Question: Do dates in the URL of blogs or websites help determine freshness of the content or is it largely ignored? -Filipe Santos, NYC

Do website or blog URLs determine the freshness of the content?

To search engines, no, spiders crawl then index those pages which determines the freshness. To users, yes, users will look at the URL to determine out fresh that post is and see if it is relevant to what they are searching for.

I really like how Matt Cutts put this answer because I see bloggers trying to trick Google News or other blog news related websites and keep their post  at the top of the ‘most recent news’ list by constantly changing the date in the URL; honestly, it’s somewhat annoying.

However, Google does do a very good job determining the age of a blog post by caching it super fast and then caching every so often to check for new content and changes to that post. You will find the more popular one particular post is, the more that page will get cached. Frankly, I’ve found that changing the date in your post URL or changing URLs period is not a good practice and should be avoided – create the post and let Google do the rest.

Some Quick SEO Tips for Your URLs

1. Remember to create keyword rich URLs – static page & blog post URLs
2. Never put a date within a static page URL
3. Avoid long URLs – you want something simple and to the point
4. DON’T, I repeat DON’T have dynamic URLs
5. Avoid changing URLs often and if done be sure to use proper 301 redirects
6. Leverage your internal linking by linking to other pages within your website ie: link from blog post to static pages

More than one H1 on a page: good or bad? – Erin, south of Boston

Is more than one H1 header tag good or bad?

In short, bad!

There are two main reason why you should only have one <h1> header tag in place per page:

1. Better for SEO – I recommend having only one <h1> header tag per page and one <h2> header tag utilizing those two for your target keywords without keyword stuffing either of them. If you have more than two sections on one page, follow those up with <h3>’s and <h4>’s as needed and remember you can style them via CSS to look excatly like your <h1> and <h2>’s if you wish. Keep search engines and visitors in mind when using header tags.
2. Style – Header tags were created for style and anyone that’s been around web development at all knows that multiple h1′s on your page looks horrible when CSS is disabled – hence the reason why there are h2, h3, h4, etc. Don’t forget that you do have header tags beyond h1 & h2!

If you have a company logo on your site, what is the best way to include the text of the logo for SEO purposes? ALT tag, CSS hiding, or does it matter? – Richard M, Austrialia

Use ‘alt tag’ or CSS to label your logo?

In short, Yes, use the ‘alt tag’ or the alternative text tag to add text to your logo or any other image for that matter.

In detail, Search engines love to see alternative text being utilized in images and hate to see hidden text in any way, shape, or form. I recommend keeping your alternative text very simple and to the point around 3-4 words but remember to add some relevant keywords within your images alt text as well – always keep search engines in mind along with users.

Why use the ALT tag in your image?

1. It’s Search Engine friendly – search engines, especially Google, have gotten very smart at catching ‘black hat’ type SEO tricks and hate to see them in any part of your website. They do however love to see correct ways of optimization and will value your website higher in the long run if you do everything correctly. With that said, USE ALT TEXT because search engines love to see all images, including your logo, have them in place plus it does add value to your site.
2. Generate traffic from Image Search- I don’t know about you but I love Google Image Search and use it on a daily basis to find great, relevant images for my particular need. Supply your images with alternative text will give you that extra boost you might need for your images to start showing up in image search ultimately generating more traffic for you. Weather it’s a church website or a personal blog, always use alt text.
3. It’s Simple & Easy to use – I know that CSS hiding is NOT hard but neither is using the ALT tag in your images. In fact, it actually takes less time to add some good alternative text than it does hiding some text via CSS. Another cool feature about the alt tag is ANYONE CAN USE IT – that’s right, anyone! If you can add an image via HTML you can add alternative text (see below for reference). If your using a CMS (Content Management System) be sure to utilize the Alternative Text option – it’s super easy!

So, How do I add alt text to my images?

Easy, just use the codex below:

• <img src="boat.gif" alt="Big Boat" />

When adding an image just add the alt=” ” to your HTML and remember to put unique alternative text for each image between the ” “.