Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - SEO Methodologies

Misleading email-con about domain search engine submission

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:33:00 -0000

One of my domains was coming up for renewal recently, it was already renewed, I'd taken care of it, done deal. I'm guessing that this rather opportunistic company was monitoring domain renewals and spotted an opportunity. Then I got a rather bizarre looking email. It looked a lot like an invoice, and was sneakily designed and worded to look like a domain related issue. It uses lots of semi scare mongering terminology and shock value statements about offers expiring! And last chance to make sure things are in place! The whole thing is a con to try and get you to sign up to a 'search engine submission' service. Which anyone in web technology will tell you isn't managed in this way at all. I mean it can be, but only if you want to pay over the odds for a service that largely takes place by itself, or with minimal management from a web administrator. Shocking behaviour from this company, its not very convincing if you are technically aware, but for 'Joe public' could cause a random outburst of knee-jerk payment. Warn your less tech aware relatives. [Screen shot of email below]

How Business and Government are trying to manage your Google experience

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 05:28:00 -0000

Governments and businesses are continually trying to interfere with how users find their web content. Not by the same means as developers and marketers, IE good SEO principles and an actual strategy, but by trying to change fundamental elements of the search system. [More]

Google is tweaking my search results

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 09:54:00 -0000

...And I don't really like it. Maybe Google thinks that it is serving up more relevant results as it is filtering down the results based on things I've said or done, and things either Twitter or Facebook contacts have said. [More]

Bulmers Cider using QR codes to track and target landing pages

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:11:00 -0000

QR codes have been around for a while now but often people struggle to see any real value in them, or how to use them and obtain measurable results. This blog article describes how the UK Cider manufacturer Bulmers have added a QR code onto their product labels and are effectively tracking QR scans through to a specific landing page within their site. [More]

The SEO way to safely redirect a Page or folder using 301 redirects

Mon, 10 May 2010 17:09:00 -0000

In a recent project we are restructuring a site to be more intuitively architected. But what impact will moving the directories or pages have on all that hard earned Search Engine Ranking Optimisation work? This article deals with how to safely redirect users from an old page or folder to the new URL, and keep Search Engine's informed of your changes without leading them to dead content (Dead content is bad and will adversely affect your Site rankings). [More]

Redirecting a URL using 301 or 302

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:41:00 -0000

If I want to redirect a URL I will usually try and do it on the server side, as this seems like the best fit solution to a redirect. It can be done server side, or in code, examples of both are below. Whether it is an entire site redirect or a page move necessitating a URL redirect there are some small, but key differences in how to do it.

Differences in 301 or 302 redirects

The 302 redirect is a temporary redirect that indicates to browsers and search engines that it is not a permanent change. This is all well and good, but some engines will overlook this due to knowing that it is a temporary change. Google for instance will not index redirects of this type, effectively leaving your users pointed at the wrong URL. The 301 redirect is a permanent redirect. It is much more search engine friendly, as they will not skip over it. They read it and cache the destination template as the end point, rather than using the redirect url, so saving your users that extra jump.

Implementing the redirect

In IIS:

In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
Enter the redirection page
Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource" (This makes it a 301 redirect)
Click on 'Apply'

In code:

Google Analytics tracking across multiple domains

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:05:00 -0000

I recently came across an issue where an online application was crossing several domains during the customer experience, and the Google Analytics tracking was losing the referrer when they left the originating domain. The usual Google Analytics tracking code is:



var tracker = _gat._getTracker("#GACode#");
			tracker._setDomainName("none");
			tracker._setAllowLinker(true);
			tracker._initData();
			tracker._trackPageview();

With the addition of two extra lines: tracker._setDomainName("none"); tracker._setAllowLinker(true); We can force each link to carry the cookie data over to the next domain, maintaining the user data throughout. There is one other small change. Any href that transitions from one domain to the next has to include an onclick event that tells it to use a tracker method. Link Text We need to do something similar to form submissions:
In this way the user cookie is maintained across multiple domains.