discuss: Review of GNU/Linux Tools Summary
Subject:
RE: Review of GNU/Linux Tools Summary
From:
"Chris Karakas" ####@####.####
Date:
14 Dec 2003 10:45:09 -0000
Message-Id: <20031214.gJz.63864600@www.karakas-online.de>
To Guru (and everybody who might be interested):
>I've changed order and grouping many many times.
>I'll try again to re-arrange them thats not a bad idea.
>
There is one thing to keep in mind when regrouping: Chapter and section labels -
DON'T change existing ones! You may change their position, but please not the label.
Subsection and Subsubsection labels can be changed without problem.
Why? Because Chapters and sections will become separate HTML documents. That's a
DSSSL stylesheet setting which controls how deep a level will still produce a
separate HTML document. The name of the documents will be the label of the chapter
and section respectively. Obviously, you can move a section around, without
affecting the HTML name of the resulting file, IF you don't change its label. You
can of course change its contents, put it somewhere else as a section of a different
chapter etc., but please leave the label untouched.
The problem is that the document is already on the Web and is receiving a lot of
visits. Most of them from search engines. If you change the section label, the HTML
name changes. Consequently, the link from the search engines is no longer valid. The
same is true for private bookmarks, or public bookmark lists.
But there is more to it: it's not only a matter of waiting 2-3 months for the new
HTML document that contains the old (a bit reorganized) content to be indexed by the
search engines. It's that the old name might have been at place 1 of Google (say)
for some keyword, because a lot of other people linked to it. Now, with a changed
label and, consequently, a new HTML file name, those links do not reference the new
document, and it gets a ranking close to "nowhere" (because Google takes links to a
document to mean "votes" for that document and weights that document accordingly) -
and nobody finds it. ;-)
For example, the following chapter is at around place 16 out of 2,5 million (!) for
"network commands" on Google:
http://www.karakas-online.de/gnu-linux-tools-summary/network-commands.html
See for yourself:
http://www.google.com/search?q=network+commands
If you change the label (don't confuse it with the title! I mean the SGML "id", or
the LyX "label") of chapter 15 from "network-commands" to something else, then the
above URI will disappear and we loose readers. Of course, changing the title also
affects the SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), but not as drastically as to
eliminate the document altogether. However, Google likes a title that is correlated
to the file name, so a title "Network commands" and a label "network-commands" are
optimal from the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view.
That's just a reminder. I don't think you will need to change labels while
reorganizing, but think about it if you must. Cool URIs don't change
(http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html).
Cool labels don't change either. ;-)
--
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
http://www.karakas-online.de
