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Using Rel HTML attribute to your Advantage

November 17th, 2009

Since the introduction of HTML, the link element “a” is one of the oldest elements most commonly used in web development. Included in HTML 2 initially, it still exists in HTML 5. However, even though this tag was enhanced multiple times with different attributes over the years, most webmasters still stick to what they’ve learned, not realizing there were many more options available, or preferring to avoid new attributes like “rel” altogether.

The rel attribute had its fifteen minutes of fame in 2005 when Google announced that they would be ignoring links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute when ranking websites in search results. Unfortunately, 2005 was the “golden age” in the rise of SEO marketing companies and webmasters took that announcement to heart – avoiding the rel attribute altogether or thinking it was only for “nofollow”.

Also, Google’s “nofollow” announcement was greeted with applause by famous blog software makers because it helped to fight spammers who used to abuse blog comments and create site trackbacks using the rel attribute.

However “nofollow” behavior has changed lately.

So, what is really wrong with the rel attribute? Can we use it without “nofollow” effectively?

A hyperlink connects two HTML pages; the rel attribute is supposed to identify the type, relationship or value of the link itself. Since the introduction of microformats and the XHTML Friends Network (XFN) many more rel values have appeared in the web developer’s toolbox. Multiple values can be used on the same link tag, like this: <a rel="home me contents" href="http://example.org">.

A few of the most popular/appropriate uses for the rel attribute are included here. But compare that list with what is available in HTML 5. So much more than “nofollow”.

What about rel’s cousin – the “rev” attribute?

Rev is less popular than rel and is about to die a slow death since it is being phased out in HTML 5. Since the rel attribute defines the link target’s relationship to the current page, rev’s purpose is to define the current document’s relationship to the link target (the reverse). For example, <a rev="help" href="example.org">. This example indicates that the current document is the help manual for the site/page specified in the href attribute.

These types of HTML features have existed for many years, yet webmasters are very slow to adopt and use them with confidence. Taking a more informed approach to HTML can have two main benefits: it would help many search engines to identify what’s really important and the end user would benefit with new and exciting features (that would not be blocked out automatically). For example, tags like rel=”payment” can be used in RSS feeds. If you are media/text publisher, you can ask your readers for a comment or tip without asking them to click away and visit your page. What features could you introduce by gaining control over your rel attributes?

Tags: linking, Links
Posted in Links | No Comments »

Breaking up is hard to do: Will your links come back?

November 10th, 2009

Often, broken links can be organized into two categories: gone “permanently” and gone “temporarily”. Why is there this distinction at all? A broken link is a broken link – isn’t it?

A “permanent” broken link occurs when a domain name is completely inaccessible or has expired. The domain wasn’t renewed by the webmaster – abandoned only to be bought by spammers who now have the advantage of the site’s former Internet credibility. Other sites that have a link to that domain now have sent their users to the spammer’s site.

Obviously, it’s good practice to know when certain domains expire, especially your own. One of the more popular services is Go Daddy, who will monitor expiry date and domain information for a fee in return. This is good and bad: you might be a responsible and proactive webmaster, who renews in plenty of time, or you could be a spammer waiting to pounce.

If you find a domain inaccessible error, you should look for alternatives or cached content – refer to this LinkAider blog post for more information about how to deal with broken links.

“Temporary” broken links occur when sites go down for maintenance from time to time. Other sites experience network or software errors. In these cases, you’ll probably see a custom error message explaining what has happened. Twitter is the most obvious example of constant downtimes. Its infamous downtime has become the topic of Internet folklore and is a part of many jokes already. Furthermore, Twitter was the inspiration for funny projects like: istwitterdown.com (now defunct itself – how ironic!) August 2009 was rather tough for Twitter according to the chart from the pingdom monitoring service. Growing pains or maintenance can take a toll – but downtime on a social network is not as serious as downtime for your income-generating site. Although these days you may argue that Twitter now provides this type of service and should be making uptime guarantees like other hosting providers.

Hosting providers build contracts around guarantees for uptime. Typically, they are expressed using a percentage. Percentages put a context around the amount of time that a server/hardware/network is continually available (its availability). Percentages make the hosting contract look great at first sight. However, let’s do some math. If a hosting provider says:

90% uptime, it means the server may be down 876 hours a year
95% = 438 hours down
99% = 87 hours, 36 minutes
99.9% = 8 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds
99.99% = 52 minutes, 33.6 seconds
99.999% = 5 minutes, 15.36 seconds
99.9999% = 31.68 seconds

Of course, these are just network guarantees. Webmasters can also experience some downtime (on top of that) due to script mis-configuration, bad coding or human errors.

Also, when double checking and/or fixing your broken links manually, keep in mind that some websites may be inaccessible within a certain network location or country. So if you have some doubts, check services like these: downforeveryoneorjustme.com and dingitsup.com.

Downforeveryoneorjustme.com is a nice test to do when your users tell you that a site is down. You can check it online and then diagnose the problem – it might be their machine, not the server or the network.

Dingitsup.com sends a text message to let you know when a site is back up or has gone down. Be the first one to know if a site goes down before your end-users or customers start calling. The last thing you want to send out is a large email campaign and have a flood of complaints about a site that is unavailable.

In summary, if you have any doubts about a domain link, double-checking is always the safest route. If you’ve already signed up with LinkAider, you know that you can re-run your broken link report with a single click. If you haven’t signed up yet, consider doing it now. It’s free.

Tags: Broken links, gone permanently, gone temporarily, Inaccessible links, Links
Posted in Broken links, Links | No Comments »

What Came First? Sliced Bread or Page Rank and Link-Weighting Algorithms?

October 16th, 2009

Making toast on Sunday morning was changed forever in 1928. The invention of the bread slicer provided a change in technology but did not replace the need to slice bread. It’s the same with link references on the web. A new technology doesn’t necessarily change what’s always been done – it just does it faster or makes it easier for the human end-user.

Google determines webpage importance according to the link count to that page. Links end up having a serious impact on your webpage link count and weighting for your page rank. Ever wondered where this came from? Do you think it was Google’s unique idea? 

I’m sure they would like to take credit for it but the answer is no. If you have ever gathered a list of references for a paper at university or read any serious non-fiction or scientific book, you’ve probably done or have seen what Google has automated for the Internet world of end-users who search for information constantly.

Traditional references to other articles and book sources are provided in a list at the end of a piece of writing. These are called bibliography. This will lead readers to additional information and tell them what writings the author referred to when creating the book. You may also use it to evaluate the quality of the book you’ve just read – to make sure it has used legitimate information.

Bibliographic index or bibliographic database is a collection of these references which is used to find particular articles, magazines or books. And the reference count is used to determine legitimacy of a particular writing. Is this starting to sound familiar? Since Google uses linking references to rank its page results, this enhances a site’s “legitimacy” automatically, and improves your website’s rank on the Internet according to Google’s system.

An analog search engine was established in 1896. Index cards were used to build a database of books and people could mail in their requests for material. They would then have the information they needed to look up the book at the local library. Some professional indexers still use a method like this today to ensure key words are incorporated into an index. Indexing and inserting key word alternatives are critical to Search Engine Optimization as well.

Bibliographers, such as this one working in the 16th century, provided key historical texts that catalogued important writers in history. Without these types of reference lists, many people would not know that this kind of information was available.

The library that started on clay tablets is now going online. It should be interesting to see how search engines and webmasters cope with the information catalogs of the future. With hard copy formats disappearing, how does one reference a page number? How big is a page? What kind of linking will occur when new types of search engines, such as WolframAlpha, are developed to present information in a different way.

If your site’s reputation online depends on its links and the number of references you have, it would be interesting to keep up with new types of technology that have become available to streamline a basic need. Manage your links and satisfy the need for information – electronically and at your fingertips.

Tags: link weight, Links, page rank
Posted in Links | No Comments »

Website Topology Tune-up and Maintenance

October 8th, 2009

The real world of 2009 is very different from 2000. Webmasters and developers often had one key player back then that helped them create a logical site structure: the information architect. These roles existed in larger corporations when the large e-commerce sites we know and love today were under construction. However, the webmasters of today are expected to be Information Architect, Designer and Manager to create and run an organized, easily accessible and optimized site by themselves.

Typically, they have already developed a structure in their mind or sketched it out on a napkin during a lunch meeting. Seems unorganized but some of the structures remain in place today – but how effective are they for SEO and page ranking? Technology has evolved to be very out-of-the-box, but the extra help they may need is not available.

Get Informed

Watch Rand’s entertaining video about content categorization for large sites, such as blogs, news or enterprise sites. He provides some great examples and reasons for the model he selects.

Keep in mind that it is very easy to define site structure when starting a new site. Starting a fresh site is less complicated, everything is clear, organized and in just the right place where you’d like it to be. However, when your site gets a bit older, the content is growing in size and may be a little too haphazard. You add a page here and there. Some blog posts are moved to an archive section. You remove old pages, products. Content starts to get a little bit rushed and disorganized. The grand plans and structure you designed has now been lost along the way. When a year has passed – do you still know how your site is organized?

By the way, Bruce Clay refers to such technique as siloing. Siloing categorizes content on your site based on the theme. The theme and sub-topics are determined by target key phrases pulled from the content on your pages. Siloing categorizes the content both structurally and virtually, which means the content is categorized on the server (or at least how it appears to search engines), and virtually – it’s how contend is interlinked. Check out this article about siloing (a.k.a. page rank sculpting).

Link with Purpose

As you all know, search engine optimization is a lot about links. If you link much to a specific page, Google thinks that’s the most important page on your site. And yes, everybody links to their home page and top product categories, contact pages, and so on. Still – is this the right way for your site?

So – a site’s structure matters a lot. But keep in mind that page rank sculpting doesn’t work with the “nofollow” attribute anymore! However, you can achieve the same results with robots.txt, javascript links and the meta robots tag.

Definition: nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not be included in the link target’s ranking. It helps to reduce specific types of search engine spam.

Get Some Website Tune-up and Maintenance

Still, there is one question we didn’t answer: How do you maintain and follow your site’s structure when you have an established (grown up but messed up) site? Can you still draw it on your napkin? Don’t worry – because LinkAider will come to the rescue. With LinkAider, you can see your “most linked to” page with a single click. Also, you can manage and reorganize your your pages and links in any way you like.

Build your site’s structure wisely and if you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now. It’s free.

Tags: linking, Links, topology
Posted in Links | 1 Comment »

Bad Links and other Hidden Hacks

September 28th, 2009

Do you have an open source Content Management system? Usually it’s a great help to have content generated by users and use the open source code capabilities to develop what you need. Unfortunately, more and more sites are getting hacked by search engine spammers. They hack in and code their bad links, exploiting security holes in the open source code. The innocent webmaster has no idea.

Webmasters remain unaware because the links are hidden from human eyes – only visible to search engine robots in order to grab higher positions in search engine ranking. MIT’s Technology Review recommends:

“that anyone running her own website regularly patch the Web server and any software running on it. In the same way that you wouldn’t browse the Web with an unpatched copy of Internet Explorer, you shouldn’t run a website with an unpatched or old version of WordPress, cPanel, Joomla, or Drupal.”

How can LinkAider help?

LinkAider now has a Smart Advisory module that detects excessive linking to a particular domain. And since LinkAider is a robot, similar to Google’s bot and other spiders, it can see the invisible and detect the content for human eyes. For example:

Links like this are invisible to human eye.

How do hacked sites and bad links hurt webmasters?

Posts and tweets that contain links to your legitimate site can be rejected if malware is  detected – reducing your exposure and reputation at the same time
Sites get removed from search engine indexes completely
Sites suffer a drop in rankings as a penalty for including spam links

LinkAider’s Smart Advisory module can perform a bad link check and report back to the webmaster on how to contain and correct these code violations.

Beware of Cloaked Spam

Seobook has an interesting story about cloaked spam and how hard it is to detect and remove. A text-only option displays the links and keywords that are hidden on the site. Google has indexed a list of this particular hack on more than 20,000 websites. This Google Reader discussion thread reveals how unsuspecting people are affected by the hack.

What You Can Do: Establish a Routine

Check if there are any suspicious links using LinkAider
Perform some manual checks:

“Google, through some of its products, offers webmasters some ways of spotting if a site has been hacked or modified by a third party without permission. For example, by using Google Search you can spot typical keywords added by hackers to your website and identify the pages that have been compromised. Just open google.com and run a site: search query on your website, looking for commercial keywords that hackers commonly use for spammy purposes (such as viagra, porn, mp3, gambling, etc.)”
Perform your updates when you are notified – especially for the latest Content Management System currently in use.
Do not use unknown plugins or themes.
Monitor your site for new links or suspicious activity.
Ask all of your third-party developers to follow this routine.

Subscribe to LinkAider in order to catch all of the hidden hacks and bad links before they catch you off guard.

Tags: Bad links, Spam links
Posted in Hacks | 1 Comment »