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Fixing 404 File Not Found frustrations (SEM 101)
You've seen it. So have I. Nearly every person who has actively browsed the Web for more than 15 minutes has seen it. I'm talking about the dreaded 404 File Not Found error. When it occurs, users simply abandon their search on that site and go elsewhere. That's a potential lost sale, subscription, or...
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Webmaster Center blog Q&A
We've been really busy here at the Bing Webmaster Center blog team, pumping out new content on a regular basis to create a nice library of content on issues that matter to webmasters and online publishers . I thought I'd take a moment to catch my breath, pause on creating a new thematic article (or yet...
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The merciless malignancy of malware Part 4 (SEM 101)
OK, so I totally geeked out with my recommendations on how to better secure your webmaster computing environment. As a result, I had too much material for one post and thus had to split it up into two pieces. Let’s wrap up this long series of posts on malware by finishing up with the last of the security...
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The merciless malignancy of malware Part 3 (SEM 101)
We’re going to diverge a bit from our regularly scheduled programming. Normally this column discusses search engine optimization (SEO) and related elements of search engine marketing (SEM), but we’re knee deep into our multi-part series on malware and we’re going to begin the wrap-up with a talk about...
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The merciless malignancy of malware Part 2 (SEM 101)
Malware infections are no laughing matter. When they afflict your website, they can infect your customers, who won’t appreciate your sharing, intentional or not (and I’m guessing it’s not)! And if Bing discovers malware on your site, your listing in the Bing search engine results pages (SERPs) will either...
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Prevent a bot from getting “lost in space” (SEM 101)
We recently published a non-SEM 101 blog post on controlling the crawl rate of MSNBot , the Bing web crawler (aka robot, or simply just bot). That got me thinking about robots. Naturally, that led to The Robot on Lost in Space . Will Robinson , the show’s precocious youngster who was a whiz at 1960s...
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Uncovering web-based treasure with Sitemaps (SEM 101)
Have you ever noticed how pirate treasure maps are like Sitemaps? While your website may not contain a treasure of gold and silver (unless it’s a metals commodities trading site!), if you have good content, that is certainly treasure to someone who is looking for it. Unfortunately, it’s buried...
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Get detailed site analysis to solve problems (SEM 101)
Last week I discussed common site errors that can inhibit the search engine crawler (aka bot). I pointed out common areas of concern and recommended a few tools to help diagnose such issues on your site’s pages. This week, I wanted to introduce a new tool for your collection that will be of great...
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Common errors that can tank a site (SEM 101)
Imagine being a content developer for a website. You write a bunch of clever and informative articles, which should deliver a good dose of new visitors and ranking potential to the site. You submit them to the IT department for publishing online, and wait for good things to happen. But instead, it all...
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Images and Flash and script, oh my! (SEM 101)
The old adage that was once attributed to a Chinese proverb tells us, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” But John McCarthy , a noted mathematician and computer science pioneer, stated conversely, “As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture.” Perhaps McCarthy...
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Head’s up on <head> tag optimization (SEM 101)
Much of what constitutes a well-architected webpage is never displayed in the page itself. The contents of the <body> tag are what you see in a browser. But a webpage consists of two major elements, the <body> tag only being one. The content of the <head> tag (and for that matter, the...
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Architecting content for SEO (SEM 101)
It wasn’t that long ago that I discussed in this blog how to create good content that will get your site noticed, by both end users and search engines. But to be clear, just writing some slick text is not the whole story. The previous blog articles in the Site Architecture and SEO series ( files...
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Making links work for you (SEM 101)
Links can be the lifeblood of a good website, as we discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly . But how well you manage them on your site from a site architecture perspective can be the difference between your website being starved for oxygen (aka search engine referral...
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Site architecture and SEO – file/page issues (SEM 101)
Search engine optimization (SEO) has three fundamental pillars upon which successful optimization campaigns are run. Like a three-legged stool, take one away, and the whole thing fails to work. The SEO pillars include: content (which we initially discussed in Are you content with your content? ), links...
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Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 2 (SEM 101)
In the previous blog post, Links: the good, the bad, and the ugly—Part 1 , I discussed that links are de facto endorsements of the site linked to, that the relevance of the linked to page to the one linking to it is critical for determining the value of the link, and how the quantity vs. quality...
