First SEO changes curacao.com implemented
October 17th, 2007 by Joost SchrierSome time ago I wrote about the SEO make-over for curacao.com. We are taking things one step at a time and because the website is relatively large it takes quite some time to implement even the smallest of changes. Only yesterday was I able to put the first steps in the process live.
The first steps in this SEO make-over were to redirect the curacao-tourism.com to curacao.com and to add unique titles to all pages.
- Redirection (301)
Up until about 2 years ago curacao.com and curacao-tourism.com were separate websites. Curacao.com was the property of a local company and curacao-tourism.com was the official tourism website of the Curacao Tourist Board (CTB). When the new (current) website went on-line the two websites were joined by allowing them to show the same content. So, they still existed side by side, but now with the same content.
The result of this move was that there were duplicate content issues and a fragmentation of the link juice directed at the websites. In short; the search engines did not know for sure which of the two domain names was the main one and the websites were seemingly competing against each other in the link arena.
By redirecting all traffic headed for curacao-tourism.com to curacao.com the search engines will now understand that curacao.com is the main website and the link juice for curacao-tourism.com will be added to that of curacao.com. The result will be a more focused website in terms of SEO. - Unique titles (and meta-tags)
Curacao.com was built - and is maintained - with the CMS SiteCore. In this CMS a main template is defined into which XSL renderings and/or .NET sublayouts are loaded. The main template however held the title tag and the meta-tags and these were static (i.e. the same on every page).
The problem with static titles throughout your website is that it looks like all pages are the same and you’re not using the valuable real estate that the title tag is. Especially with curacao.com the last was very evident because the title was “bon bini Curacao”. It sounds and looks very friendly but the only keyword in it is Curacao for which curacao.com has been number one since forever.
By adding unique titles to (almost) every page on curacao.com we’ve added to the focus and relevance of these unique pages and will, hopefully, improve their individual rankings.
As with all changes you do to a website you’re not sure whether or not the actions will have a positive effect. You can be 90% sure that your changes will result in higher rankings and more visitors, but the only way to be sure is to keep an eye on the statistics. During the following few weeks we will do just this and hopefully see an increase in visitors (and conversions!).
