Defining custom error pages is a convenient way to show users a friendly page when they encounter an HTTP error such as a 404 Not Found, or a 500 Server Error. Unfortunately ASP.NET handles custom error pages by responding with a 302 Temporary redirect to the error page that was defined. In this post I explain how to create a custom HttpModule that allows you to use custom error pages while preserving the original HTTP status code and avoiding the 302 redirect to the error page.. [More]

The increasing interest of the search engine marketing community in social media has resulted in more and more discussion about how to get in on the "traffic goldrush". As an SEO, I appreciate the enthusiasm in exploring new methods for maximizing exposure for a client's site, but as a social media user I am finding myself becoming increasingly annoyed with the number of people that are set on finding ways to game the system.. [More]

If you have a blog that is even moderately popular then you have likely fallen victim to some form of content scraping. Ever since it became possible to earn money through ads on a website there have been people trying to find ways to cheat the system. The most widespread example of this comes in the form of splogs and similar spam-based websites, which consist only of ads from Google AdSense and duplicated content from other sites. In this post I will share a method you can use to identify "evil" spiders and bots that are wasting your website's resources.. [More]

Being a successful web developer requires constant effort to refine your existing abilities while expanding your skill-set to include the new technologies that are continually released, so when I first started my job as a search engine optimization analyst I was fully expecting my web development skills to dull. I could not have been more wrong.. [More]

The use of XHTML in the context of SEO is a matter of debate. The consensus tends to be that using XHTML falls into the category of optimization efforts that provide certain benefits for the site as a whole (extensibility, ability to use XSL transforms) but offers little or no added value in the eyes of the search engines. That being said, as the number of pages that search engine spiders have to crawl continues to increase every day, the limits to how much the spiders can crawl are being tested. This has been recognized by SEOs and is reflected in efforts to trim page sizes down to make a site more appealing to the spiders. Now it is time to start considering the significant benefits that a well-formed XHTML document can potentially offer to search engine spiders.. [More]

When it comes to designing and developing a web site the load time is one consideration that is often ignored, or is an afterthought once the majority of the design and structure is in place. While high-speed internet connections are becoming increasingly common there are still a significant portion of web users out there with 56k connections, and even those with broadband connections aren't guaranteed to have a fast connection to your particular server. Every second that a user has to wait to download your content is increasing the chance of that user deciding to move on.. [More]

There has been a lot of controversy in the world of SEO as of late, mostly centering around the PageRank penalties that Google has been handing out to enforce their paid-link policies. The members of the SEO community, who do enjoy to voice their opinion from time to time, increased the size of Google's index by about 2.3% blogging about it (just kidding! I love the SEO community). As more updates to the Toolbar PageRank happened over the weeks, more disgruntled SEOs, webmasters and site owner's came out of the woodwork to express their outrage at Google for decreasing the Toolbar PageRank of their site. For some, however, this outrage is misplaced.. [More]

In an ASP.NET application the web.sitemap is very convenient tool for managing the site's structure, especially when used with an asp:Menu control. One aspect of the web.sitemap that is often overlooked is the ability to add custom attributes to the <siteMapNode> elements, which provides very useful leverage for managing a site's meta-data.. [More]

One of the greatest time-savers in web development is the use of dynamic pages to serve up database driven content. The most common examples of which are content management systems and product information pages. More times than not these pages hinge on a querystring parameter such as /page.aspx?id=12345 to determine which record needs to be retrieved from the database and output to the page. What is surprising is how many sites don't adequatly validate that crucial parameter.. [More]

Looks like Google might be up to something as link data has been going missing across sites in Google Webmaster Tools.. [More]