Posts Tagged ‘seo’

Magento theme improvements from 1.3 to 1.4

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

There are loads of improvements in the newest version of Magento themes. I just list some from my point of view. I observed these changes when I started using Magento 1.4 three days ago, but they may exist in the late version of 1.3.x.x already for long.

Everyone knows we should separate presentation from content. Magento does it very well since its first public version. Magento 1.4 just makes separation even better. A theme is about presentation, usually made of two parts, app/design and skin. Compared with skin, app/design part is somehow closer to content. Magento 1.4 themes remove layouts and templates from app/design, which means they are fully rely on css to present different themes. Base/default theme is an exception, but it is a fall-back theme.

In 2-column or 3-column page templates, main column code comes before left/right column. I think it hugely helps SEO. I first saw this kind layout in a Zen-Cart template. Maybe Magento was inspired by it. Under template/page, one-column.phtml was deleted, which saves confusion with 1column.phtml.

The header logo is no longer displayed as a background image, which is a minor change but makes big improvement.

I spent 3 days to re-write my theme to be compliant with Magento 1.4 but I love these changes.

My third DNS server down for a month

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

今年初,我退掉了 godaddy vps,把原来 godaddy vps 担当的辅助 DNS 角色转给了 1&1 server,却忘了开 1&1 server firewall port (硬件防火墙那道关)。

今天才发现这台辅助 DNS 在过去的一个月根本无法执行 DNS 解析(因为我设置了三台 DNS,挂了一台没引起警觉)。难怪最近 webceo 给我的评分只有 5 分上下,google 的排名也有下降。

赶紧打开防火墙,希望分数能上去。

Who is official emule — does it matter?

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

前几天看了一篇文章,说 emule-project.net 才是 emule 的中文官网,而著名的 verycd.com 并不是官网,是它运用商业手段混淆了人们的概念。

当时看完没什么感想,躺到床上突然又想到这篇文章,突然就有了感想。首先我理解 emule 的中文开发者默默无闻地做了很多工作,没得到大众承认的心情。世上本有很多看似很不公平的事情,比如学识比人高挣钱没人多。

我记不得是先认识 emule-project.net 还是先认识 verycd.com,但至少我知道这两个网站,verycd.com 接触得多,看得出运营商很用心地做网站;emule-project.net 接触得少,没多大感觉。

至于谁是官网,重要吗?最终用户关注的是资源,开发者关心的是程序,看问题的角度不一样,心目中的官网就不一样。或者说,根本就没有官网,哪个网站有用就上哪个。互联网本来就是挑战权威的,如果一定想当官网,那就开发个程序不用开源协议分发啊,emule 原版都没这么做,中文版还挣个什么。

至于说 google 和百度与 emule 相关的关键字排名都青睐于 verycd.com,错了吗?就算 emule-project.net 是官网,这因素也只占有限的google 排名权重。约略设想一下,如果 emule-project.net  排第一,大部分最终用户被 google 带到一个 bounce rate 很高的网站,google 肯定调整一下,找一个 sticky 的网站取而代之。少数开发者或许更关心 emule-project.net,不满意 google 的搜索结果?那只好对不起了,少数服从多数。人性化搜索或许能解决这个少数人的问题,但目前算法不理想。如果开发者要抱怨 google 的搜索结果,那不如贡献一个人性化搜索算法?(我有点站着说话不腰疼)

人性化搜索有点遥不可及,说点可以实现的。emule-project.net 和 verycd.com 是两个不同方向的网站,emule-project.net 没有排名的先天优势,那么做一个比 emule verycd 版更强的程序如何?我比较了一下,verycd.com 下载安装后就能用(界面比较花俏,我不喜欢,可能别人喜欢;内置搜索有 bug,会显示一些病毒结果), emule-project.net 安装后仍需两步设置(幸亏我还知道怎么设置)。不作官网之争,争做更好的软件,让 emule-project.net 版的 emule 在 verycd 用户中口口相传,以后大家仍上 verycd 找资源,但用 emule-project.net 版的 emule,那也是一种成功。

Google sandbox applied to my company’s site

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

每次更换域名都是一次痛苦的经历,但没办法,业务需要我的公司又更换了新域名。

原域名在一个主要关键词 google 排名第5(不算很好,勉强凑合),更换后排名第9。这样排了一个月左右,然后突然消失,不过一个星期以后就回来了,还是第9。不过过了一个多月,又消失了(用工具查了一下,准确地说,是被埋在416位)。

第二次消失的时间比较长,差不多三个星期。期间我们查了各种被 google 惩罚的可能,最后确定我们没做错事,最大的可能是进入了传说中的 google sandbox。于是一方面保持耐心等待,一方面该做的优化继续做。今天早上排名回来了,第5。

我这下对 google sandbox 有很更深的体验。

Does Google prefer sites using xml + xlst?

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

I came across a good site today which is generating web pages using xml plus xlst. And an idea came cross my mind – does Google prefer sites using xml + xlst? i.e. suppose the transformed xhtml contents are all the same, is xml + xlst technology gain more SEO weight than xhtml?

I asked myself the question, and assumed the answer is postive. Bearing in mind xml + xlst technology makes cloaking much easier, but Google must have some technology to anti-cloaking in the long term.

However, after I have searched Google, the expects who answered the question with No.

Really?

Magento sub category url at level 1

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Although Google said it does not matter if you put pages at deep level, it would be quite nice to put all category pages at level 1. I have not found a way to achieve it in Magento.

I have a strong reason to put sub category url at level 1 besides of SEO – Sometime I need reorganise the category hierarchy. If moving category around changes its url, the site will produce 404 error if the visitor visiting the site via bookmark or search engine cached url.

Magento takes care of product pages very well. It asks you whether to use categories path for product URLs. However, Magento does not ask the same question for sub category pages. If a sub category is at level 3 from root category, its url will be sub-category-level-1/sub-category-level-2/sub-category-level-3. That is too long. If you can make sure each category (no matter which category it belongs to) url identifier identical, why Magento not simply use sub-category-level-3 as url?

No deplicate posts any more in WordPress

Saturday, December 13th, 2008

刚用上WordPress后,我发现WordPress一个不足之处——同一个post_id的post,可以用不同的url来访问。

以此blog为例,我设置permanent link structure为/%post_id%/%postname%/。我认为post_id查询最快,postname又是meaningful string,最有利seo,所以我把两者结合起来了(后来据说顶层目录的文件最利于seo,所以我更喜欢设置permanent link structure为/%postname%_%post_id%.html,但据说Google不吃这一套,那我就没必要为一些小引擎去劳师动众修改现有的blog,扯远了)。

当permanent link structure存在post_id和postname两个参数时,post_id起决定作用。早期版本会完全忽略postname,造成只要post_id是正确的,任何杜撰的postname都会被承认。设想一下,如果我发布了一个post以后修改了postname,搜索引擎读到不同url上的相同内容,肯定会降低对此blog的评价。

所以,当时我想改一下WordPress程序逻辑,当post_id存在但url中的postname不等于数据库中的postname时,返回404页。但是我还没来得及做这个修改,今天惊喜发现WordPress 2.6 (可能更早的版本已经实现了这个修改) 已经会把/(post_id)/(incorrect_postname) 301跳转到 /(post_id)/(postname),这应该比我设计的方案更完好,我非常喜欢WordPress的体贴。

Create Effective Backlinks

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

要有好排名得有好的backlinks,这个道理我很早就知道了,但一直未及深入研究。最近读到一篇文章很有可操作性,我准备依样画瓢。

  1. Use wordpress.com for creating your blogs. – Wordpress has grate on-site SEO and blogs on Wordpress.com get indexed pretty quickly. Once you create an account there, you can create unlimited number of blogs without having to register any new accounts.

    不指是直接使用wordpress.com的blog好,还是自己安装一个wordpress blog好?

  2. Write more then one post per blog. – Google loves backlinks that look natural and active blog that has your link in blogrol seems pretty natural. You can also include some backlinks inside blog posts linking to relevant parts of the website you are building backlinks for.

    到底写几篇post才算好呢?要知道写post很累的啊!

  3. Use Scribefire – Scribefire is grate firefox plugin that will allow you to write into your wordpress blogs from your browser. It helps a lot to have all your blogs listed in it and be able to drag-and-drop pictures from the web directly into your blog posts.

    Scribefire倒不必了,我觉得在线编辑已经很方便了。

  4. Your blog posts don’t have to be masterpieces – Remember you are not writing content for readers, you are writing it for spiders so it only has to seem relevant to the topic.

    这我知道,但我总会尽力写好post的。随便写点东西,或者排版很糟糕,搜索引擎可以糊弄过去,观众糊弄不过去啊。

  5. Promote your blogs – You won’t have much use of these backlinks if you don’t build backlinks for the blog. Luckily, building these backlinks is not so hard as you can use all the benefits provided by RSS feed. Submit your blogs RSS feed to as many services as you can that will create some backlinks out of it. It is also easier to do this when you have more blogs to submit at once.

    我觉得submit rss feed是最值得操作的。

Magento SID

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

如果magento base url 为 goods-pro.com,那么用www.goods-pro.com 访问时,页面中的链接会带有SID,这是为了跨域名访问时,会话不丢失。

为了SEO,就得避免SID,为此goods-pro.com和www.goods-pro.com只能选择一个做base url,把另外一个301跳转到base url。这里我个人比较爱好no-www的方案:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

芳草苑

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

一时兴起,调查了一下芳草苑产业。

  1. 第一产业:这个产业最不繁荣
    1. 芳草苑农业。只找到芳草苑香薰SPA,SPA本身不属于农业,暂且假定它用的香薰草出自于芳草苑。
    2. 芳草苑林业。草木是不同的,所以从名字上说,芳草苑林业是不存在的。
    3. 芳草苑渔业。芳草渔村是仅有一个,但芳草渔村也不真正搞芳草苑养殖。芳草渔村是集餐饮、肉鸽养殖、观赏犬培育、旅游及商务接待于一体的综合性度假村,把它归类于服务业更恰当一些。
    4. 芳草苑牧业?这本应是第一产业中相对最为繁荣的行业,黄滔«芳草»诗曰:泽国多芳草,年年长自春。应从屈平后,更苦不归人。看来泽国人都不上网,我无从追查。
  2. 第二产业:行业繁荣度差距最大
    1. 芳草苑工业。确切地说,没有芳草苑工业,但江西中烟工业公司的员工天地叫芳草苑,大概烟草也是芳草吧。
    2. 芳草苑建筑业。那就遍地开花了,有上海芳草苑、北京芳草苑、宁波藕池芳草苑、广州芳草园、成都芳草苑等。
  3. 第三产业:欣欣向荣
    1. 芳草苑博客业。我算一个,还有成千上百个。
    2. 芳草苑流通业。前面提及的芳草渔村、芳草苑香薰SPA应该归入此类,另外众多的芳草苑商店,如青青芳草苑。
    3. 芳草苑服务业。杭州芳草苑宾馆、北京芳草苑国际青年旅舍等。
    4. 芳草苑福利业。芳草苑小学算一个,既然有小学,估计也有芳草苑幼儿园。
    5. 芳草苑公共事业,包括国家机关、政党机关、社会团体,以及军队和警察部门等,不会有以芳草苑命名的吧?