uploading website

[stuart1980]

I asked this before on here and people said that I need to speak to the guy who did some work for me.

Basically, I have a website which I designed in WD, and had an SEO person who began to optimise it. However, he went awol I think because he had really underquoted me for the work. Since then I we have changed addresses, but I have been scared to update the website in case I lose any search engine rankings as apparently he put a site map in and a 301 redirect.

I was informed on here that I need to find out exactly what he did to the site before anyone could advise me. I managed to contact him and he said this:

1. URL Canonicalisation issue was resolved with .htaccess fix.
2. 13 W3c errors were removed from the home page, as well as other pages in the website
3. robots.txt file was created and uploaded
4. sitemap.xml file was create and uploaded on 8th May 2009
5. Content was created and placed into a testing file, I can not see any record of this being signed off to go live.
6. .htaccess redirects were place from old site URL structure to the current URL Structure.

I don't really understand what this is, as I'm not really very well versed in the technical details of web design. What should I do? We are getting lots of post sent to the wrong address, but I really need to alter the website.

On another issue, I remember having massive problems uploading it using Xaras built in uploader, as I think the website is too big for it too handle. I tried using Filezilla, but I remember having all sorts of problems with htm. html tags or something on the homepage and it messed it all up. Therefore he was doing this for me.

site is:


www.bloomsburycleaning.co.uk

[stuart1980]

....................Anyone?

[Soquili]

Sorry Stuart, I doubt that anyone can help.

Questions specific to how to use Web Designer or Xtreme are easily answered. Questions about how to do things outside the design capability of the software are not something members or moderators are prepared to handle.

[steve.ledger]

I don't really understand what this is, as I'm not really very well versed in the technical details of web design. What should I do? We are getting lots of post sent to the wrong address, but I really need to alter the website.

I hope this doesn't come across the wrong way Stuart, but I think your answer is that you need to find someone else to help you on a 1-to-1 basis. Someone who can explain the changes they are making to your post Web Designer HTML output.
If you are to continue this post export editing regime with your sites, then you need to understand what is being done and why.

[Drwyd]

Hi Stuart.

If I was in your position I would start again from scratch using the original site as a content donor (The on-page optimisation on your current site is patchy) and keep all editing within XX to make it easy for yourself to update. The only externals would be redirects, robots and sitemaps.

The game plan would be

1 Keyword research.
This should always be the first step with any commercial site. Without it everything that is done afterwards will be built on guesswork.

2 Competitor research.
Check out the competition and see what they are doing. Millions are spent on marketing and studying what they are doing will point you in a direction that is known to work.

3 Make a content and structure plan.
Decide how you are going to structure your site (keywords in URLs etc.) and which keywords your are going to deploy on which pages.

4 Build your site.
Build your site based on the content/structure plan.

5 Tidy up
At this point you can start doing your canonicalisation, redirects, robots.txt files and sitemaps.

6 Back links
Repair links broken by the site rewrite and generate new links.



Doing steps 5 & 6 before sorting out the on-page optimisation is like flogging a lame horse.

The only drawback to doing things this way is a possible temporary drop in traffic.

[Egg Bramhill]

What the* is canonicalisation please? Even dictionary dot com can't give me an answer. Sounds good if you can charge for it ;-)

[perseus]

In web search and search engine optimization (SEO), URL canonicalization deals with web content that has more than one possible URL. Having multiple URLs for the same web content can cause problems for search engines - specifically in determining which URL should be shown in search results.

Wikipedia

Hope it helps ..

[Soquili]

Odd that Google's Search Engine Optimization Guide does not contain that word.

The guide does state that SEO only effects organic searches and not "AdWords". The AdWords will always appear first and to the left of organic search results.

[Egg Bramhill]

Cheers perseus, so it's c14n

For anyone else wondering Wiki goes on:

Example:
http://www.wikipedia.com
http://wikipedia.com
http://www.wikipedia.com/
http://www.wikipedia.com/?source=asdf
All of these URLs point to the homepage of Wikipedia, but a search engine will only consider one of them to be the canonical form of the URL.

I think I'm not going to loose any sleep over this one

[perseus]

Soquili :

Odd that Google's Search Engine Optimization Guide does not contain that word.

This is what the head of Google’s Webspam team has to say about it :

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-ad...onicalization/