Comments on: Rails SEO Tips 90% Completed http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rails-seo-tips-90-completed Patrick McKenzie (patio11) blogs on software development, marketing, and general business topics Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:17:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Hao http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1252 Hao Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:35:12 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1252 very nice man! we are modifying my site with your suggestion I did find an error in your bookmark code where quotes are not escaped properly. I added this to the title variable .gsub(/'|"/, "\\\\'") very nice man! we are modifying my site with your suggestion

I did find an error in your bookmark code where quotes are not escaped properly. I added this to the title variable

.gsub(/’|”/, “\\\\’”)

]]> By: Personal Trainer http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1253 Personal Trainer Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:19:04 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1253 Thanks for the tip in regards to the titles and descriptions. I found that successful SEO is extremely challenging and that Google's magic recipe for success relies on so much more than what information is currently available to us mere mortals in the web world. I've seen poorly optimized sites rank on the first page and well optimized sites rank way further down. As for Guy, you rank decently for the keywords "popular baby names". I'm assuming you've used several optimization tools to check your keyword density, etc? Thanks for the tip in regards to the titles and descriptions. I found that successful SEO is extremely challenging and that Google’s magic recipe for success relies on so much more than what information is currently available to us mere mortals in the web world.

I’ve seen poorly optimized sites rank on the first page and well optimized sites rank way further down.

As for Guy, you rank decently for the keywords “popular baby names”. I’m assuming you’ve used several optimization tools to check your keyword density, etc?

]]> By: Patrick http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1247 Patrick Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:35:14 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1247 Interesting challenges there Guy. Let me think about it and get back to you. Interesting challenges there Guy. Let me think about it and get back to you.

]]> By: Guy Davis http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1246 Guy Davis Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:30:40 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1246 Hi. I'm a big fan of pretty urls as well. For example, my site shows the popularity of your name at <a href="http://www.babynamemap.com/boys/Patrick" rel="nofollow">http://www.babynamemap.com/boys/Patrick</a> Change the end of the url to another name and it will search for that. My big SEO challenge is that to build an engaging and interactive web-app these days, you need to use AJAX and dynamic interfaces. So, I lean heavily on ExtJS for their tree, grid, and window components. That's great for humans visiting the site, but Google's crawler completely ignores all the dynamic Javascript. For example, the <a href="http://www.babynamemap.com/region/popular/female/3" rel="nofollow">table</a> listing popular girls names in the US lets visitors quickly navigate a large dataset, but Google just sees the generic HTML page and not the actual popular name data. It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. I need to build an interactive site to impress users and get word of mouth, but that means Google search thinks the site is worthless. Without Google liking my site, hardly anyone visits. Any ideas? Hi. I’m a big fan of pretty urls as well. For example, my site shows the popularity of your name at http://www.babynamemap.com/boys/Patrick Change the end of the url to another name and it will search for that.

My big SEO challenge is that to build an engaging and interactive web-app these days, you need to use AJAX and dynamic interfaces. So, I lean heavily on ExtJS for their tree, grid, and window components. That’s great for humans visiting the site, but Google’s crawler completely ignores all the dynamic Javascript. For example, the table listing popular girls names in the US lets visitors quickly navigate a large dataset, but Google just sees the generic HTML page and not the actual popular name data.

It’s kind of a chicken and egg problem. I need to build an interactive site to impress users and get word of mouth, but that means Google search thinks the site is worthless. Without Google liking my site, hardly anyone visits. Any ideas?

]]> By: pngl http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1245 pngl Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:23:32 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1245 Time to write a plugin that saves a field into a redirect table when it is modified, and adds a route to keep the old url valid. Time to write a plugin that saves a field into a redirect table when it is modified, and adds a route to keep the old url valid.

]]> By: Charlie http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1248 Charlie Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:53:49 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1248 Good points. It can become a bit more complicated when you're not in complete control of the data, though. For example, a site with user-editable pages (and titles) may contain a page with a poorly chosen title. The title can be changed to better suit the content, but you'd still be stuck with a URL that may now be semantically incorrect. That's probably not the case for most folks, though, so I may just be picking at the edge cases. Good points. It can become a bit more complicated when you’re not in complete control of the data, though. For example, a site with user-editable pages (and titles) may contain a page with a poorly chosen title. The title can be changed to better suit the content, but you’d still be stuck with a URL that may now be semantically incorrect.

That’s probably not the case for most folks, though, so I may just be picking at the edge cases.

]]> By: Patrick http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1251 Patrick Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:12:47 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1251 Incidentally, there is a reason for that. Your approach is workable for the user experience but suboptimal from the point of view of search engines. For example, consider a blog engine with slugs based on titles. If you rename the post three times, you could potentially have links (and link juice) split among three links. Worse, you now have canonicalization issues because Google thinks that all three are distinct pages with duplicate content! Bam go your rankings! Boo. Instead, make a good first guess at the slug and, if you ABSOLUTELY must be able to change that later, do it with a redirect table. Incidentally, there is a reason for that. Your approach is workable for the user experience but suboptimal from the point of view of search engines. For example, consider a blog engine with slugs based on titles. If you rename the post three times, you could potentially have links (and link juice) split among three links. Worse, you now have canonicalization issues because Google thinks that all three are distinct pages with duplicate content! Bam go your rankings! Boo. Instead, make a good first guess at the slug and, if you ABSOLUTELY must be able to change that later, do it with a redirect table.

]]> By: Patrick http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1250 Patrick Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:09:21 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1250 That is a good point. I'd suggest, rather than prepending the ID, just to save the slug in the database. Let the underlying data change as much as it wants to, but keep the slug static. That is a good point. I’d suggest, rather than prepending the ID, just to save the slug in the database. Let the underlying data change as much as it wants to, but keep the slug static.

]]> By: Charlie http://www.kalzumeus.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1249 Charlie Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:56:59 +0000 http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/rails-seo-tips-90-completed/#comment-1249 My instinct is to just agree with you wholeheartedly about the pretty URLs because... well, they're just so darn pretty. But they're not without their shortcomings, either. If the value of the field you use for your slug changes, the URLs already floating around in the world for that resource are now invalid. Not likely with your simplified example of bingo card categories, but quite likely for many other types of resources. This, is why you should consider prepending the id to the slug. Maybe the lazy guys are onto something. My instinct is to just agree with you wholeheartedly about the pretty URLs because… well, they’re just so darn pretty.

But they’re not without their shortcomings, either. If the value of the field you use for your slug changes, the URLs already floating around in the world for that resource are now invalid. Not likely with your simplified example of bingo card categories, but quite likely for many other types of resources. This, is why you should consider prepending the id to the slug. Maybe the lazy guys are onto something.

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