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Casual Articles - Whats Important for Search Engines?
I don't usually eat dairy and rarely have it at home. I really enjoy ice cream, however, and occasionally will go to a good ice cream store for their high quality treats. In the western suburbs of Chicago there is a dairy run by a family that has several stores, and more recently they've expanded into other suburbs and into Chicago. When I stopped at one of their stores recently, I asked for a sundae with a little chocolate sauce, a little caramel sauce, and a little marshmallow topping.The girl behind the counter looked at the cash register/computer with a furrowed brow as she tried to figure out how to take my order. Next, she conferred with two other teenage employees who were behind her making sundaes and other ice cream concoctions. There was much whispering. After about
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all
If you are Blogger and you wish to increase traffic into readership and visitors to your website then it is smart to talk about the weather specifically the major category hurricane named storms. During the 2005 Atlantic tropical hurricane season; we had Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita and Hurricane Wilma into these were among the top searched words on Google from August 2005 to be December 2005.It is interesting that people are always joking about others talking about the weather and just think if you talk about the weather on your Blog, you will totally increase traffic on your web site. What kinds of things do people like to read about on a Blog during hurricane season?People are looking for alternative news stories and events, which are not in the mainstream media but are of public inter
The interesting part of the email was this person's misconceptions about what he thought were important factors for the search engines. I'd like to share those points with you, with my comments following each one:
* Little or no Flash.
This is a huge misconception to many who are trying to design search-engine-friendly websites. There's nothing inherently wrong with using Flash and no reason to avoid it altogether. What you do need to avoid is an all-Flash site, as well as Flash navigation. But that's it. And even if you have those things, there are workarounds.
* All scripts should be called from external files.
This is a great idea to keep file size down and make it easy to update your pages, but it's got nothing to do with search engines or how your pages are ranked within them. Search engines have long known how to ignore code that is of no use to them. Whether your scripts are right there in the source code of the page or called up externally will have no bearing on your rankings or search engine relevance.
* The site should be designed using CSS as extensively as possible.
Another myth. CSS doesn't have any special properties that search engines like better than tables or any other HTML code. Again, it may make it easier for you to update your pages, or to use your content for other things, but it's not an SEO technique that will increase rankings or relevance.
* The CSS should be called from external files.
Same as calling up scripts in external files — nice to do, but not a search engine issue in the least.
* There should be no comments in the code. It should be added to an FAQ or Doc-type file.
Why not? I'm not sure where this myth came from, but I suppose if you're thinking that file size is going to affect your search engine rankings, you might also believe this one. It may have also come about because some people used to think that adding keyword phrases to comment tags would help search engine rankings, even though it didn't. Comment tags have long been ignored by the engines, and because of this, you can use them as much or as little in your source code as you would like. I always comment out bits of text and code that I no longer wish to use but that I may want to add back in later. It's absolutely, positively not a problem!
* A large percentage of the code on each page needs to change from page to page so that the search engines don't see the pages as duplicate content.
Nope. You certainly do NOT have to change the code in your pages to avoid duplicate-content issues! Website templates have code that is exactly the same from page to page. This is good and normal and certainly fine with the search engines. One would have to think that the search engineers were really dumb if they were going to penalize pages because they used the same design template from page to page! Sure, you don't want the same exact *content* on every page of your site, but even that is not generally a problem if it's a few sentences here and there. (See my recent article at Danny's Search Engine Land site on the Myth of Duplicate Content.)
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all.
Learn to recognize potential problems before they threaten the survival of your business.During the bleak days of the Depression, an aggressive politician from New York named Franklin Roosevelt made a bold promise that his administration would put “two chickens in every pot and a car in every garage.” As it turned out, this was one of the few times in history when a political exaggeration was actually an economic understatement.Today, poultry is so inexpensive that it is the most common meat used in pet food. And the automobile has become such a fixture in the American home that owning just one is a handicap rather than a privilege. In fact, we have such an innate understanding of the internal combustion engine that most of us have a rough idea of how it works and why it sometimes doesn
* All scripts should be called from external files.
This is a great idea to keep file size down and make it easy to update your pages, but it's got nothing to do with search engines or how your pages are ranked within them. Search engines have long known how to ignore code that is of no use to them. Whether your scripts are right there in the source code of the page or called up externally will have no bearing on your rankings or search engine relevance.
* The site should be designed using CSS as extensively as possible.
Another myth. CSS doesn't have any special properties that search engines like better than tables or any other HTML code. Again, it may make it easier for you to update your pages, or to use your content for other things, but it's not an SEO technique that will increase rankings or relevance.
* The CSS should be called from external files.
Same as calling up scripts in external files — nice to do, but not a search engine issue in the least.
* There should be no comments in the code. It should be added to an FAQ or Doc-type file.
Why not? I'm not sure where this myth came from, but I suppose if you're thinking that file size is going to affect your search engine rankings, you might also believe this one. It may have also come about because some people used to think that adding keyword phrases to comment tags would help search engine rankings, even though it didn't. Comment tags have long been ignored by the engines, and because of this, you can use them as much or as little in your source code as you would like. I always comment out bits of text and code that I no longer wish to use but that I may want to add back in later. It's absolutely, positively not a problem!
* A large percentage of the code on each page needs to change from page to page so that the search engines don't see the pages as duplicate content.
Nope. You certainly do NOT have to change the code in your pages to avoid duplicate-content issues! Website templates have code that is exactly the same from page to page. This is good and normal and certainly fine with the search engines. One would have to think that the search engineers were really dumb if they were going to penalize pages because they used the same design template from page to page! Sure, you don't want the same exact *content* on every page of your site, but even that is not generally a problem if it's a few sentences here and there. (See my recent article at Danny's Search Engine Land site on the Myth of Duplicate Content.)
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all
Many SEO forms may disregard PPC ads but pay per click advertising has many a time achieved effectiveness that others have not. You must understand that SEO services optimizes your site for certain number of keywords that raises the ranking of the site on search engines but PPC ads are very different because they are targeted ads that speak to targeted audience and your web site reaches the first page of the search engine.Want to know how that is done? Here I present 7 simple steps to achieve success with PPC advertising.1. Your ad must target a specific audience that is genuinely interested; it is not a matter of only generating clicks but of converting those clicks into clients. Thus you must design your ad in accordance with this rule instead of generating more clicks.2. This is ther
Another myth. CSS doesn't have any special properties that search engines like better than tables or any other HTML code. Again, it may make it easier for you to update your pages, or to use your content for other things, but it's not an SEO technique that will increase rankings or relevance.
* The CSS should be called from external files.
Same as calling up scripts in external files — nice to do, but not a search engine issue in the least.
* There should be no comments in the code. It should be added to an FAQ or Doc-type file.
Why not? I'm not sure where this myth came from, but I suppose if you're thinking that file size is going to affect your search engine rankings, you might also believe this one. It may have also come about because some people used to think that adding keyword phrases to comment tags would help search engine rankings, even though it didn't. Comment tags have long been ignored by the engines, and because of this, you can use them as much or as little in your source code as you would like. I always comment out bits of text and code that I no longer wish to use but that I may want to add back in later. It's absolutely, positively not a problem!
* A large percentage of the code on each page needs to change from page to page so that the search engines don't see the pages as duplicate content.
Nope. You certainly do NOT have to change the code in your pages to avoid duplicate-content issues! Website templates have code that is exactly the same from page to page. This is good and normal and certainly fine with the search engines. One would have to think that the search engineers were really dumb if they were going to penalize pages because they used the same design template from page to page! Sure, you don't want the same exact *content* on every page of your site, but even that is not generally a problem if it's a few sentences here and there. (See my recent article at Danny's Search Engine Land site on the Myth of Duplicate Content.)
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all
So you have started working as a freelancer, and you have gotten potential clients. Now you need to make a quote for the project. How much do you charge?This is perhaps your first project, and you are afraid to offend the client if you over-charge.. Don't be. Here are some tips and considerations you can ponder before and after sending a quote.Things to consider before sending the quoteHow badly do you need the project?Is this just a project to pay the bills, or is it a fun/interesting project to do? If so, consider this as a factor to lower the price if the client asks for it. (Which they most likely will).Are you using subcontractors?Can you undertake the entire project yourself, or do you need to use subcontractors for some areas? If you need to use subcontractor
* A large percentage of the code on each page needs to change from page to page so that the search engines don't see the pages as duplicate content.
Nope. You certainly do NOT have to change the code in your pages to avoid duplicate-content issues! Website templates have code that is exactly the same from page to page. This is good and normal and certainly fine with the search engines. One would have to think that the search engineers were really dumb if they were going to penalize pages because they used the same design template from page to page! Sure, you don't want the same exact *content* on every page of your site, but even that is not generally a problem if it's a few sentences here and there. (See my recent article at Danny's Search Engine Land site on the Myth of Duplicate Content.)
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all
Determining your target market is a must! You must define who will come to your event and who will purchase your products. Your target market will make it easier to determine a theme, which is also very important, and help when deciding on speakers, location, etc… Who is your audience? What interest and/or problems do they have? You want to bring products and speakers that will help your audience. If you don’t, you will not have a successful event. And you will also have people very upset with you! Some areas to think about when determining your target audience follow: 1. Industry/Niche What industry are they in? What niche do they fill? How can I help them fulfill this niche and grow their business bigger and better? This determines a lot! This tells you wh
* All picture links should have text links under the pictures.
No reason for that at all. Image links that make use of the image alt attribute (aka "alt tags") have always been followed easily by the search engines and will always continue to be followed. They're followed even without the alt attribute, but the words you place in there tell the search engines and the site users exactly what they'll be getting when they follow the link. It's essentially the same thing as the anchor text of a text link.
* DO NOT use drop-down or fly-out menus using JavaScript.
This is fairly good advice; however, there are very easy workarounds if you have to use JavaScript menus for some reason. The "noscript" tag is a perfectly legitimate place to recreate your menu for those who (like the search engines) can't do JavaScript. I've been using this technique since 2000 or so when my website was designed with JavaScript menus, and it's definitely not a problem. I just haven't gotten around to redesigning my site with a more crawler-friendly navigation. Certainly these days, a CSS menu would be a better option.
* Must use basic HTML link navigation (textual navigation, no JavaScript mouse-over, and no image map graphical navigation).
Yes and no. JavaScript links are definitely a no-no. But there are plenty of crawler-friendly image maps, and like I mentioned previously, graphical links are A-OK with search engines.
* All pages must be VALIDATED by an HTML validator and all style sheets need to be VALIDATED through a CSS validator.
Why? This has nothing to do with search engines. It's nice to do, though.
* The majority of the site will be static, as static pages are easier for search engines to crawl and rank properly.
Dynamic pages are just as easy to crawl and rank as static pages. Most websites today are dynamic because they're simply easier to maintain. The search engines have figured out how to crawl and rank them just fine for many, many years now. It's true that there are specific things you need to watch out for when creating a dynamic site, but most developers are aware of the worst of the issues. You certainly should consult with an SEO if you're changing content management systems, or if you're having problems getting your dynamic URLs spidered and indexed. But there's no reason to have only static pages on your site because you're worried about the search engines being able to index dynamic pages.
* The site needs to be browser-compatible and screen-resolution-compatible.
This is another thing that's nice to do for your site visitors, but it has no bearing on search engine rankings or relevance.
Phew! I hope this helped clear up a lot of misconceptions that anyone else may have had. Please don't get me wrong — I do agree that most of the things listed here are great design tips that can help you to create an awesome, user-friendly website. I jus
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