FEATURE: Site Review: JoesJeans.com

by Lisa Barone, June 30, 2008

Last week on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog we introduced you to Joe’s Jeans, a funky jean retailer with an edge and absolutely no search engine optimisation skills. In our initial blog review, we ran you through some of the high-level SEO blunders that the site was committing. We covered how creating a site entirely in Flash had caused most of the Joe’s Jeans site to be completely unspiderable, while also mentioning the site’s canonicalization issues and how it failed from a usability perspective.

This time around we’re going to dig deeper and create a list of SEO recommendations that we feel, if acted upon, would help the site see the greatest SEO impact. The goal is to highlight issues that you can apply to your own site, as well.

Recommendation #1: Create a static version of the Jeans silo

The Joe’s Jeans Web site is built almost entirely in Flash. It may be appealing visually, but it presents a number of obstacles to the search engine optimisation process. A site constructed entirely in Flash can lead to unspidered pages, poor usability or even complete dropping from the search engine’s index, if not careful.

Because the very important Jeans silo on the Joe’s Jeans Web site is built entirely in Flash, none of those products are being indexed by the search engines. This has eliminated any hope they have of ranking for their proprietary terms (brand names, etc). As a result, when a user searches for their favorite brand of Joe’s Jeans, they’ll be greeted with resellers instead of the actual site. This is because search engines are still unable to read Flash.

The Joe’s Jean’s home page is also entirely Flash-based. When the search engines spiders (and users without Flash enabled) stop by to visit, they see only this:

Nothing is indexed.

This presents an even bigger problem when you consider that most of the links coming into Joe’s Jeans are pointed at the home page. With no HTML links on that page, none of the link popularity generated is being transferred into the rest of the site. The PageRank is literally dead on arrival. This will make it almost impossible for the product pages found in the Shopping silo to rank in Google. Right now we see that they’re cached but they have zero PageRank.

Our SEO recommendation would be to create static HTML versions of every Flash page on your Web site, with special care being shown to the pages in the Jeans silo. We feel that these pages represent the site’s strongest opportunity to produce original content and to rank for proprietary terms. By creating static versions of these pages and linking to them from your home page, you’ll pass PageRank and give yourself a chance to rank for the terms most important to your users.

Recommendation #2: Create Site Content to Engage & Attract Users

To rank, you need content. Every page on your site should have copy designed to help users understand what your site is about and to lead them down the conversion path. The Joe’s Jeans Web site is virtually void of any of this.

By failing to offer content, the site is missing valuable opportunities to use keyword-rich text to build trust with their users by explaining what they offer and how they’re different/better than their competition. With the exception of the Shopping silo (which has text content that is lean, at best) any content the site does have has been put inside an image or Flash file, rendering it completely useless for users searching for it.

Our SEO recommendations for adding content to help users are as follows:

• Create Silo Landing Pages: The first thing Joe’s Jeans needs to do is to create landing pages for each of its product categories. Landing pages are important to search engine optimisation because they’re the first step in creating a cohesive site theme. They also give people a place to link to and provide important information for visitors looking to gather information about your product offerings.
• Create Product Descriptions: The next thing Joe’s Jeans should do is create product descriptions for each product it sells on its Web site. Without any information as to what the product is made out of it, the type of fit, or washing instructions, why would anyone take the risk of purchasing online? Your customers want to know what they’re getting before they give you their credit card information. Product descriptions give site owners a great opportunity to answer any questions their customers may have, while also paying attention to keywords.
• Utilize a Sub Navigation System: The more you use your site’s keywords on a page, the more likely the engines will find that page relevant to those terms and display it when a user performs a search. This means it is very important for site’s to create natural opportunities to add keywords. On a site as lean as JoesJeans.com, they should consider implementing a sub navigation system on product pages to give them room to use certain terms. The site should also break out its About Us page. Right now, the page is nothing more than pictures of articles they’ve appeared in. This page should be used to tell customers about the company and help them build trust in the Joe’s Jeans brand.

Recommendation #3: Provide Adequate Content for Search Engine Spiders

When we talk about content, we’re not only talking about the kind that’s important for users. It’s equally important to create content that will feed the search engines. Unfortunately, this is an area where Joe’s Jeans is doing itself a great disservice.

The Meta data on Joe’s Jeans site looks like this:

It’s the Meta data for the shopping cart site they’re using, not for their site. This is obviously not going to help the search engines properly rank their site.

Here are our SEO recommendations:

As a SEO-conscious site, you want to at least make sure all the standard Meta data is in place. That means filling your Title, Description and Keyword tags with keywords that are relevant to your content. Right now the Joe’s Jeans Web site is using keywords relevant to their shopping cart software because they didn’t take the time to edit it. This is inexcusable as the X Cart software they are using is highly modifiable. To make their site search engine friendly, Joe’s Jeans needs to list their unique Meta data and modify its page naming system to use real page names instead of relying on dynamic pages. Using unique, keyword-rich page names will help the jeans retailer to tie its site themes together in a more cohesive way. Also, by placing their proprietary names on key product pages, it will help the site to rank for those terms, bringing in highly targeted traffic.

The site must also begin using <H1> tags properly. <H1> tags are arguably the most important on page (visible) SEO factor and yet they’ve been completely ignored on this site. Using <H1s> and Meta data appropriately will help the site to create themes around its site content and lay the foundation for their ranking strategy.

Other content areas that the site should capitalize on include adding keywords to the alt attribute for each image and creating a robots.txt file for the site.

Recommendation #4: Encourage the Engines to Spider Your Site

Once you have a static version of your Web site and an adequate amount of content to help users and the engines understand what you’re about, it’s time to alert the search engines. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set up an XML feed for the search engines to help them discover the pages on your site. Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Analyst Maryann Robbins wrote a detailed article about the benefits of building an XML Sitemap that may be of value.

We’d also recommend creating a traditional site map to provide HTML links for every page on your Web site for the search engines to follow and housing your JavaScript externally to move your content up higher and make it more accessible for the search engines.

If you’re interested in capitalizing on the vast opportunity to use your Web site to increase conversions and ROI, creating a Web site that is accessible and search engine-friendly is an absolute must. The recommendations listed above will help any Web site increase their rankings in the search engines and accessibility for users.

For permission to reprint or reuse any materials, please contact us. To learn more about our authors, please visit the Bruce Clay Authors page. Copyright 2008 Bruce Clay, Inc.

BACK TO BASICS: Methods and Implementation of Redirects

by Virginia Nussey, June 30, 2008

Web developers have a number of choices when implementing a redirect. Depending on the type of server, the scale of the project and the reason for the redirect, programmers can choose from several options to redirect individual URLs or entire domains. Some methods have greater search engine optimisation benefits than others. In this article, we will outline those options and provide the steps of implementation for preferred methods.

Types of Redirects

The 301 redirect is the preferred and most SEO-friendly form of redirect. Also known as a permanent redirect, the 301 informs a search engine that the page has been permanently moved to a new location. In turn, the search engine will drop the now defunct page from the index, include the new page in the index, and transfer rankings and link popularity from the old page to the new. The 301 redirect is also the SEO-preferred form of redirect because it eliminates the possibility of creating duplicate content within the search engine index. Because a search engine responds to a 301 by dropping the old page, the chance of having two pages in the index with the same content is avoided.

A common redirect is the 302, or temporary, redirect. This type is not as beneficial for SEO purposes as it is known to cause duplicate content to be indexed, which can then cause pages to be filtered from SERPs or be assigned to a supplemental index. Duplicate content can be caused by a 302 redirect because the command tells the search engine that a page has been temporarily moved and the search engine responds by retaining the original page in the index and attributing the content on the new page to the original page. If a search engine then arrives at the new page through an alternate route it will index the page and, voila, there is duplicate content. There are many good reasons for implementing a 302 redirect, but unless the new page is truly required only temporarily, it is not a recommended practice.

A JavaScript redirect is also not recommended from an SEO perspective. The benefit of a JavaScript redirect is the ability to redirect based on settings that can be detected by JavaScript, such as browser type, if the user has Flash capabilities, if the user accepts cookies, etc. The problem is that search engines don’t execute JavaScript and therefore cannot follow the redirect. In such cases, a search engine will flag instances of JavaScript redirect for human review. Sites are then dependent on the discretion of the human reviewer who determines if the redirect benefits the user – in which case it will usually be allowed – or is a tactic for delivering a different page to a spider than a user – in which case it may be penalized. The policy at Bruce Clay, Inc. is to never implement JavaScript redirects, even if only temporarily.

A Meta refresh is a way of telling a Web browser to automatically refresh a Web page after a given time interval. The refresh can also be used to fetch another URL, so when the refresh time interval is set to zero or one second the Meta refresh serves as a method of URL redirection. Because Meta refresh can be used to show different content to a search engine than a user, using a Meta refresh for a redirect is discouraged by search engines and the W3C. In fact, some search engines see Meta refresh redirects as a prompt for a spam flag.

Implementing a 301 Redirect

As you can see, there are a number of types redirects and many ways to implement each; however, the 301 redirect is the most recommended and search-engine-friendly method.

Because search engines, the W3C and we at Bruce Clay, Inc. all believe that the 301 redirect is the preferred method, the following instructions will demonstrate the way to program a 301 redirect for both Apache and IIS servers.

With access to your Apache or IIS server, implementing a 301 redirect is a worthwhile way of ensuring link popularity transfers and inbound links, search engines and interested users can locate your new URL.

Apache Servers

To implement a 301 redirect on an Apache server, you need to have access to your server and your Apache Configuration file. If you do not have access to your server you can call your hosting company to get access. Using a command called “Allow Override” in the Apache Configuration file allows the override of .htaccess files. The .htaccess file is a control file that allows the programmer to customize configuration for individual directories and all sub-directories contained within. Once you have allowed .htaccess override, open the .htaccess file located in the root directory of the Web server. If there is no .htaccess file, create one.

To edit the .htaccess file, use a UNIX style text editor, such as an HTML editor or code editor such as TextPad. To redirect pages, add a line to the file telling the server what to do. This can be done several ways.

• Example 1 - from URL to URL:
  RedirectPermanent /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html
• Example 2 - from URL to URL:
  Redirect 301 /old-file.html http://www.domain.com/new-file.html
• Example 3 - from Domain to Domain:
  RedirectPermanent / http://www.new-domain.com/

There are three parts to the directive, which should all be on one line. The first is the redirect command. The second is the root relative path to the file or directory that is being redirected; for example, /old-file.html refers to http://www.domain.com/old-file.html. The last part of the line is the full URL of the page being redirected to. Each part is separated by a single space. Each directive should be followed by an empty line.

If you are confused by the second and third examples above, that is because both include exceptions to the rules. In the second example, the “Redirect” command by itself will accept the type of redirect after it; in this case it is a 301 redirect, and “Redirect 301” is read as the first part of the directive. In example number three above, the second part of the directive is a lone slash. This instruction is understood as the entire directory and all sub-directories.

After you have added your redirect directive to the .htaccess file, test to see if it has been properly implemented by typing the URL of the redirecting page or directory into your browser. If the URL redirects to the proper page, the redirect has been correctly executed.

IIS 7.0 Server Redirects

To implement a 301 redirect on a Microsoft IIS 7.0 server, you will need access to the IIS Manager. For this method you must also download the URL rewrite module, available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Go to the IIS Manager (Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services Manager) and select the site that will be redirected. Then, go to the Feature View and click “URL Rewrite Module”. In the “Actions” menu on the right-hand side of the page, select “Add Rule”. An “Edit Rule” page will open, and here you will add the redirect rewrite rule. In the URL Rewrite Module, every rule requires four pieces of information:

1. Name of the rule
2. Pattern to use for matching the URL string
3. Optional set of conditions
4. Action to perform if a pattern is matched and all conditions checks are accepted

In the following example, the redirect rewrite rule created will redirect http://domain/blog/2007/archives to http://domain/article/archives/2007.

On the “Edit Rule” page, enter the following information in the stated fields:

It is worth noting that “Append query string” will be checked by default. If you do not want any query strings appended to the new URL, uncheck the box.

Leave all other settings at their default values and save the rule by clicking “Apply” on the right-hand side. Then test that the redirect has been correctly applied by typing the URL intended for redirection into a browser. The browser should automatically be redirected to the newly-created URL.

This is the recommended method of implementing a 301 redirect within a Microsoft IIS 7.0 server. For a tutorial of redirection with Microsft IIS 5.0 and 6.0, please see the previously published article and blog post on the subject.

For permission to reprint or reuse any materials, please contact us. To learn more about our authors, please visit the Bruce Clay Authors page. Copyright 2008 Bruce Clay, Inc.