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Posted by:
Antonio Chagoury
6/14/2008 7:05 AM
Blog Friendly URLs
An established best practice for SEO is for keywords relating to the content of a web page to appear in the page's URL (what is often called a "Human Friendly" URL). Among several established blog platforms this is put into practice by taking the title of the blog entry (which is often a semantically strong indicator of what the page is about) and putting it into the entry's URL. Version 03.04.01 introduces this functionality and it is activated via the "Module Options" screen.
After enabling this option you will no longer see references to “Default.aspx” in the URL, instead you will see an aspx reference made up on the blog entry’s title. Below is an example for a blog entry entitled 'Title of my blog entry':
- Version 03.04.00 and earlier:
http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/Default.aspx
- Version 03.04.01:
http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/Title-of-my-blog-entry.aspx
Removal of duplicate content issue (i.e. having exactly same content at two or more different URLs):
Another well established SEO best practice is to avoid having the same content reachable via two distinct URLs. This was a problem in version 03.03.00 (and earlier) , here they are:
- A "Friendly URL" for the blog entry, found in the page listing blog entries.
- A "Permalink" version, linked at the bottom of a blog entry in version 03.03.00 and earlier
With version 03.04.00 the "Permalink" was removed from the bottom of the blog entries - hence addressing part of this issue, however, the issue was not fully resolved since both versions of the URL continued to appear in the RSS feed generated by the module (the friendly URL would appear between the
tag in the RSS feed, while the tag contained the Permalink version of the URL). Some well-established web-based RSS readers (including Newsgator & Google Reader) use the URL when providing a link to a blog entry, hence those subscribing to a DNN blog’s RSS feed would be directed to content using the Permalink version of the link. In version 03.04.00 the tag contains the new Human-Friendly version of the URL.
Updating the “Regenerate all permalinks” function:
To reinforce the value of the two SEO improvements above the "regenerate all permalinks" function (found at the bottom of the "Module Options" screen) has been updated so that you can regenerate the "Permalinks" for all its blog entries for the given instance of the blog module.
You will need to execute this "regeneration" individually for each instance of the blog module in your DNN portal(s) if you want all blog permalinks in a portal to be recalculated.
Unique Page Titles:
One of the most important “identifications” used by search engines when determining the importance of a page (and the scope of its content) is the text contained the <title> tag of your page (found in the header section of an HTML page). It is therefore vital that an individual blog entry has a unique title tag appearing in the HTML header. The option to have a unique title tag for a blog entry can now be switched on in the "Module Options" screen. The title tag that will be generated for a blog entry will have the following format:
<title>[X] - [Y]</title>
Where:
- [X] is the title of the page on which the DNN module has been installed
- [Y] is the title given to the blog entry.
Insertion of the rel="nofollow" attribute on hyperlinks added in blog comments:
The element rel="nofollow" will now be systemically added to all website links provided in the comment field (and also to all websites entered in the new "Your website" field that is provided for those leaving a comment, more on thisnew feature in subsequent entry). Adding of the rel="nofollow" attribute to a hyperlink indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines). This is an established SEO best practice for blogs by deterring link spammers from maliciously flooding comment fields with unwanted links to websites (in an effort to “bleed” authority from your site in the eyes of search engines).
Future SQL Plans:
One of the most glaring omissions for the blog module, in terms of SEO, is the ability of the module to automatically generate a unique description meta tag for each blog entry. The plan is to address this in a future version.
Many thanks to Eoghan O'Neill for his insight, expertise, and relentless dedication to testing and re-testing and for keeping us developers on our toes to make sure all these enhancements were carried out to spec.
19 comment(s) so far...
Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
As for Blog Friendly URLs, I think that this feature will be execellent if the website will use the english language(Culture), however is not great for other languages( such as Ease Asia). For example, in our language( Chinese ) it will make the url look odd and uncomfortable. Then the url will be similiar way as following:
http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/博客的标题使得url很古怪.aspx
By sunwangji on
6/14/2008 11:55 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
At first, I so am appreciated your guy great job! but I just had more thoughts about new features above for sharing, hope those will disturb you much. As for Unique Page Titles, the [Y] - [X] will be more reasonable because the entry title should be stand out than the title of the page. Actully I would like the following way:
[Y] - [X]
Where:
[X] is the title of the blog.
[Y] is the title given to the blog entry.
By the way, I did not understand the rel="nofollow" attribute. can you give me some detail explanation( related the attribute and SEO ).
By sunwangji on
6/14/2008 11:55 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Thanks for the update Antonio ... well done!
By tkraak on
6/14/2008 8:57 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
sunwangji - Good point. We'll probably stick with the page title for now. There are issues with forcing the blog title into the page title, particularly, what happens if the blog title is very long?
In version 4, we may make much greater use of templating and tokenization, in which case the blog owner could customize the title of the page using a variety of token options. In the meantime, version 3.4.1 will surely provide SEO improvements for all users.
By rip_rowan on
6/17/2008 5:00 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
yeah, the long blog title is a particular issue, the same situation for the entry title! In common, the blog title will be as following example:
1) DNN Team Blogs
2) dnnsun's blog
3) Baldwin's Blog
By the way, any other can share some thoughts about the url issue which I had mentioned in the 1st comment?
By sunwangji on
6/18/2008 3:18 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Sunwangji - you always have the option to disable the SEO-friendly URL, in which case the module will use the current format. Obviously, since you're writing in Chinese, the solution to your problem would require that the core be able to render all of its hyperlinks in Chinese. I'm not sure if that's possible or planned.
On the other hand, although http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/博客的标题使得url很古怪.aspx may be somewhat uncomfortable, it is still going to be more search-engine relevant than http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/default.aspx, so I think the SEO improvements still help you.
By rip_rowan on
6/21/2008 12:02 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Hi,
Good job on the SEO improvements. As soon as you switch on the new URLs all the old blog posts will cause duplicate data as they will be referenced via the old URL. Are you planning on automating a 301 redirect to the new HF url or is this going to cause problems in Google? I guess some RegEx is needed to punt the old requests on to the new one with a 301.
By rodneyjoyce on
7/2/2008 7:56 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
This is by far the most important feature set I have been waiting for. Thank you for all of your hard work.
By hismightiness on
7/3/2008 1:28 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Great improvements! I am really excited to see these come into effect and solve some of my duplicate content issues with the blog module. For the person who asked about the "rel=nofollow" attribute, NoFollow is a robots directive given to search engine bots to ignore the links that are posted in a blog comment. This will help eliminate spam or junk comments that are typically left on a blog post just for the sole purpose of leaving a link and getting some Google "Page Rank Juice" passed onto them. A site that uses a nofollow attribute on outgoing links is basically telling Google not to pass along their sites reputation. This will discourage or minimize spam in your comments.
By ShellyLynn on
7/12/2008 6:51 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
IS there Any plan to add provide Tagging ? Blog tags ?
By aghanem on
7/25/2008 8:08 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
you mentioned somewhere above version "03.04.01"
I assume this never went live (or did I forget to upgrade?)
Is this now expected in 03.05?
-Subodh
By shakya on
10/24/2008 10:34 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
@Subodh: Yes, given that we added some major enhancements, 03.04.01 became 03.05.00
By AntonioChagoury on
10/24/2008 10:35 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Great to see seo improvements in the DNN blog module.
Would prefer to see the blog title first.
Also, is the nofollow tag an optional setting?
By Stephen Vale on
10/28/2008 5:58 PM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
How long till this is coming out. I hate working on a blog I know wont rank well and will have the page title in the results instead of the blog entry name.
By Jonathan Ranes on
4/26/2009 7:46 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
@Jonathan Ranes: This release has already been published. Please download version 03.05.01. Enjoy!
By Antonio Chagoury on
1/10/2009 9:19 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
when i click on read more or comments.....it says page cannot be displayed
By PM on
4/26/2009 7:47 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
@Jonathan Ranes: This has been released last year. The version is 03.05.01
By Antonio Chagoury on
4/26/2009 7:47 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
@PM: Please post support questions on the forum - you will get faster response using that medium.
Thanks.
By Antonio Chagoury on
4/26/2009 7:48 AM
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Re: Upcoming Blog Features Part 2: SEO Improvements
Thank's for this nice tricks !
By Voilier on
1/5/2011 8:29 AM
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