Why Include WWW When Marketing Your URL?

I've seen a bunch of recent criticism (on Linkedin actually) for a company that used "www" at the beginning of their URL in some of their marketing material. Although there was a bunch of other issues with the advert shown.... in my opinion the use of "www" in the web address didn't even warrant a mention, let alone an outburst of ridicule. But apparently this was a major modern digital marketing faux pas.

So does adding the prefix, short of World Wide Web, really look dated or unprofessional?

I don't think so.

Whilst technically you can have either (with or without the "www" sub-domain) I don't think it makes a bit of difference whether you show it or not.

However...

For Search Engine Optimisation benefit, make sure your site is available on just one of the two URLs ("www" and "non-www") and not both at the same time... by redirecting all traffic to the main one

You can obviously decide not to show the "www" in your adverts if you want to make better use of space (again, make sure you have the correct URL redirection in-place)

Advanced SEO : Using canonical references

What is Canonicalization?
The process of picking a single site URL to be indexed by the search engines from a range of URL’s. This happens when there are duplicate versions of the same/similar content on one site. Think of it as a way of suggesting the ‘true’ URL for your page(s) to the search engines

Why would I have multiple versions of the same content?
This usually occurs when you have dynamic content delivered from a database or there is more than one URL for a single page (typically the homepage, but not necessarily).
An example of this is an ecommerce site that enables users to get the same or very similar results from different actions.
E.g. If you have the URL of a product catalogue listing page built up from a series queries or filters.

The search engines understand this stuff?
Yes, they more than understand it they use it as a signal for search engine optimization. Since early 2009 Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have all stated they support this way for website owners to say “hey search engines, all these pages may have different URL’s but they are actually the same”.

What is the issue with duplicate content?
Search engines think that everyone is trying to game them and submit duplicate content to push themselves up the organic rankings. Without this, when a search engine finds duplicate content, it won’t now if you have done this accidentally or on. This means that they may well display the URL you don’t want to display, miss pages you want to get index or even worse downgrade the value of the page(s) they find… affecting the rankings and potentially the entire optimization of your site.

So how do I do this on my site?
If you read articles about this on the web, you would think that it is as simple as embedding a link in the header of your HTML pages (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_meta_tag )

In theory this tells search engines the preferred location of the page to index (the “canonical” location) instead of the one it has found.

In practice it is more complex to create and maintain a working Canonical structure within an eCommerce site, especially one that has an evolving product catalogue.

Twitter usage - how to be more professional

I've recently written an article giving some top tips for Twitter users. You can view the article here:
http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php?AID=8590&Title=Top+Tips+On+Tweeting

Its quite surprising for me to see so many regular users of Twitter still doing some pretty basic or incorrect stuff and not making the most of their precious 140 characters. There's some obvious question to ask, for example:

• Why don't people shorten their URL's to make the most effective use of their posts (and to measure click throughs)
• Why are hashtags not used more regularly?
• Why aren't more posts repeated if they are important?
• Why do so many postings still have spelling mistakes in them?

Just because Twitter is an informal social media channel, it doesn't have to be used unprofessionally.

URL shorteners and search engine optimisation

I've just upgraded my Google Toolbar on Internet Explorer 8 and have found the Google URL shortener http://goog.le/ integrated within the 'Share' functionality.

So, does the Internet need another URL shortener? Possibly not.
But is there any harm in Google doing one? Possibly not. It was likely cheaper developing their own one than buying up http://tinyurl.com/ or http://bit.ly/ (the default URL shortener for Twitter), but not that Google needs to worry about money.
Here's Google's blog post from December on the launch of this service:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html

Coincidentally I was having an interesting conversation with one of my clients yesterday about the SEO (search engine optimisation) implications of URL shorteners. A check with this URL shortener article by Danny Sullivan does corroborate the fact that a lot of these services allow shortened links to add to your SEO efforts (by correctly using 301 redirects) .

On top of this, its my belief that creating a bespoke URL (e.g. http://www.tinyurl.com/keyword+linkid) could further add to your SEO efforts by including your required keyword(s) into the URL as we know that keywords in hyperlinks can increase the relevance and therefore the value of each link.

Do you have your Facebook vanity URL yet?

This weekend Facebook started accepting requests for personalised/vanity URLs. This allows a user to add their name to the end of the Facebook URL to allow them to be found directly (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/haydensutherland). Its thought that this feature is the next step along Facebook's plan to become more Twitter-like.

However, it is also possible to set up a vanity URL for a company group / page if you have more than 1000 fans.

Have you got yours yet?

Note:
The way to obtain yours is to go to http://www.facebook.com/username and register the one most suitable that is still available.

Telegraph URL shows political bias

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/4961897/Gordon-Brown-is-a-cunt.html

Yes, you read that correctly...

An effective URL strategy and its benefits

The URL and extended URL use on your company website is important for 2 key reasons:


1. It provides a logical navigation structure
Basic usability says that you need to show users where they are in the site structure. Yes, you can provide all the signage/clues/breadcrumbs/etc. but also providing a decent URL path gives your browsing user an informal breadcrumb trail that provides them with further hints as to where they are. Or put it another way, not providing this may mean the difference between your customers finding what they want and not.

For example, just by looking at the URL path on the Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/productinfo/product-demos/podcasting-software/

You could perhaps decipher that you were looking at some information on one of its products called Captivate. You may even go so far as to think you were on a page that demonstrated how its could be used for podcasting. You would of-course be correct.

However, who would have guessed that this is a link to PC World's Business site to buy this same product? http://www.pcwb.com/catalogue/item/ADOCA004


2. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Real users aren't the only things that read URL's to understand the content. Most web search engines also read the URL and use it in their indexing of the page. This is one of the reasons why blog posting appear so high up in searches for specific phrases.
For example, if you type the following into Google "Customers can be brand evangelists", you get two search results, the top one being:
http://press20.blogspot.com/2008/04/customers-can-be-brand-evangelists.html
(my 14 April posting on the subject)



So if you're thinking about re-developing your new website, remember to ask your technical team what they are doing about the URL structure.