Comments on: Server Responses – The What and Why for SEO

By: pst

pst — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:59:23 +0000

I understand the point about responses you make. But what I think might also be pretty important nowadays is not just the response itself but also the time the response takes. Especially the Google webmaster tools show a lot of sings that Google strongly keeps an eye on the sites performance. The reasoning seems quite obvious. Why put a page up in the top SERPs if it’s not at all likely it can handle the traffic.

What do you think about that aspect?

By: pittfall

pittfall — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:52:23 +0000

Conz,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, there are a number of automated tools that can help you monitor your site(s) but many of them can be pretty costly. However there are a number of free tools and tools that you may be already using. Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a great program that will crawl a site and report everything page that responds with a 404, 301 and 302 server responses. If you are unsure that your server is responding with a 404 correctly, you can monitor you 404 page through your analytics program by putting a tag to monitor the page. Cheers.

By: conz

conz — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:24:32 +0000

The question I have is are there any automated tools available that I can use to check the status of my sites automatically? That would be useful especially for those of us who have many sites.

By: Oregon Web Design

Oregon Web Design — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:08:03 +0000

I use Google Webmaster Tools to track technical problems on my sites. Once you submit an XML Sitemap Google will crawl the pages and let you know of any errors. It also helps in getting new pages indexed quickly (all new pages in my site were indexed in less than 24 hours) and you can remove URLs from Google’s index that have been moved or deleted.

It’s been invaluable to me, so I thought I’d share

By: pittfall

pittfall — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:44:08 +0000

@Amparo
Analytics does not track this, this is at the server level. Analytical tracking begins when a page is loaded, the http server status happens prior to this.

Sorry for the news, but thanks for your comment.

By: Amparo S. Cursos

Amparo S. Cursos — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:41:13 +0000

Does anybody know a method to track 301 (or 302) redirects with Analytics?

By: pittfall

pittfall — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:02:08 +0000

@Consultant

There are three main pillars to building an effective website, technical concerns (server responses are just one aspect of this pillar), onsite (content development) and offsite promotion (link building).

The technical performance of your website is the first and is considered by some as the most important thing to consider.

Thanks for the comment!

By: pittfall

pittfall — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:59:04 +0000

@Reason and @Frank,
I am sure that there are some tools that automate the process of monitoring or checking a website, but I think that every website should be reviewed to verify the server responses from the start. Moving forward, setting a specific metric on the 404 page or building a report in your analytics package will do the monitoring for you. The other way is to monitor your server logs.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks for the comments.

By: Website Consultant

Website Consultant — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:21:30 +0000

How important are some of these things to someone who is just starting out with SEO? Should I be making sure I understand all of this before I start going into link building or should I wait until I’ve done a lot of the other stuff first?

By: Reason Refills

Reason Refills — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:22:54 +0000

The question I have is are there any automated tools available that I can use to check the status of my sites automatically? That would be useful especially for those of us who have many sites.