[CF-Dev] Re: [ cf-dev ] OT - Search Engine Optimisation

["Stephen Moretti (cfmaster)" <stephen@cfmaster.co.uk>]

> The client that I have been developing a website for has a third party 
> 'optimisin' the site for search engines. He has expressed concerns 
> that there are only 4 entry points to the site when really there 
> should be hundreds. He is claiming that he can't optimise the site as 
> it uses coldfusion. He says that all of the products should have an 
> individual page to be properly optimised. Now this sounds like total 
> ball locks to me but I bow down to those that might know...
>
> Does any one have any comments on site optimistaion for search engines 
> etc ....

Frankly, that is a load of ball locks these days.

www.formica.co.uk is one of my sites (technically not design wise).  Its 
built using a version of fusebox 2, so it uses fuseactions and I have 
not implemented SES urls.  Its brand new and I've only ever submitted it 
to google.co.uk. 

I'm in the process of using google to create a site search, because 
google has walked through every single link in the site and indexed just 
over 2000 products (about 600 really, but each product appears in one or 
more ranges) and 200 "static" content pages.

I've just a quick check and a search on Yahoo, Altavista, Lyco, Ask 
"awol" Jeeves and MSN (boy is MSN slow) for "formica" or "formica uk" 
where appropriate.  In all cases formica.co.uk appeared somewhere in the 
top 5.  Also in the those top sites was also formica-europe.com, which 
is rather old and clunky now, but also built by me using a version of 
fusebox without SES urls.

The site doesn't fair so well in the google listings (second page), but 
then the meta descriptions and keywords are the same for every page, 
which is never the best plan for making sure your site gets good 
listings.  However, the title for every page is dynamically populated by 
the content on the page and dull though it is to the average person on 
the street, there is plenty of good text on the site.  I'm sure if I was 
to populate the meta tags with appropriate information for each page, 
then the site would be listed higher up in google.  That said - Formica  
don't really talk about formica, they talk about 'laminate paper', so 
the word "formica" isn't exactly over used on the site.

I'm sure that there are a number of things that I could do to make the 
site better optimised for search engines (site map, better titles on 
images, etc...), but the old query string/built in coldfusion arguement 
is a load absolute twadle!

I've no idea what an entry point is, but surely every site anywhere in 
the world has only one entry point!  The homepage! 

The Formica sites all trade links to various worldwide counterparts and 
a number of manufacturers link to the site appropriate to them. Cross 
linking like this will also give a site a better listing in Google and 
many of the other search engines.

One thing you do need to be careful of is site depth.  There are too 
many menu levels on the Formica Europe site and it does get indexed all 
the way through, but the rejig that resulted in the UK site means that 
the menu levels have been reduced and now everthing that is supposed to 
get indexed does. Hopefully, a rebuild of the Europe site (due in 2005)  
will also address this and that site will be entirely indexed too.

Find out from this SEO "specialist" what he wants to be able to do to 
each page - I'll bet you can probably make a few relatively minor 
changes to the display templates for things like products that will 
automatically do what is required.  In terms of keywords and 
descriptions, you need to make sure that these can stored in the 
database alongside content etc, so that you can dynamically  populate 
them when you display that page.

This guy will be P.O'd because there won't be _any_ work for him to do 
once you've put appropriate measures in place in the site. :)

ahem... takes deep breath.... sorry for the rant..... sheepish grin

Stephen