We recently made a change in the architecture of our site. I'm sure you have seen the new channels feature. If not, you can read about it here. In doing so, we also made some decisions about the site structure in order to get better search engine results for the fantastic content you are writing. One thing that we did, that has had a few of our members asking questions, is add 'no follow' tags to the tag links. We have also added 'no index' tags to the tag pages.
Why the heck would we hide the tag pages from the search engines you might ask? To drive more traffic and create a better user experience.
We have a lot of content on the site. We are constantly trying to find new ways to get your content to rank higher in the search engines. With the advent of Channels and topics, we now have a more direct structure for search engine spiders to find and index your content. Internal site link structure is an important component of search engine optimization. The more focused you can make the internal link structure of the site, the easier it is for the search engines to index content.
Prior to channels and topics, tags were a way that similar content was housed. Our tag pages stunk in the search engine results. There is no other way to put it, they just plain stunk. We have some tag pages that house hundreds of articles about a particular topic and yet never returned search engine results or traffic to the site. In recent tests of certain search terms, your particular blog post on a topic or just your blog page will return results in every instance and the tag pages for the exact terms you were tagging with do not show.
Our tag pages appeared to google and other search engines as search results or a directory of results. Google doesn't like pages that act in this manner. If you were to look at a tag page, you will see that the content is truncated and only snippets of the content are displayed.
The new topic pages act much more like a living blog with fresh, fully displayed content about a particular topic. The structure of the channel and topic pages make a much more fluid path to you content, allowing search engine bots to access and index your content easier. It is our belief that the long tail results for these topics page will far outweigh the traffic driven by the tag pages (which won't be tough, since the tag pages stunk, remember)
At the same time, leaving the existing tag structure in place to be indexed points the search engines in too many directions. We want to focus the traffic and the results to one area; an area that is better able to be indexed.
The tags still serve a purpose for the readers of your blogs. They organize content on your blog in an easy to find format. If you have ten blog posts about the home buying process, you still want all ten of those posts tagged with 'home buying' so that consumers who find your blog will be able to access similar content you have written on subjects.
There is a TON of information out there about search engine optimization. Everyone has an opinion of what works and what doesn't work. This is our opinion. If you don't like it, feel free to leave your comment here.......or better yet, get the heck off my blog, go build your own site and give it your best shot to get the kind of results we are getting for 111,000 people , many of whom don't know SEO from SEC. (That was a joke.......kind of........if you've read this far, my editor (Jon) felt you deserved a joke......and he might have suggested heck over a different word).
Here is a video that talks about 'content categorization for SEO' from the brains behind SEOmoz. If I haven't put you to sleep yet, then Rand does a better job of explaining on the whiteboard some of the thinking behind this concept.
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Bob, I think it makes a lot of sense and as a writer of actual content, I love the move to get more of our content indexed. I guess it also will clean up some tags as people find out that it's only for readers of ActiveRain. Anything you're doing to get our content out there and rated higher in search engines is okay with me!
Ok, well, I might not be able to explain this to someone else (and have it make any sense) but it seems to me anything that improves our rankings can't be bad.
Not a problem. I've always considered the tags a system of organizing topics internally. They are useful for the user, but not good Google food. Not in any way related to meta tags.
I can go to my tag list and pull up everything tagged "mortgage mess".
I seem to be doing that every few days lately.
Bob -great post, thanks for sharing! LOL~
Really though, this makes a lot of sense and after watching the video that reinforces the concept, it made much more sense. Driving more traffic to members and creating a better user experience is key, this sounds like it will work well. :-))
More good information. Still don't understand it all but figure it all will work out.
Bob, first, I can not see why anyone would complain about the free information that you guys give out daily. I use it when I was building my other 3 sites and Alexa already loves all 3 of them and Google is warming up.
I guess I have to be clear on my topics then
I have an incredible amount of trust in the folks at AR and while achieving higher SEO so that someday I might be discoverd by a prominent SEC company to be their CEO and use my accounting degree configuring their COGS so that their NI improves would be nice; it is not my goal in life!
Danny, No body was complaining. We just had people looking for an explanation for why we did it and this is it.
Bob, I think Jon owes you a "whiteboard" :) - love the channel concept
Bob - Thanks for the explanantion. I had an great conversation with Brad this afternoon regarding this and lots of other good stuff. Keep up the fantastic work..the place rocks!!
Bob, I think it makes sense, given my great expertise at SEO developed during my many weeks of experience in internet marketing. My question is about standardization of topics. The top topics showing in various channels I have not used, although I have several posts that would fit in those topics. I have used a different topic name. Do we have enough data to produce a standard drop down for topic titles? this should help SEO for posts, if we selected from standardized topics, at least it seems so to me, given my great experience of many weeks. And I hope that this does not warrant an invitation off your blog. Richard
OK, whatever, I'm sure it is great. Now quit working so hard and come talk to us more :)
Love the music with the YouTube video.
Thanks for the info. Not that I completely understand it all, but I'm sure you are making sure I get good google results when I type quality posts. Thanks
Richard,
We chose to leave the topic pages user generated so that they would create a massive long tail that will capture traffic from search results. (I could give a better explanation of the long tail if anyone wants it, but there are many posts about it)
We do not have a standard drop down, but when you are creating your post and you select a channel, then begin to type a topic in, if you give it a second, it will create a menu of similar topics that others have created. (see my screen shot below)
Richard,
haha, it certainly doesn't warrant an invitation to leave. In fact, that is a GREAT!! question and I hope my answer above made sense.
So it seems since channels are the new thing, shouldn't the key word for what your post is about go in the topic?
Also can you explain why my comments on the AgentGenius blogs get indexed but not here? I'm sure you have an explanation but I noticed it the other day when I was searching some of my search terms I want the consumer to find me on and the AG comments were there.
Bob,
I had added some to my above comment, not expecting you to reply so quickly.
thanks btw for your reply.
I am here reposting the update to the comment. I do somewhat understand long tail marketing. My guess is that you are allowing the users to determine what search words (category) we want a post to be in.
For instance on the home page down payment assistance is a top three topic. I have posted many articles on DPA, none of them is in the topic entitled downpayment.
This means that a visitor to the AR home page will navigate to the downpayment topic and not see any of my posts because I selected mortgage regulation at a topic.
I just need to get a better handle of using the topic names.
Here is the update to my comment above.
It seems to me that the benefit of tags is that each post can be accessed from different topics. The difficulty with tags, is that there can be too many variations. The category/topic system may develop too many variations of topic names if they are not paired down. What is lost is that each post is assigned to one topic. What is gained is that the structure is more defined (with standardized topic names.)
I have an important question:
Should I go back to all of my posts and try to categorize them?
If I go back should I try to find a rather specific topic so that it directs the bot more locally? Like geotag my posts if they are talking about specific local things or I am trying to attract local clientel to my blog entries?
Or is it better to be nonspecific and put them into channels but keep the channel really general?
Also if I go back and put all my posts into specific channels is this better from an SEO standpoint because then it will let the bots find my stuff easier? Will this increase the likelihood of my content being indexed? Will the bots reindex content? Could this have immediate SEo benefits as well as more permanent SEO benefits?
Should I spend tonight working on this?!!
I think thats all I was wondering...
Thanks! :)
Bob - I know just enough about SEO, tags, bots, etc. to be dangerous.
I am not going to even attempt an intelligent question or comment here.
Thanks for the post explaining it all and more importantly, thanks for all of your work to make AR work.
I will post to Localism and take some time play around with the channels. The video almost made sense to me - who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks!
Richy!!!
I miss you buddy!! It was great to see your name pop up here. I really hope everything is going well for you!!
Shane,
Lots of good questions.........
let's see if I can take them one at a time.
Yes you should go back and put your posts into channels and topics. You certainly want to put similar posts into similar topics. Geo-tagging could be a route you chose to go. We don't know exactly what the results will be for the topic pages versus your actual posts.
It will not reindex your content, but it will create links from the topic page back to your blog posts. Over time, the topic pages will gain more authority and those incoming links from the topic pages will help quite a bit.
Most likely, your posts are already indexed, but internal links from pages with more authority will help.
This may be a conversation for the phone. I am about to take off to go pick up my son, but you can call me on my cell phone if you'd like. I have about an hour in traffic. 425.753.7340
Bob: My husband just asked me if I was watching, "Benny Hill"!!!! As far as I'm concerned, I'm putting the best content out there about my area and putting my trust in your hands to get it to every possible customer/client for me via your 'link juice'! Thanks for all you guys do!
Hi, Bob,
Maybe you should make it simple for us non-techies. I think you're saying that Channels and Topics are great for search engines, and Tags are great for other Active Rainers.
Oh I see I understand, oh wait no I dont. Ok some where between there I got bits and pieces of it but yeah I will leave that stuff to you guys.
Thanks for the continuing things you guys do to make active rain a better and better place. Appreciate it.
Thanks I will call you. I appreciate you taking the time for that.
Thanks for the explanation. It appears by the comments that not many people (including me) fully understand this, but I'm sure it will sink in if we read this a few times and continue to use the Channel feature.
nice move with the no index on the tags.
Wow ! Vrrginia Hepp took my line that I only know enough to be dangerous.
Thanks for the good information. I think I may have to reread a few times to make it really sink in for me.
Would be nice to see more information like this to help us drive more business to our sites.
Best Regards,
Wayne
Still a bit confusing for me - but I'm learning...
Bob, I trust you completely. If you say it's better, I believe it must be!
I guess it's a good thing I trust you guys totally, cause I'm lost on this one. I think I'll just come back and revist this a bit and maybe it will make more wense. But The key points are great anything you can do to streamlilne how I'm sound Yippie.
Bob~ I have complete faith in you and AR. I don't really understand all of this stuff, but you guys really have it under control. Vickie
Bob, you are The Man, the team captain. Cheerleading your leadership! GO Bob!
Ginger
Bob, very cool move. Thank you. Your tweaking has me popping up higher in the rankings for my firm than my BIC. They spend a lot more money to advertise the firm than I do. AR ROCKS! Regards, Carolyn.
Sorry, Bob. Servers are looping and kicking us out again (LOL). Regards, Carolyn.
A little over my head - I just don't want my tag cloud to show - I HATE IT, it's so ugly on my outside blog. Will this do anything to fix that?
Thanks,
Amber Gardner
BOOOOYYYYYY....he writes JUST AS FAST AS my college Calculus teacher. YIKES!! ;-) GBU!
This is one of those areas where many of us simply don't understand the technical side of things. Bottom line is we trust the mods to do what is best for us all.
Hi Bob and the rest of your awesome team.... You Guys Rock! Thanks for your inspiring support and always trying to improve AR for the benefit of us all!
Thanks Bob for clearly explaining such a difficult subject. What I just learned is that I have a great deal of clean up to do with my tags and posts.
Y'all are great to put the SEO at the "importance" list. We thank you.
Later in the rain~Deb
Bob,
Will you be posting a big print English transaction of this post for us seniors??? LOL, Thanks, Fran
P.S. I am one who misses the importance of all this...I just keep blogging for content...and WOW, my Google page rating has risen to a five!!!
As long as you don't add nofollow to the links in the content ... "as a writer of actual content" lol.
Good points and yes you kind of bored us, but only because this is the last article we're reading before we close shop and we're in a hurry to close. But in all seriousness, we totally understand what you're doing and aare grateful that you do know what you're doing. Keep up the good work.
This post totally sucks....at least you had a good joke in it :)
Bob,
I take you word on this since most of it is Greek to me.
good video. I don't really understand a lot of it. My RT blog did not work for years (Google could not find it), they changed something last September and it finally got traffic (lots of traffic) but I killed it anyway to focus more on ActiveRain because I have more confidence in the staff at ActiveRain when it comes to index tags, links and things I don't want to worry about.
It's funny that AR members would NOT want their AR tag cloud to show... or list of tags. Or that they obsess about having too many tags. Do they have a search on their AR blog so a reader can find stuff? Tags are all a reader has to find their way around your blog. Or searching all of AR.
I love looking at Tag Clouds.
Very interesting - enjoyed the video. Honestly, it makes sense a litle but I do not understand that much of it. For now, I am concentrating on providing good content for the blogs and am keeping my fingers crossed that the tech stuff will take care of itself : )
Bob, thanks for this great info...I must be honest that I am more concerned about all of this as it related to my own blog but I am happy to see AR is working on it as well.
Thanks for the post. I have been trying to figure out the best way to categorize that box.
It's all Greek geek to me! Actually, the video was great and takes out some of the mystery. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the hard work all you guys are putting in. If it helps, then I'm all for it!
Zooooooooom. <------- That's the sound your post made as it went way over my head. Even so... I trust that y'all know what you're doing... so thanks for changing that, uh, thing, so that we could, uh, get better results.
I'm glad you and Rand can explain it so well ... I listened to it enough times that I think I'm beginning to understand what's happening ... thanks for making it better for us - especially the technically-challenged ones, like moi. :)
Bob - Thanks for the explanation - I don't know much about the inner workings of search engines and i for one an glad you and your staff do so I can keep blogging and hopefully because of yor ongoing effort get found.
Bob, I was just at a NAR sponsored training session and when the topic of digital media venues, that help the member, came up Active Rain was noted by all bloggers as the most reliable(even with Proxy errors) and the best one to learn on and the easiest to find info on- CONGRATS for being so well thought of by the agent members!
So the old adage of "Less Is More" is applicable? Just when I think I'm starting to understand a little bit... oh well, it keeps things interesting! LOL Thanks for the update, Bob.
Sounds like a good idea. Now I actually have to listen to the whole video!
I didn't know why the change was made, and appreciate the explanation, which I am happy to say I mostly understand.
Okay Bob - thanks for explaining, but I am still totally confused. I read a post somewhere recently that said we need to make sure that there were not no follow tage. That post confused me as well. Anyway I think I'll just trust that you guys know what you are doing. Thanks for looking out for us.
Can anyone explain no follow links to me or is there a blog or site where I can learn about them?
WidowMaker...
Okay. So I gather my famous booger tag is no longer of any use to anyone. Oh well. At least I had it out there long enough to crack a few people up :)
TLW...ROAR!
Well...
When all else fails I guess I could resort to doing this CLICK :)
A smart man would tell the blogger who is doing that to cut the crap :)
P.S. I bet right about now you're re-thinking that whole miss me thing. Wink.
TLW...ROAR!
I am sure that you know a lot more about this than I do, so if you say this is better for our blogs, I am all for it. Thanks.
Sounds like the content on Active Rain will be more organized with this approach but it will take some getting used to!
Bob, though this is a bit confusing to me - I trust that you are all doing the right thing. Sometimes when I read stuff here on the Rain, I get that glazed look....know what I mean? ;-) Anyway, one thought I did have was to wonder if we need/should/can go back and sort our past blogs into the categories, channels, topics you mention? ;-)
I had not read your blog for some time and I am glad I came back. I trust that AR knows what it is doing when it comes to getting pages to come up as search results. The system you describe sounds like it can only help the community.
Bob: I am not quite sure how I even found this post, but... I see that I am coming to it nine months late. I actually understood a bit of it... but I have a suggestion.
Is there any way that after a post like this... that is not a BEGINNING or entry-level post about whatever the content is... could the writer, or one of the community builder people make a list of a few links at the bottom of the post... that I, or someone, could go to, that would show videos or explanations that would lay the groundwork or foundation for that particular post.
It could be something like this. Note: IF you would like more information to help you understand this post, click on the following links for some more basic information on the subject.
Then... list the links... Or... perhaps inserting more links in the body of the post... when the post itself mentions something that the reader might not understand.
Thanks a bunch. May 27, 2009
Are Channels everything you hoped for? I had read this when you posted it. I am not sure I had read Brad's post... comments are gone so I can not see if I stopped by to say "Great Post thanks for sharing" or even to ask questions.
Brad said in the post:
"Each Channel will offer three "Topic" links to the side, these are the most popular topics in that channel. Keep Topic title's short. There will soon be a text auto-fill displayed as you begin to type in topics. Any previously entered topic will begin to display as you type, just as tags do now. The "Topics" most written about will be the ones displayed on these links."
That last part is not true today is it?
The "Topics" most written about will be the ones displayed on these links."
For example the ActiveRain Channel has
and in fact the top three most popular Topics are
in a professional channel. Market Reports in a Professional Channel?
Is it our creativity or lack of direction reading?
Are ActiveBlogs our ActiveRain blogs or our Outside blogs or both?
I think Channels and Topics works for driving traffic to our Outside blogs or would that traffic be there without channels / Topics which become Categories on the Outside Blogs?
Talking to myself here already and since the recent server problems you are not goiing to have anyway to know this is here.
A social media guru recently advised:
"Thirdly, the channels have nothing to do with outside blogs being indexed or anyhting. The channels are just ways for AR to categorize the stuff in the network. So that if someone wants to search one specific subject alone they can. Consumers will still find the stuff on their own through Google, etc. "
I will be blogging about this.
I think Channels and Topics do matter to the search engines on our Outside Blogs. I think if Jenny K had had Categories showing on her Outside Blog she would not have thrown in the towel and canceled her Outside blog.
I know when I did not have Categories showing on my Outside Blogs Google could not find them.