Whether we call it rewriting the URLs or changing the permalink structure, it is a common practice to use “nice” URLs on dynamic content websites, instead of the default ones. For example, this post has the URL http://tastekid.com/blog/?p=75, and if I was rewriting the URLs it would have probably looked like this: “http://tastekid.com/blog/2008/10/rewriting-the-urls”.

Nowadays, noble arguments are used in favor of rewriting the URLs, like “improving the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links” [Wordpress]. But let’s face it, these weren’t the most important arguments back when this whole practice begun. Instead, this was (and still is) one of the basic SEO techniques used in order to improve the SERP performances of web pages.

It is a known fact that one of the measures used by search engines when evaluating a page is the URL relevancy. For example, “http://example.com/how-to-rewrite-urls.html” will be seen as more relevant than “http://example.com/?articleID=2435″, for a search performed on “how to rewrite URLs”, given the same article content, page title, inbound links etc.

Besides the lack of relevancy, there was (and still is, to a certain point) a belief that search engines have something against dynamic URLs, that is, URLs that are using GET variables (e.g.: “?x=1&y=2″).

A long time ago, a large part of the web was consisted of static pages. That meant that if the URL of a page was “http://www.example.com/how-to-rewrite-urls.html”, a real physical HTML file called “how-to-rewrite-urls.html” presumably existed on the disk in the root of the example.com domain. The idea was that these static pages where considered to be more relevant than dynamic pages, that can be artificially generated in large numbers and don’t necessary contain relevant information. This idea is obviously obsolete now, and I am sure that for some time now search engines don’t even bother to consider that a “nice” URL may address a real physical file.

I don’t think that today search engines have anything against dynamic URLs. The only (but important) factor that contributes to the SERP performances is the URL relevancy. To explain my point of view by giving an example, I do think that “http://example.com/how-to-rewrite-urls.html” will perform better than “http://example.com/?articleID=2435″, but I don’t think it is considered any better by search engines than “http://example.com/?q=how-to-rewrite-urls”.

Rewriting the URLs is a good practice in most cases. Besides improving SERP performances, it also provides a sort of teaser for the page in the URL (if you give the URL to a friend through a messaging system, he or she will have an idea what it is about). Rewriting the URLs for this blog would be a good idea. For TasteKid though, I have decided not to do it. One of the reasons is that I consider a link like http://www.tastekid.com/ask?q=Radiohead to be sufficiently relevant. Another reason is a sort of statement against rewriting the URLs when it is not necessary, and proving that search engines don’t have preconceptions with dynamic URLs (Google has indexed most of Taste Kid’s pages). Also, rewriting the URLs comes with a (small but greater than 0) processing overhead, and for a search discovery engine, I think classic dynamic URLs are more appropriate.

After experimenting with Google AdWords I’ve learned some simple lessons, that probably all of you out there that have at least some experience with this program are already aware about. Nevertheless, because my second campaign was actually very successful in terms of high add relevancy, high click rates and low costs-per-clicks, I’ll post here some simple advices for the ones that don’t have experience working with AdWords.

First of all, in order to obtain good ad performance, keep in mind you’ll need a strong connection between your ad keywords (or key phrases), the ad itself and the landing page. To be more specific, one of my ad-triggering key phrases was “similar music”. The ad itself had the title “find similar music” and the body of the ad contained the word “music”. The landing page, that is, the main page of Taste Kid, has a title that contains the phrase “find similar music”, and these words are to be found on the page’s description and content, as well.

To explain a little, Google has to establish how relevant your ad is. The better this relevancy, the better your campaign’s performance. The only data Google has in order to do that is your ad and your landing page. So, the keywords you define should be relevant, words-wise, to the ad that you have defined, and the ads should be relevant to the page that is targeted. So there should be always a strong connection between these 3: the keywords, the ad, the landing page.

Considering this, the steps for defining an ad group would be:

1.Establish what are the keywords that best describe the page you are about to promote.
2.If necessary, do a little SEO to optimize that page for those keywords (setting a relevant page title, page description, etc.)
3.Define an ad that contains those keywords. Of course, it should also be coherent and appealing. Considering an ad has a limited number of characters, concentrate on a maximum of 3 keywords (two, or even one, may be enough). Try to have one keyword in the ad title.
4.Then, set as keywords in Google AdWords the keywords you have chosen at step 1.

Maybe the most important thing is to find the right keywords. A few simple rules for that would be:

1.The keyword you chose should describe or be related to what your page is all about. Moreover, the page should be optimized for those keywords.
2.The keywords should not be too generic. For example, in my successful campaign I’ve used key phrases like “similar music”, as opposed to “music”, or “find music”, that would have been too generic. Many other sites most probably are already using those keywords and are much more relevant for them.
3.The keywords should not be too particular. You have to come up with keywords or key phrases that many people are searching for on Google. This is why I’ve used “similar music”, as opposed to “music recommender system”, for example. I made the educated guess that much more people will search for things like “similar music metallica” than “ music recommender system website”.

Giving all these things I’ve learned, I’ve managed to define a campaign having a very good performance. Due to financial restrains though, I had to pause this campaign for a while. Actually, I still have an outstanding balance for Google of about 100 euros, that I’m planning to pay as soon as I’ll have the money.

Note: This post has been written in retrospect and posted on September 13th, 2008.

The next step was to buy a domain name. Although many would have probably done this long before going public, or even before developing the application, most certainly before starting an AdWords campaign, I though getting the application up and running was more important. While online marketing and branding are paramount to any product and service, I think nowadays there is too much buzz surrounding these aspects, almost as if they are more important than the product or service itself.

This type of view also applies on the domain names market. People are buying domains only because they are cheap, not because they are committed to do something with them. Specialized companies are trading large amounts of domains, making a business from reserving domains containing certain keywords, then selling them on a bigger price to other companies and individuals that, most often, end up doing nothing with them. Although I have quite liberal views and I believe in the open market, I think that this trade layer between registration authorities and truly interested clients has many of the characteristics of a parasite.

Even though many interesting domain names are already reserved, usually by such companies that buy them only hoping to sell for profit, I think there are still a lot of free catchy domains out there. After a couple of days of searches, I came up with TasteKid.com for this project, and I must say I am very pleased with it.

Although I’m far from being an expert, and there are many places where you can find suggestions about finding a good domain name, here are some of my advices:

1. Unless you are keen on buying a precise domain, try to find one that is still available – that is, not already registered; it will be much cheaper, you won’t feed the companies that make a living from selling and buying domains and you will have the satisfaction of finding a domain that no one thought about before. Search for available domains using one of the many available tools, like http://www.checkdomain.com/.

2. Try to find a short domain. I know, many short domains are already taken, but there are still a lot of them out there. What does short mean? Obviously it’s very hard to find anything unregistered bellow 6 characters on the .com market. I would 6 to 10 characters, but that is not a rule. Think though that a shorter domain means people will remember it more easily, type it faster in the address bar, and, maybe most important, subconsciously giving it more trust. Think of a Google result page for some music-related query, what would you choose between a spinner.com result and a freemusicforeverybody.com result? I think many of us would chose spinner.com, even though the second domain name is more descriptive.

3. Be careful when thinking about going for other TLDs than .com. Even though .net, .biz and other TLDs may offer a lot more available domain names, people are more reluctant to trust these and have become used to thinking quality web sites have usually .com domain names. There are a lot of successful exceptions, one of them being Last.fm, and hopefully people attitude will change over time, but still think twice before going for it. Obviously this doesn’t apply to regional (contry) TLDs, that are trusted by people living in that particular country. Also, think twice before using numbers or hyphens in your domain name. These may be catchy in some instances, but then again, they usually are driving people away.

4. Think outside the box. If you sell cheap cars, your domain name doesn’t have to contain “cars”, “buy” and “cheap” in it. You can later optimize your site for these keywords, but in my opinion it is more important for a domain to be short and catchy than descriptive. Of course, if you manage to get a domain that contains a keyword related to what the site is about, that is very good. But don’t become frustrated if you can’t find something too descriptive. Your domain is your brand, and your brand should be, first of all, original. buy-cheap-cars.com has nothing original in it.crazycars.com, well, that would be an improvement, don’t you think?

5. Play with words. Think of a few words that you wold like at least one of them to be contained in your domain name. Then add other words to them, maybe less related to what you do. There are keywords suggestion tools available online, that may help you with this game.

6. Search and ask for advice. Read articles like this one, use online domain name suggestion tools. Tell about the domain name you are thinking about buying to your friends, business partners or family. Take into consideration their feedback, but remember that first reactions in situations like these are not always very relevant. Just think about a friend asking you about your opinion on the domain “google.com”, before Google emerged. I bet you would have said something like “But it doesn’t even mean anything!”. So don’t overdo it.

7. When you find a domain name that you like, don’t think too much about buying it. There is always that thought that “maybe I can find an even better one”, but don’t leave this thought take over you. Remember, as important as the domain name is, there are many other things much more important, like the web site you will host on that domain. And, most often, after you buy the domain, you start to get attached to it and to like it even more.

Good luck!

Note: This post has been written in retrospect and posted on September 10th, 2008.

The first public url of Emmy was http://www.smartlearned.com/emmy. SmartLearned, which stands for Smart Learning Artificial News Editor, is the domain that hosts the public side of my university graduation project (more information on this project you can find on its “about” page).

Emmy looked like this at the time. My brother, Felix, helped me with the design, but even though he is a very good web-developer, he lacks the designing skills and the artistic touch needed in order to come up with a neat Web 2.0 look and feel. Nevertheless, I wasn’t very much interested in this aspect at the time, I just wanted to test the behavior of the application and if there are any obvious problems with it being online. Also I was itnerested in designing the functional scheme of the web site, and, as you may have already observed, the structure is very similar to the one used in the present.

I gave the url to some of my friends and received moderate optimistic feedback. I also added the url to Google, and soon enough they started indexing the website.

Note: This post has been written in retrospect and posted on September 10th, 2008.