Comments on: SEO Concerns and Product Update Issues with Affiliate Product Data Feeds http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/ Discussion of Online Advertising, CPA, SEO, Affiliate and Next Generation Marketing Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:25:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Carsten Cumbrowski http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/comment-page-1/#comment-20684 Carsten Cumbrowski Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:57:58 +0000 http://www.revenews.com/?p=3311#comment-20684 p.s. the EAN13 does not work for all types of products, particularly the ones that have no national nor international bar code. p.s. the EAN13 does not work for all types of products, particularly the ones that have no national nor international bar code.

]]> By: Carsten Cumbrowski http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/comment-page-1/#comment-20683 Carsten Cumbrowski Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:55:15 +0000 http://www.revenews.com/?p=3311#comment-20683 Hi Scott, thanks for your comments as well. The identity or auto_increment product id generates extra overhead during updates, unless you are using it as an additional key for your internal purposes. Having your own product identifier makes sense if you do price comparison, but there I would prefer using the EAN13 barcode, which is even used by several U.S. merchants themselves (Wal Mart is an example of a large retailer who uses EAN13 for their product ids). It's a bit slower for primary key look ups, if you keep your own auto_increment product ids smaller than 2.1 million, but you can save a lot of time during pre-processing of feeds. Hi Scott, thanks for your comments as well. The identity or auto_increment product id generates extra overhead during updates, unless you are using it as an additional key for your internal purposes. Having your own product identifier makes sense if you do price comparison, but there I would prefer using the EAN13 barcode, which is even used by several U.S. merchants themselves (Wal Mart is an example of a large retailer who uses EAN13 for their product ids).

It’s a bit slower for primary key look ups, if you keep your own auto_increment product ids smaller than 2.1 million, but you can save a lot of time during pre-processing of feeds.

]]> By: Scott A. http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/comment-page-1/#comment-20682 Scott A. Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:05:14 +0000 http://www.revenews.com/?p=3311#comment-20682 Good post Carsten. I agree that you can't just build a datafeed site for SEO anymore. It needs to have some social functionality and some noteworthy features that can garner some press. It's fine to have datafeed content, but I think a good solution for a new site would be to keep the data part of an internal search engine and only make products public if your community interacts with them. For example if you've got a review system maybe only publish the products with reviews. That way there is always a person tied to each spiderable product in one way or another. As for your structural suggestions I'd like to add another solution. You can assign an auto_increment product ID to each product as you import them into your database. These ID's can be used in your URL and will never change. You can simply mark them as out of stock when the product is no longer in the feed and stop linking to those pages. Then maybe after a couple months the product can be removed permanently. Good post Carsten. I agree that you can’t just build a datafeed site for SEO anymore. It needs to have some social functionality and some noteworthy features that can garner some press. It’s fine to have datafeed content, but I think a good solution for a new site would be to keep the data part of an internal search engine and only make products public if your community interacts with them. For example if you’ve got a review system maybe only publish the products with reviews. That way there is always a person tied to each spiderable product in one way or another.

As for your structural suggestions I’d like to add another solution. You can assign an auto_increment product ID to each product as you import them into your database. These ID’s can be used in your URL and will never change. You can simply mark them as out of stock when the product is no longer in the feed and stop linking to those pages. Then maybe after a couple months the product can be removed permanently.

]]> By: Carsten Cumbrowski http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/comment-page-1/#comment-20681 Carsten Cumbrowski Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:46:09 +0000 http://www.revenews.com/?p=3311#comment-20681 Hi Paul, thanks for the comment. From a SEO perspective I don't think that your idea makes a lot of sense and is even counter productive IMO. No, you have to do something with the feed content. Mash it with something else of value to the user and that is unique, add also your own content to it, step by step and/or have users generate it for you. Whatever the result might be, it not only has to pass the automated filters and checks by the search engine bots and algorithms, but also pass the human check as well. If it does not pass the second and only the first, then it is just a question of when and not if your site will be kicked out of the search engines... manually penalized or filtered out during a future update of SE Algos that will come for sure. Hi Paul, thanks for the comment. From a SEO perspective I don’t think that your idea makes a lot of sense and is even counter productive IMO.

No, you have to do something with the feed content. Mash it with something else of value to the user and that is unique, add also your own content to it, step by step and/or have users generate it for you.

Whatever the result might be, it not only has to pass the automated filters and checks by the search engine bots and algorithms, but also pass the human check as well. If it does not pass the second and only the first, then it is just a question of when and not if your site will be kicked out of the search engines… manually penalized or filtered out during a future update of SE Algos that will come for sure.

]]> By: SEO http://www.revenews.com/carstencumbrowski/seo-concerns-and-product-update-issues-with-affiliate-product-data-feeds/comment-page-1/#comment-20680 SEO Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:17:41 +0000 http://www.revenews.com/?p=3311#comment-20680 I wonder if hard coding section pages as index-able pages would work? Create a html page that would link to the dynamic pages. They can show discounted products and some of the popular models. All this info would be static and indexed. You would need to update these pages weekly or monthly. Good solution? Paul R I wonder if hard coding section pages as index-able pages would work? Create a html page that would link to the dynamic pages. They can show discounted products and some of the popular models. All this info would be static and indexed. You would need to update these pages weekly or monthly.

Good solution?

Paul R

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