Strip Parameters From URLs [New Google Webmaster Tools Feature]

Google has added a feature to strip parameters from URLs to its Webmaster Tools. With extra parameters, search engines can index the same content under multiple URLs, which may split link equity.

Seven months ago, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (at the time) signed on to create a canonical URL tag, to indicate what URL is the “correct” version, without parameters (although Google is the only one actively using this tag, for now). While that will also continue to work, this new one is probably better because the canonical URL tag requires the page to be crawled before it can be indexed, and might thus cost a little in initial crawl efficiency, but for most cases, it will probably be the easiest to implement and most universal solution.

To use this new feature, sign-in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, go to Site Configuration > Settings and click on the Adjust parameter settings »

Download 2 Free Books From Google About SEO

The following 2 books come directly from Google and are basically about SEO and how exactly Google works so that you build your website to get the most out of Google.

1. Google's Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide:

Quote from the book:

Welcome to Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site's user experience and performance in organic search results. You're likely already familiar with many of the topics in this guide, because they're essential ingredients for any webpage, but you may not be making the most out of them.

DOWNLOAD


2. Google: Making the Most of Your Content - A Publisher's Guide to the Web:

Quote:

At Google we’re frequently asked how web search works, and how web publishers can maximise their visibility on the Internet. We’ve written this short booklet to help you understand how a search engine ‘sees’ your content, and how you can best tailor your web presence to ensure that what you want to be found is found – and what you want to keep hidden, stays hidden. From webmaster tips and online tools, to a step-by-step guide to frequently asked questions, this booklet is geared towards small web publishers as well as owners of large sites. Just as the Internet itself has evolved dramatically in the past decade, so has Google’s own approach to web search and its relationship with site owners. We’ve created numerous tools to help webmasters maximise the visibility of their content, as well as control how their web pages are indexed. But there’s always more we can do. We hope that this booklet will encourage you to give us feedback and let us know what we can do to make the web an even better place for both searchers and publishers.

DOWNLOAD

Preventing Some Content To Be Indexed By Google

You must know of the rel="nofollow" link attribute which tells Google not to index the link to which is applied. Well, it seems there are some tags you can use to prevent Google from indexing certain parts of the website too: googleoff and googleon.

How googleoff and googleon work

There are 3 different parameters. Words surrounded by the googleon/off tags will not be indexed as occurring on the current page.

The "all" attribute turns on all of the attributes: index, anchor, and snippet:

<!--googleoff: all -->
everything between these tags will not be indexed
<!--googleon: all -->

Index attribute:

this is indexed by google
<!--–googleoff: index–--> this is NOT indexed by google <!--–googleon: index–-->
this is indexed by google

Anchor attribute:

<!--googleoff: anchor-->
<A href=linked_to_page.html> shark </A>
<!--googleon: anchor-->

This will not cause the word "shark" to be associated with the page "linked_to_page.html". Otherwise, this hyperlink could cause the page "linked_to_page.html" to be a search result for the search term "shark".

And finally, the snippet attribute:

<!--googleoff: snippet-->
The text surrounded by googleon/off tags will not be used to create snippets for search results.
<!--googleon: snippet-->

This is basically kind of like the Adsense tag:

<!--– google_ad_section_start–-->
relevant area for the ad
<!--– google_ad_section_end–-->

(More details about the google_ad_section_start, HERE)

For more about these, see this Google document | via vegabundia

Check The Page Rank Of Each Page / Link On A Website With Free Application PaRaMeter [SEO Tool]

Checking the Page Rank for any website is an easy job: you can use Google Toolbar, Firefox addons or simply websites which can do this. But PaRaMeter application can do more than that.

PaRaMeter stands for "Page Rank Meter" - a free Google PageRank™ checking and monitoring tool. This application is interesting because you can enter a website and then PaRaMeter checks the Page Rank of every link from that website (like blog posts, etc). Also, it allows you to check different data centers to see if there are any differences in the way Google rates your website / links.

In case you don't know, PageRank is one of the methods Google uses to determine how relevant and important a page is, kind of like a “vote”, by all other pages on the Web telling Google how important a particular page is.

Download PaRaMeter