http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/tags/Jandrick/default.aspxTags: JandrickenCommunityServer 2008 SP2 (Build: 31104.93)http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/01/22/optimizing-large-sites.aspxThu, 22 Jan 2009 14:48:00 GMT1e469e21-c924-44fa-a132-47b5d0a8ad47:7268Pete Prestipino1http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/rsscomments.aspx?PostID=7268http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2009/01/22/optimizing-large-sites.aspx#comments<p>If you are responsible for optimizing a very large site (I&#39;ve had this challenge personally), then you know that you make big changes (not small SEO modifications on a per page basis) and hope that best practices established by watching the success of others will apply to you as well. We&#39;re not talking about cases of sites with hundreds or even thousands of pages, but from hundreds of thousands of pages and more.&nbsp;</p> <p>Jeremiah Andrick from the Microsoft Live Search blog posted yesterday about how to <b><a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/01/19/optimizing-your-very-large-site-for-search-part-1.aspx">optimize for large sites</a></b>, and there are some excellent lessons for anyone responsible for SEO.&nbsp;The first tip he offered up was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonicalization">canonicalization</a>, also known as normalization - the concept of only exposing URL per piece of content to the engines. </p> <p><i>Here are a few other tips for optimizing large sites:</i></p> <ul> <li><b>Add or remove the trailing /</b> <ul> <li>http://www.mysite.com/ to http://www.mysite.com</li> </ul> </li> <li><b>Remove the index or default</b> <ul> <li>http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx to http://www.mysite.com</li> <li>http://www.mysite.com/en/us/default.aspx to http://www.mysite.com/en/us</li> </ul> </li> <li><b>Avoid CamelCase &mdash; convert your text to lower case</b> <ul> <li>http://www.mysite.com/FooBar/ to http://www.mysite.com/foobar</li> </ul> </li> <li><b>Remove query string variables or rewrite to readable URLs</b> <ul> <li>http://www.mysite.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ab99&amp;displaylang=en to http://www.mysite.com/downloads/en/family/ab99</li> </ul> </li> <li><b>Remove Port Numbers</b> <ul> <li>http://www.mysite.com:8080/ to http://www.mysite.com</li> </ul> </li> <li><b>Avoid exposing secure HTTPS version</b> <ul> <li>https://www.mysite.com/en/us/ to http://www.mysite.com/en/us</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>Andrick also recommends 301 redirects, using a consistent linking convention, avoiding linking to multiple versions of a page, and using absolute links. To read all of Andricks&#39; recommendations, <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/01/19/optimizing-your-very-large-site-for-search-part-1.aspx" target="_blank">click here</a>.</p> <div style="clear:both;"></div><img src="http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/aggbug.aspx?PostID=7268" width="1" height="1">Search Engine Optimizationseolive searchJandrickoptimzing large sites