It’s almost summer! That time of year when a young boy's fancy turns to responding to natural search RFP's (okay, well for some of us at least). You see, I write this as we are in the midst of putting together a multitude of request for proposals for natural search.
The requests vary quite a bit. Some are very detail oriented and some cut right to the chase. My personal involvement in these over the years has always been to make sure the Strategic Partnership and Client Service teams have the necessary technical and case study background. At that point, it's in their capable hands to package and merchandise the RFP in a way that accurately portrays Resolution's service offerings without overselling or laying too much out up front.
I'll be totally honest, the extent of my sales background consists of selling refrigerators and laundry machines at Sears in my college days. In other words, while I have an absurd understanding of the inner-workings of an R134a based condenser (and those just sold themselves let me tell you), I lay no claim to having sales expertise :-)
However, the selling process in natural search RFP’s is intriguing to me. I usually only work with the technical aspects, but I know that’s only part of what goes into them. As an SEO professional, I can see how, on one hand, you want the client to understand your subject matter expertise. At the same time, you don't want to 'give away the farm' so to speak.
I wrote a blog that pontificated on this very subject. Then I read that blog back to myself on a flight from New York last week and saw how uninteresting it is to read as an outsider. So I went straight to the source via Lauren Mittleman, who is Manager of Strategic Partnerships here at RM. She is on the frontlines of hundreds of natural search RFP's (as well as paid) and deals with the balances I'm talking about daily. I asked Lauren three big questions on the subject, and here are her answers:
1. On average, how long does it take RM to get all the information together for a natural search RFP? What questions/items tend to take the longest to formulate a response to?
It absolutely varies based on the RFP and how much detail the questions are looking for. All RFPs need to address the company on an individual basis to take into consideration its specific challenges and needs. We need to take a deep dive into the client’s site, so the analysis can take anywhere from a day to a week to complete depending on the complexity of the site.
2. For natural search RFPs, do you think there is a juggling act between getting specific with responses and not ‘giving away too much up front’? If so, why? If not, why?
Whether it is an SEO or PPC RFP, you must always be considerate of this balance. You want to assure the client that your company has the expertise and proven success to provide unparalleled SEO service offerings, but you cannot reveal all the intricate strategies that go into managing these campaigns. To that point, it would be nearly impossible for us to relay all the information that our SEO experts impart on our client service teams to guide our clients to optimal natural rankings.
RFPs are tricky because you provide such detailed insight into campaign creation and management that if you reveal too much, you are essentially providing a step-by-step guide to the client to implement the strategies themselves or to pass along to another firm.
3. If you were going to put out an RFP for natural search, based on all the RFP’s you’ve seen come along, what would be the one question you absolutely WOULDN’T put in there? Why? On the flip side, what is something you’ve seen in an RFP that you’d absolutely make sure to ask and why?
To follow the path of my previous response, one question that is difficult is in regards to what our exact, step-by-step process entails. Like I said before, we want to show them what we will do, but not provide a detailed scope that could be made public. The balance must be maintained to convey our expertise and still keep our competitive advantage.
A good question that, surprisingly, is not asked very often is what our philosophy/methodology is. Often, RFPs get so specific and so tactical that clients don’t really get a feeling for who the agency is and what we are all about, which really sets us apart from the competition. When questions like this are not asked, we try to pepper in those beliefs with direct answers that are founded in our holistic approach. This way we are able to tell the story of Resolution Media’s unique approach to the search landscape.
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
Answers from the Front Lines
4 Tools You Absolutely Have to Be In the Habit of Using
While there are certainly things professional SEO's do and understand that provide value on par with what they are paid, there are some really obvious habits anybody can get into to discover what's going on with their site (and the search-sphere around it). The clients I've had that embrace these habits seem more 'in tune' with not only their industry, but how their projects stack up in it as well. The result is that they are more proactive in their involvement, which ultimately helps everyone accomplish their goals quicker. The best part? These things are free!
-Use Google News Alerts to monitor keywords and your brand.
News Alerts have to be one of the greatest things in the history of…things. I couldn't imagine doing my job without them. You can use Google to scour the internet for you and report back when your products, brands, names, or just big words are mentioned anywhere on the internet.
Set the frequency to whatever works best for you (fair warning, it WILL bombard your inbox if you set it to notify you whenever things come up). This is a great reputation management tool as well. Another really cool use I recently learned is to use the Google link operator to monitor new links coming into your site. Set that particular alert in real time if you're proactively building links and you'll see the links as soon as Google recognizes them. How 'bout that?!
-Give your site a once-through with a spider simulator when a new page launches or a site is redesigned.
Spider simulators are pretty common, and which one you use is a matter of personal preference really. They all essentially tell you the same thing. You will want to use these to make sure the content you can see on your site is in fact, being seen by the spider when it crawls. If it isn't, then you may need to look for other ways to get that content visible.
We have some internal proprietary tools that give us a much deeper analysis of a site, but you can get some at-a-glance high-level information about web pages on your site quickly. I still use Summit Media's spider out of habit from time to time. It's characterizations of the site in question aren't always 100% accurate, and I wouldn't give that "grade" much consideration in the grand scheme of things. However, the points it looks for on a page (image descriptions, use of header tags, etc.) are all pertinent and helpful in seeing some major issues on a page.
-Use Google Trends to see what the search economy in your industry is like.
This is another really great invention from Google I can't imagine living without. Ever wonder how much your top referrers stack up to the entire Google search? You can use this to see what kind of buzz is around your brand, if search volume around a term has seasonality, how offline promotions affect search buzz, etc. I think it’s a good idea for any 'client' to run the big keywords they are targeting through here at least every quarter. Just knowing how 'popular' a subject is may help anticipate lifts or drops.
-Use del.icio.us as a reference for popularity.
If you haven't used del.icio.us or set up an account yet, you really should. It's a social bookmark site where you can look at what articles/web pages other people in the network are linking to. You can learn a lot about 'buzz' around your brand, people, topics, keywords, and generally what's hot around the net. It’s also a great way to learn about the characteristics of content that draws people in. It's a big enough user base to get a decent sample space (and to compare across users) to get a sense of what's catching on and what isn't, and how people perceive it.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it’s a good place to dig in if you haven’t already. There are other tools out there that essentially do what I described above as well (some of that amounts to what your personal preferences are). But in the end, people who use tools like these as a force of habit in their routines will have a lot better view of what's going on with their site and the search space it resides in.
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
Five Myths About Big Brand SEO
This post warrants theme music! It's Rush, so that means that sound you just heard is Bryson expressing his disdain. :-)
I encounter a lot of misinformation and false assumptions when working with companies that have huge brands. Some are the byproduct of the naiveté and some are even fueled by other SEO's. Wherever they come from, if you hold them as truths, you may be compromising the effectiveness of your project. It's absolutely true that a brand with a lot of publicity has a lot of traffic by its very nature. They also tend to experience a disproportionate amount of navigational queries. But I digress...
The following are myths I’ve encountered through blogs, mass media coverage, and other discussions that simply aren’t true for any brand regardless of its girth.
-The amount of money you spend on paid search can influence how you rank naturally
Google has been quite adamant about this one. It's a little fuzzy with Yahoo's YSSP, but ultimately, a natural algorithm is not measuring a site’s paid budget. Were an engine to factor in budgets, it would go directly against the business model of an engine (which is to provide the most relevant results possible). Google can draw interest in Adwords because of the sheer volume of users it has. Diluting the results would compromise that.
-Larger brands are able to work directly with Google to be 'placed' higher in rankings
I'm not sure where this originated, but more often than I’d like, I hear someone assume this is possible. While I've seen search engines bend over backwards to help bigger spenders in paid search maximize their return, there isn't a secret society of marketers' that are able to manipulate natural search results.
-There comes a point in a company's website life cycle where SEO engagement is no longer useful
I’m pretty sure every SEO professional could write a 1000 page diatribe on this one! The truncated version (and I mean REALLY truncated) is that search behavior is a constantly evolving thing. Google’s Udi Manber has stated that up to 25% of the queries they see each day are entirely new to them. How can there be an end game with that happening? Sure there comes a point where a site is as crawl-able as it can be. But at no point can a site (nor its content) be an end-all-be-all high-ranking juggernaut for your (potential) customers' query forever and ever. For that reason (and it certainly isn't the only one), optimization must be continuous in order to achieve continuous success. There are a host of technical arguments as to why SEO isn't a finite process as well, but I think this one is the most logical/obvious.
-Certain big name companies and large-search firms are able to gain access/inside knowledge to Google's Algorithm
I don't know why I pick on Google because this rings true for any search engine. I guess Google selling off Performics made me think of this. I hear this implied from clients and colleagues from time to time, but the fact of the matter is that it just ain't so. Nobody has a replete list of all the things Google is looking at to determine rankings. That's simply not public information. Not even employees of the engines can tell you. Matt Cutts wouldn't know all the factors (as he's more or less implied over the years). Alex Trebeck doesn't even know (and from what I can tell, he knows everything). The ability to practice SEO with data driven recommendations, meticulous research and reverse engineering are what drives success.
-Big brands do not get 'banned' from indexes regardless of their SEO practices
Well I wouldn't say it is common, but it certainly happens. I would say that in my experience, when we encounter something on a site that could lead to a penalty, it's almost never because the tactic is being used to intentionally 'game' the engines. Mostly it's because something or other was overlooked, there's legacy content/code on the site or a functionality independent of SEO was considered.
Regardless, there is no free pass to spam or trick spiders. This is why one of the first things we do with a new client is go through their entire site (or sites) and ensure nothing is occurring that could potentially raise a red flag.
There's a lot of inherent advantages a company with big name recognition has in search. But those don’t include any of the factors above.
Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 2
As promised in Part 1, today I’ll relay some things I see larger brands do (or not do in some cases) that have a direct effect on their relationships and linking with their core audience:
· Engage your PR department/agency and Search agency – This seems like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised! It's a matter of the right hand knowing what the left hand is doing really. Press release distribution schedules need to be in sync with optimization efforts as they are very much related. The buzz analysis and general research an SEO performs can greatly improve the impact of a press release. It should also be mentioned that optimizing the press release itself should always be part of the plan :-)
· Take an inventory of digital assets with your search agency – Video, social media profiles, domain names, mobile technology and more should all be leveraged, as they all affect your visibility. With the advent of universal search, this is even more important. Make sure your search agency is aware of what you have available, as the ability to optimize these assets can produce huge dividends.
· Integrate online and offline efforts – We've seen huge (and measurable) successes with clients that use their website in conjunction with offline efforts. More specifically, we've measured how these offline efforts can directly impact the types of links coming into a site, which helps search engines perceive what subjects/themes your site is relevant to. The residual effects of these integrated campaigns go far beyond increased brand engagement; they can help mobilize your loyal customers. Along these lines, also be sure you are integrating your online efforts. Even today we see very popular brands that aren't integrating their social network profiles with their website and vice versa.
· Build content around customer segments and disseminate accordingly – It's becoming more and more obvious that different user demographics access content in different ways. At Resolution, we see how some clients have users accessing web content via mobile browsers, whereas others may see a lot of activity in social networks and so forth. It's important to understand this information and build your web presence based around your users.
· Define goals and ensure your analytics are functioning properly – As analytics packages are swapped in and out, and tags are increasingly complex, we see a lot of instances where data is not accurate. When we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of visitors, multiple conversion goals and a host of other metrics, larger sites have all sorts of chances for things to go awry. Test, test, and test again.
Make sure all pertinent analytics are working properly. This is not only important for gauging referrals, entry pages, and the success of a linking/outreach campaign, but crucial for gauging success on a website in general. It may create some headaches up front, but it’s a lot better than finding out 6 months into a project a tag wasn’t implemented properly and you now have six months of inaccurate data to decipher. Jeff went into some greater detail on how the use of analytics is so crucial to optimization.
By no means is this an exhaustive list, and I certainly don't mean to imply that link-building should be a cornerstone of your marketing strategy. However, with larger brands, the degree to which they are engaged with their core audience is absolutely shaped by how well their content resonates with that audience.
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 1
One of the most discussed, yet vague, topics in search optimization is link building. Nobody seems to agree on how to go about building links into a site, yet everyone agrees that your linking relationships are crucial to how your site ranks (or doesn't rank as the case may be).
Search engines themselves have become increasingly efficient in determining what are legitimate links vs. links inflated for the purpose of ranking. As a result, many tactics that may have worked back in the day are no longer valid.
What I find interesting is that other bloggers discuss link building almost exclusively in relation to new or smaller sites. What about when you're managing linking relationships with a large brand? How about a large brand that already has a page rank of 8 or higher with a few million links pointing to it?
While the general linking theories hold true for a site of any size or reputation, things change quite a bit on a tactical level. Let's be honest, I'm not going to go about driving links to a startup Sarrusophone enthusiast site the same way I would Wal-Mart's website.
In a situation where the very nature of the brand engenders lots of inbound links, we need to be more concerned with where those links are coming from, and how the brand stacks up with influencers and authoritative sites in their industry. In fact when discussing linking relationships with a site like Wal-Mart’s, I would submit that it's actually part of a larger conversation on audience engagement. But we'll factor out the larger component and focus on the tactical level of engaging the core audience through search (well the 20,000 foot view of it anyway).
With large popular sites, we become less concerned about how links build trust with an engine, and more concerned with building relationships with the right core audience so engines better understand who that core audience is (which should get interesting with the advent of the semantic web). There are some obvious advantages a ubiquitous brand has over a startup or lesser known brand (offline presence, sponsorships, etc). But beyond that, a large company with a lot of resources to mobilize has awesome opportunities to really achieve successes without doing a WHOLE lot of things different than they already are.
In tomorrow’s segment, I’ll discuss some of the things I have observed larger brands do (or not do, in some cases) that have a direct effect on their linking and relationships with their core audience.
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
More on Content Management
I talked a few weeks ago about how important it is to consider your network capacities when moving to a new CMS. For unrelated reasons, we've been in a lot of talks with clients this year about considerations for content management systems which has me thinking more about this. Don't get me wrong, the scope of what goes into selecting a CMS for an enterprise website goes far beyond just how SEO-friendly it is (or isn’t as the case often is). But we're fortunate enough with our clients that these decisions are being made with natural search in mind. Some professional CMS tools are very search friendly, and even marketed as such. Some are not – focusing their efforts on other user-experience/content-delivery assets.
Perhaps I’m overly optimistic, but I’m generally of the belief anything can be optimized, so long as you are willing to take the necessary steps to do so. Based on what I've been seeing recently (albeit less often recently), I made the following list of things that your CMS system can do that produce positive and negative effects for SEO and rated the scope to fix the issue (your mileage on that may vary, however, depending on the infrastructure, IT expertise, etc.).
- Dynamic or static URL structure – If the URLs passed by the CMS have session IDs, database queries, etc, they may be difficult to crawl. In these instances, URL rewriting will be necessary. How flexible the CMS is in allowing this can be a major issue as well as the technical expertise on hand. PROJECT: MODERATE/HEAVY LIFTING (depends on how many URLs we’re talking about)
- Rendering content via AJAX or on a single URL – This can be very problematic if your site's content can't be indexed based on URLs. In addition, this can have adverse effects on the user-experience if your site receives traffic from browsers that aren't capable of using this technology PROJECT: EASY FIX
- Pages are W3c compliant – This isn't as vital to crawl-ability as it once was, but there's no doubt fully compliant pages shouldn't pose problems for spiders to crawl. PROJECT: EASY TO HEAVY LIFTING (varies based on how ‘non-compliant’ the pages rendered are)
- RSS/Syndication capability – This tends to be more prevalent in blog-oriented systems, but the degree to which your users can access your information on their terms can directly improve your traffic. Plus syndication is important in improving keyword relevance and attracting links PROJECT: MODERATE (when not present)
- Video/multimedia integration – This sort of plays in line with what's above. But the degree to which your CMS can integrate video and tag them properly/optimally is important in gaining traction in video engines. It will also be interesting to watch how the current crop of CMS tools integrates with the YouTube API :-) PROJECT: EASY/MODERATE
- Uses temporary redirects on permanent pages – For some reason, there are still some tools out there that temporarily redirect pages by default. I'm not exactly sure why that is (and I'm sure there's an entirely valid reason), but anything that is temporarily redirected won't pass page rank and link popularity. This can be a major problem in winning on highly competitive queries. PROJECT: EASY
- Is not installed on the root – This is a pretty easy fix (in most cases I can think of) and not as common with higher end CMS tools, but there are still systems that create their own directory and then base the structure of the site within there. It's just one more level from the root that doesn't necessarily have to be there. Certainly not the ideal scenario for a new launch. PROJECT: EASY/MODERATE (depends on the server type/structure)
- Does not allow for unique title writing – I'll be honest I'm not personally aware of any systems that still do this straight out of the box, but I've certainly seen sites that appear to have generic title tags over-written (or written by default) by the CMS. This can wreak havoc on optimization efforts. PROJECT: MODERATE/HEAVY LIFTING
This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these seem to be things that crop up. Like all software, there are pros and cons to each system, and with a CMS it’s a great idea to weigh how search engine friendly they will present content.
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
Be the Ruler of Your Domain
An issue that’s arisen for clients over the years got me thinking about things to consider when registering domains. Almost any larger firm’s legal department will insist the company owns as many permutations of their domain name as possible. The reason for this is because there is no shortage of people willing to register these and use them for malicious purposes. This could include creating affiliate marketers, masking the site as official and selling knock-off products, making disparaging comments about your company, and so on. The most obvious effect for natural search is that if they succeed in generating rankings for queries around your brand, that’s one less place you are visible.
Ultimately, the case we try to make is that if our clients have a highly visible brand, then they need to be proactive in owning domains that could be used to harm its reputation. We aren’t even primarily concerned about what they do with the domain, but that they are keeping other people from getting a hold of it. I’m not just talking about making sure you own .org, .biz, .net or country specific top levels either. As cheap as domain registration is now, it isn’t all that big of an undertaking to go through a massive registration. Think in the hundreds (if not thousands) of permutations. It’s something I believe any modern large brand needs to take seriously. In that spirit, I made a list of ten other domain types that large brands should be proactively registering that aren’t always obvious…
1. Product model numbers and names – I’m being granular here. Get those long tail digits registered…at the very least the .com and .net iterations.
2. Anything with collector, enthusiast, or hobbyist tie-ins. These domains may be taken by genuine fans. But they may also be registered by people looking to capitalize on your customer base in less-than-reputable ways. Things like http://www.brand-collector.com/
3. Derogatory domains – Like it or not, we can’t always be everyone’s cup of tea. Protect yourself from vocal detractors by making sure they can’t register things like http://www.brand-sucks.com/ and be thorough (there’s more ways to say something ‘sucks’ than just that). Register anti-brand, bad-brand, against-brand and so on.
4. Misspellings – Affiliate marketers love to register these and create deceptive websites around misspellings.
5. Purchase intent domains – Speaking of affiliates, domains like purchase-‘brand’.com or buy-‘brand’.com may deceive your customers. Worse yet, they could potentially be stealing customers away. By the same token, domains that talk about selling your brand can be maliciously used too.
6. Knock-off domains – if your brand is heavily imitated, or has a lot of ‘clones’, register as many domains that allude to this as possible.
7. Referring keywords and general keyword research – The queries people are putting in to arrive at your site say a lot about what domain squatters may be looking at. Registering top level domains whenever possible for big traffic drivers can even help your optimization efforts.
8. Geo-specific domains – Almost any brand can have geographic implications. Brand-chicago.com, brand-usa.com, brand-illinois.com could all be used for malicious purposes if owned by the wrong person. Keyword research can go a long way in determining where search volume and potential visibility is.
9. Figureheads in your company – A visible chairperson could potentially be used for malicious purposes. Better yet, if your search volume and referring keywords include these individuals, then they definitely should be registered.
10. Employment domains – Things like “work-at-brand.com” or “careers-at-brand.com” could all be used for malicious or deceptive purposes.
If you find yourself in a situation where somebody is in fact using an ‘official-like’ domain name for malicious or deceptive purposes, it’s generally pretty easy to resolve it with a cease and desist order, but most people would agree it’s a lot easier to take preventative action in the first place. We have clients who own thousands of domains for this exact purpose. The best part of tracking all these down (for me) is that sometimes these domains trigger ideas for micro-site ideas that create great link-bait and further engage your audience.
Can you think of other permutations of your brand that should be considered?
Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search
Server Admins need input on that CMS decision too!
| Rand Fishkin had a great post over on SEOmoz on Content Management systems last week. The crux of the article is that regardless of your intentions, a decent CMS system is going to be preferable to a static website at some point. He touches primarily on free CMS tools, which are great, but in all reality, I'm hesitant to recommend them to high profile brands/sites. By nature of being open source, they are prone to hackers and malicious use. It's not that any of them are bad or unable to perform the tasks they say they can, but when there are entire communities devoted to coming up with ways to crack Joomla, I wouldn't recommend it to a high profile client. There are many premium CMS tools that are geared towards large corporate identities and are built to suit their needs. Investing in a proprietary rock solid CMS isn't as cheap as say, purchasing MS Office for a workstation. But they are going to replace the work a full-time employee would have done less than 10 years ago while taking your site functionality to all new levels, so they are more than worth the money. Rand's article outlines a lot of core functions of a CMS, but the capabilities of modern CMS tools go way beyond that. For example, we have clients that use their CMS to not only serve content, but determine where the visitor is from, and tailor said content to their geographic locale (IP based, so no initial logins are required). From there, it’s also common that an e-commerce layer is built in. This functionality is essential to a global business, however, as with the basic CMS functions, it poses hurdles for spiders that need to be addressed. And they aren't always obvious either (especially for the scale of hosting we’re usually looking at). I'm talking specifically about how these robust systems can eat up server/network resources when not configured properly. The reason is simple; you've got a CMS tool that puts that many more database connections in per session than simple page requests. Pile on functionality many premium tools offer and those connections keep adding up. Throw in e-commerce (usually hitting a different DB entirely), a few million visits per day/week/month and there's quite a bit going on! Don't get me wrong, companies have very elaborate server farms for this exact reason. Nevertheless, we still see times where some of the largest sites in the world that aren't able to keep up with the volume requested, and this is one of the reasons why. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that the more functionality you bake into your CMS, the more work it creates for your hardware. Why does this matter for natural search? Well aside from the obvious compromise in user experience (who wants to wait around for pages to load?), spiders don't like waiting around. They REALLY don't like 500 level errors either. Last year, SEOmoz's poll among various SEO's showed a consensus that server inaccessibility is one of the most negative impacting events for optimization. So listen to your server admins when they say they need more power! If you are upgrading to a professional CMS tool, your resource requirements are going to be different. Understand the traffic volume your site gets and anticipate accordingly. Most premium CMS providers will be more than able to help you assess this. After all, the last thing anybody (bots, CMS account reps or otherwise) wants is downtime! Posted by: Dave McAnally, Product Specialist, Natural Search |
Ruby on Rails and How Scaffolding Architecture Stacks Up to Spiders
One of the emerging technologies that has become somewhat of a darling among open source programmers is Ruby on Rails. It was originally launched in 2004, and gained a cult-like following and has since begun to make its way into more mainstream development. Simply put, it’s an application framework written in Ruby that aims to simplify the development and deployment of web applications. RoR eliminates many of the time consuming parts of development (such as compiling) by relying on conventions over configurations. The end result is that custom applications that may have taken a month to develop can now be launched from soup to nuts in a matter of a couple days! It's being embraced by a few popular websites and applications you may already use, such as Twitter, Base Camp and Yellowpages.com. Its ability to work with multiple hosting apps (a wide range of databases and CPanel support) are propagating it, and with the hefty investment from Benchmark, it certainly seems poised to grow in popularity.
As RoR continues to grow, I’ve noticed a few things that could create potential natural search and promotion issues:
- Javascript , Python and AJAX reliant – While very functional, many vital elements of what ends up being the interface exist in ways that appear invisible to spiders. This will require some additional development for content meant to be crawled.
- Extremely Load Sensitive – While many hosts aim to provide robust hosting to support RoR, the fact remains that it is essentially a servlet, and a beefy one at that. This could pose a problem to your visitors and search engine spiders if your site experiences heavy traffic.
- Apps may not be able to be ported from their native site (support is definitely not universal). Ergo, developing widgets with RoR may not be very practical (as opposed to pure xHtml).
- Built in URL mapper – This is a great feature of RoR, but you HAVE to use their URL mapper with no ability to use a 3rd party or your server’s (e.g. Mod Rewrite). It seems fairly straightforward, but since it isn’t tied to the server technology, it certainly seems like it could pose some potential cloaking issues.
This certainly isn’t meant to deter anybody from embracing RoR (or any Model View Controller scheme), however, there are certainly considerations to be made. There are always options to ensure that your site can be seen by spiders (as well as your entire user base), but as with any new technology, the pros and cons, as well as the back-up options, need to be considered.
