Yesterday, Feb 12 2009, the big 3 announced the adoption of a new relationship attribute for the header link tag in order to specify a preferred version of a page where there may be different ways to access it and to help avoid issues with duplicate content.  It's nice to have an option for when you take over a badly built site where there isn't a budget to rewrite a lot of code and do a million 301 redirects but this is just a band-aid on a larger problem.

This is why architecture of a project is important and if you build it right the first time, you don't have to worry about this being an issue.  There are always times however that a bot will surprise you with some weird entry URL so as a guideline, it's good to monitor your analytics and do simple 301 rewrites as they happen, if they happen.  Also just for kicks, there's already a WordPress plugin from Joost de Valk (thanks man) to handle it on your blog, and an extension for Magento too!

Read More:
- Google, Specify Your Cononical
- Yahoo, Fighting Duplication
- Live, Partnering to Solve Duplicate Content issues
- SEOmoz has a really detailed write-up too

December 2009 Update:
Wordpress 2.9 is adding this function into core so no more plugins will be needed to accomplish this if you're running wordpress.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Canonical Rel Attribute Just a Band-Aid

Adobe Flash (previously Macromedia Flash) has long been a stealth containment of information, hiding its information from search engines.  The ever important need for your site's content, including your all important keywords/keyphrases, to be properly indexed by the search engines has left flash web sites in the dark.  I've personally stayed away from using flash in web sites for anything more than non-content related interaction areas or animated galleries, slideshows, floorplan navigations, etc; basically anything not including copy or anything important to search bots.

So yesterday Adobe and Google announced that Google, and soon Yahoo (after they "work some bugs out"), will be improving their indexing of Flash files.  This won’t solve all the problems with Flash content showing up on search engines and it's not the complete and total package but it's a great step in the right direction for Adobe Flash and their users.

So what's going to be indexed?

All "textual content" in Flash files.  It's not everything, including images and any descriptive text that those would contain, but will at least start to index your keywords and phrases.

What's not going to be indexed?

I'm not a Flash expert by any means so I'm not real sure how Flash files are built but if you include your text in that initial movie, you're okay, but if you pull data from XML files or another .html file Google currently won't include those.  Also if you include your SWF file by way of certain Javascripting, Googlebot may or may not recognize that.  They didn't get specific on that part but if you read into Googlebot's javascript ability I'm sure you'll figure it out.  (Give it a little more time and I bet Google figures that stuff out though.)

So now what?

I'm in no rush to start developing things in Flash just because of this news but it is good to know that Adobe is working on getting this done.  I still have my qualms about Flash and the way most web sites use it, its accessibility issues, and the problems of users having older versions and having to update, etc.

I still say web site content and its navigation should not reside within a flash file and should be semantically marked up for the best search results and best accessibility.  This news also worries me that the people making those crappy flash sites will only use this news to justify their bad sites/code are just that much better.  Fail.

Read the news from Google and from Adobe for source information and some more details.

EDIT: (19 July 2008) – Google has rolled out an "update that enables support for common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, including SWFObject and SWFObject2".  So one of the first issues with their news they've already fixed.

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

Flash gets some Search Engine Love

A friend of mine recently asked me to weigh in on a question on his blog from a client who was raising some questions after attending a SEO seminar regarding hiding text with css for headings and SEO. Here's my 2 cents…

This is one of those situations where "common sense" comes into play and your intent as a web developer as well. Unfortunately the amount of "SEO companies" that practice shady techniques (Black Hat) far outweigh the ones that follow the rules and are considered (White Hat). That puts a bad taste in people's mouths about anybody who says they're an SEO so it's our job to educate them on the right way. The client was at a SEO seminar for a reason, so he’s already looking at what was worked on.

If you're using an image replacement technique for design purposes it's okay, BUT use common sense and understand the word "moderation". Much like an alt attribute on an image, the text needs to be descriptive but not full of useless garbage just to throw keywords at the bots. So when you replace an H1 with an image and put text-indent:-9999px or display:none or visibility:hidden on the text within the H1; as long as you keep it description of what the image is you're fine. If your H1 image replacement is the HLF Industries logotype, and your text says "HLF Industries" – there's nothing wrong with that. Now if you put tons of keywords in with the HFL Industries… now you're intent is not with the benefit of accessibility and your users, but to gain rank illegally and you’re not using common sense. That's when Google starts to lay down the law with their algorithm.

The same goes for sliding door images and navigation bars with text in list items that are "hidden". It's descriptive text for the button navigation and there for text browsers and audible accessibility reasons.

Now if you don't believe ME, then read the following comments and posts from Matt Cutts and Susan Moskwa of Google and feel free, Beau, to forward my comments onto your client if it would help.

1) Matt Cutts is a software engineer at Google and when posting about a site using some shady tactics got misunderstood and taken out of context by the community. He then made some comments and cleared up the situation, leaving us with some definitive answers on the topic.

Initial post on MattCutts.com – and his comment on ThreadWatch regarding people taking it out of context.

2) From a Google Groups discussion in the Webmaster Help thread (located here):
Susan Moskwa, who is one of Google's Webmaster Central Google Groups support people, said it is acceptable, based on intent. Note the keyword there… "intent".

"If your intent in hiding text is to deceive the search engines, we frown on that; if your intent is purely to improve the visual user experience (e.g. by replacing some text with a fancier image of that same text), you don't need to worry.
Of course, as with many techniques, there are shades of gray between "this is clearly deceptive and wrong" and "this is perfectly acceptable". Matt [Cutts] did say that hiding text moves you a step further towards the gray area. But if you’re running a perfectly legitimate site, you don't need to worry about it. If, on the other hand, your site already exhibits a bunch of other semi-shady techniques, hidden text starts to look like one more item on that list."

3) Roger Johansson at 456 Berea Street in 2005 weighed in on the situation and Matt Cutts said "We can flag text that appears to be hidden using CSS at Google. To date we have not algorithmically removed sites for doing that." It is now 3 years later and Google still hasn't done that, and in my opinion they won't. That comment here at ThreadWatch.

I hope that helps Beau. I don't consider myself a SEO guru by any means but I am on the front lines and have been at it for some years so if that's any consolation; then there ya go.

For further reading here are some of my bookmarks on the subject: http://del.icio.us/chuckreynolds/seo

rYnoweb.com by Chuck Reynolds

CSS Heading Image Replacement