Blog Friendly URLs
An established best practice for SEO is for keywords relating to the content of a web page to appear in the page's URL (what is often called a "Human Friendly" URL). Among several established blog platforms this is put into practice by taking the title of the blog entry (which is often a semantically strong indicator of what the page is about) and putting it into the entry's URL. Version 03.04.01 introduces this functionality and it is activated via the "Module Options" screen.
After enabling this option you will no longer see references to “Default.aspx” in the URL, instead you will see an aspx reference made up on the blog entry’s title. Below is an example for a blog entry entitled 'Title of my blog entry':
- Version 03.04.00 and earlier:
http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/Default.aspx
- Version 03.04.01:
http://www.your domain.com/dnn/blog/tabid/825/EntryID/1865/Title-of-my-blog-entry.aspx
Removal of duplicate content issue (i.e. having exactly same content at two or more different URLs):
Another well established SEO best practice is to avoid having the same content reachable via two distinct URLs. This was a problem in version 03.03.00 (and earlier) , here they are:
- A "Friendly URL" for the blog entry, found in the page listing blog entries.
- A "Permalink" version, linked at the bottom of a blog entry in version 03.03.00 and earlier
With version 03.04.00 the "Permalink" was removed from the bottom of the blog entries - hence addressing part of this issue, however, the issue was not fully resolved since both versions of the URL continued to appear in the RSS feed generated by the module (the friendly URL would appear between the
tag in the RSS feed, while the tag contained the Permalink version of the URL). Some well-established web-based RSS readers (including Newsgator & Google Reader) use the URL when providing a link to a blog entry, hence those subscribing to a DNN blog’s RSS feed would be directed to content using the Permalink version of the link. In version 03.04.00 the tag contains the new Human-Friendly version of the URL.
Updating the “Regenerate all permalinks” function:
To reinforce the value of the two SEO improvements above the "regenerate all permalinks" function (found at the bottom of the "Module Options" screen) has been updated so that you can regenerate the "Permalinks" for all its blog entries for the given instance of the blog module.
You will need to execute this "regeneration" individually for each instance of the blog module in your DNN portal(s) if you want all blog permalinks in a portal to be recalculated.
Unique Page Titles:
One of the most important “identifications” used by search engines when determining the importance of a page (and the scope of its content) is the text contained the <title> tag of your page (found in the header section of an HTML page). It is therefore vital that an individual blog entry has a unique title tag appearing in the HTML header. The option to have a unique title tag for a blog entry can now be switched on in the "Module Options" screen. The title tag that will be generated for a blog entry will have the following format:
<title>[X] - [Y]</title>
Where:
- [X] is the title of the page on which the DNN module has been installed
- [Y] is the title given to the blog entry.
Insertion of the rel="nofollow" attribute on hyperlinks added in blog comments:
The element rel="nofollow" will now be systemically added to all website links provided in the comment field (and also to all websites entered in the new "Your website" field that is provided for those leaving a comment, more on thisnew feature in subsequent entry). Adding of the rel="nofollow" attribute to a hyperlink indicates that the destination of that hyperlink SHOULD NOT be afforded any additional weight or ranking by user agents which perform link analysis upon web pages (e.g. search engines). This is an established SEO best practice for blogs by deterring link spammers from maliciously flooding comment fields with unwanted links to websites (in an effort to “bleed” authority from your site in the eyes of search engines).
Future SQL Plans:
One of the most glaring omissions for the blog module, in terms of SEO, is the ability of the module to automatically generate a unique description meta tag for each blog entry. The plan is to address this in a future version.
Many thanks to Eoghan O'Neill for his insight, expertise, and relentless dedication to testing and re-testing and for keeping us developers on our toes to make sure all these enhancements were carried out to spec.