Good to see that the North American market is not superstitious and is willing to schedule events on September 11 now ;-)

Timothy Seward of ROI Revolution will be hosting a free webinar with Tom Leung, Google’s Business Product Manager for Google’s Website Optimizer.

This 60 Minute Free Webinar on Google Website Optimizer Will Cover:

• How to Overcome the Odds – continual improvements will slingshot you past your competition.
• How to Set Up a Test with Google Website Optimizer in 3 Simple Steps
• 6 Tests To Run on Your Site with Easy to Follow Example Layouts
• Key Questions To Ask Yourself In Order to Use Google Website Optimizer for Valuable Improvements

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Date: September 11th, 2007
Time: 2pm ET (1pm CT / 12pm MT / 11am PT)
Topic: Google Website Optimizer
Sign Up Today: http://roirevolution.com/gwo-webinar
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Kev from SEO Optimise listed 5 reasons to do this and I am going to add a 6th.

First, what is meant by folder structure is a URL system that involves several forward slashes more so than equal signs and question marks.

Take the Web Analytics page of the DriveTraffic website. The URL of this page is http://www.drivetraffic.ca/web_analytics/. It could have easily been http://www.drivetraffic.ca/web_analytics.php but I prefer a folder structure so that related pages or pages within the subject category of web analytics can be tucked into this folder structure - for example the Google Analytics page: http://www.drivetraffic.ca/web_analytics/google_analytics.php.

An example of a URL that does not use folder structure is the Toronto Special Events website. Visit the link and look in your address bar to see the difference - the URL was too large to paste here.

Kev’s reasons for using a folder structure include:

1) Full Domain Link Juice
- The full weight of the domain is used when using folders as opposed to sub-domains. This is because the search engines will view the folder as part of the main site rather than a sub-site.

2) More Memorable URL’s
- If your promoting the URL either online or offline it’s far easier to remember if it’s short and simple, making the user add a .html to the end makes it less likely to be remembered.

3) Looks Cleaner/More Professional
- In my opinion filename extensions can look a bit messy, I think something like www.seoptimise.com/services looks far more professional than the previous URL which was www.seoptimise.com/our-services.asp

4) Can Switch Hosting Easily
- Another factor with this change was because it’s possible the site will be moving from a Windows server to Linux in the near future. This means that the ASP file extensions would have to be changed to PHP, using the default page within a folder gets around this problem by removing the need of a file extension in the URL entirely.

5) Easy to Organise
- The root level got very messy using the previous structure, grouping this into foldernames makes the webpages far more manageable. I’ve also found some very similar webpages which are now redirected to one version instead which will help the users and search engines to find exactly what we want them to.

And my number 6 reason is for ease of obtaining data in your web analytics program. Oh and number 7 is potential SEO impact.

But #6 - it is helpful to look at a folder of your website within your web analytics rather than each page sometimes. For example, on an insurance site are the bulk of the people accessing the marine insurance section of the site, car insurance or home insurance? What keywords are used in general to reach the marine section of the site? I don’t want to look at each page within that section to obtain a list of keyword phrases.

Do you need help converting your website to folder format? Feel free to contact us. Should you prefer to do it on your own, remember to use 301 redirects since you will be “renaming” pages!

I always get asked the question from people who stay on the edge of the SEM industry, how do I sort the wheat from the chaff?

In other words how do they know what to believe when they are reading a variety of sources? My answer is to practice - don’t just read but put into practice what you are reading and see if it works.

Now I have a question…how do I sort the wheat from the chaff that emails me? On Thursday morning I received the following email from a Toronto Communications Firm. Smells fishy to me but the phone number does represent the company; I wonder if this persons boss knows that they are unprepared for a 2pm meeting and are desperately trying to hawk someone’s work for their own presentation?

Hello - I represent and am assisting a significant client in finding an SEO/SEM consulting organization. I found your site and was impressed with how you present your business.

I would love to be able to either talk to someone or better yet get a credentials presentation from you that I can review with my client. Here’s the rub - I need it by 1pm today (Thursday) as I am meeting them at 2pm.

Please either call me or e-mail if you have questions. I monitor this address constantly.

Regards,

I was out of the office and would not have had time to respond anyway. I save urgent requests for existing clients, not communications firms that are desperately trying to look prepare for this afternoon’s meeting…

Would you have responded?