SEO?

DisgruntledOrangatang · 09-26-2009, 02:29 PM

I feel like I got a good grasp of SEO, but I think my grasp is only on the highest-level of SEO. Basically here is a list of shit I have come up with for increasing your rankings in the search results:

1. If it's a local business, fill out your google business page to 100% and get reviews on there.

2. Meta Tag keywords are useless, and if you have too many it can actually hurt your ranking. Not sure if i just made this up or heard it from somewhere and can't remember where but no more than 7 keywords per page seems to ring a bell.

3. Make your site structure have a logical hierarchy, probably the easiest thing to do.

4. If your page names have multiple words in them, separate the words by hyphens, don't make them one big string, and don't user underscores.

5. Make sure you have unique title tags for every page.

6. Make sure each page has a unique and descriptive meta description tag.

7. Use proper H1-H6 tag hierarchy on your pages, only have 1 H1 tag, and it should have matching words or phrases with whatever is in your title tag and meta description tag.

8. Put a robots.txt file in the root of the site.

9. Utilize a sitemap.xml file and have a user-oriented sitemap page as well.

That is pretty much the jist of what I know about SEO, but I heard stories about how super important SEO is and how someone can make one change to their code and increase their hits to their page by like 20% or something crazy and I was always like really? SEO seems pretty simple to me I don't see how people can't be doing it right, but then again like I said I have a feeling I only know the high level of it or something.

Can anyone else provide some insight of more SEO practices to get higher rankings and what are some of these vaunted 'make this slight change and bam' shits.

Hutchy · 09-26-2009, 02:35 PM

Domain age and many many backlinks with relevant keyword anchor text are the big ones.

As for the tweaks you are suggesting, they are fine. I wouldnt worry about small things effecting your rankings too much, just make sure your keyword densities are correct, for example you want to rank for chocolate milkshakes, make sure you have like 2-4% of your content as chocolate milkshakes.

Mixtilplix · 09-26-2009, 05:07 PM

1. Use semantic (x)html which you kinda touched on in #6. Use the correct doctype and validate it using the w3c validator.

2.Use external style sheets and make your JavaScript unobtrusive. Yes this means you can't call your JavaScript with onclick/onrelease etc event handlers in your (x)html markup.

3. Not sure if this actually helps but a lot of people place their external script calls after the closing body tag of their html files. This allows the bot to go deeper into your content.

4.Never repeat pages of the same content. You will get penalized for this.

5. Use pretty urls if you are using some sort of server side scripting langauge like php, asp.net, coldfusion.

6. Submit your website to dmoz.org.

DisgruntledOrangatang · 09-26-2009, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Domain age and many many backlinks with relevant keyword anchor text are the big ones.

Hutchy could you elaborate what you mean by back links with relevant keyword anchor text? Give an example?

Quote:

1. Use semantic (x)html which you kinda touched on in #6. Use the correct doctype and validate it using the w3c validator.

2.Use external style sheets and make your JavaScript unobtrusive. Yes this means you can't call your JavaScript with onclick/onrelease etc event handlers in your (x)html markup.

Could you elaborate on what a 'correct type and validate using the w3c validator is'.

Also what is an example of number two? No onclick/onrelease? Why not, and how do you get such things to work that you normally would then using those things.

Mixtilplix · 09-26-2009, 07:37 PM

The w3c validator is a free service run by world wide web consortium. It's a service where you upload your html pages to verify that they are written in proper (x)HTML according to the doctype declared in your HTML page. The validator will warn you of any errors in your mark up and tell you how to correct them. Here's a primer on doctypes from w3c HTML doctype declaration

On to JavaScript. It's totally beyond my capability to explain how unobtrusive JavaScript works. In fact it's a pain in itself to implement with raw JavaScript. Luckily Jquery exists which makes this process sooo easy. Lets say you have a button that changes the picture in a div with a onclick handler that calls a script to do this. To make it unobtrusive you would take out any calls to the script and instead replace it with an id. You retrieve the element in your external js file by using the getElementById() method, after this you can manipulate it how you want and give it an event handler behavior. It's more complicated then what i wrote but that's the jist of it.

Jquery abstracts a lot of the steps in making unobtrusive JavaScript but you first have to know why it is that you are doing this.

To put this bluntly search engine bots don't care how you style your website(CSS) and they don't care about behavior(JavaScript) either. What they want is content. When you Google a band you like, you don't search for scripts that the band may have running on their page right? Search engines look at your html not what the final display is on your monitor. Remember that bots will only go so many characters deep into a page before stopping, if you have a bunch of JS/inline styles cluttering up your mark up that could have been put into an external file the bot will never get to the real content.

If you want to learn object oriented JavaScript I recommend first reading JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (don't get the old versions BTW) and then DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model | Book Details. These are two good primers on JavaScript and the DOM with the laymen in mind. BTW actionscript is based on ECMAScript which is what JavaScript is based on as well. If you learn JavaScript the right way you can kill two birds with one stone 'cause it will make learning actionscript much easier since they share a lot of the same ideas and structure.

Backlinks are kinda like post farming if you know what I mean. You go around making posts onto other blogs/forums or getting sites to link back to your own website. The more links on other sites that you have linking back the higher ranking you will have.

ToeMissile · 09-26-2009, 10:58 PM

Maybe some helpful info can be found here: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmasters/Site owners Help

Hutchy · 09-27-2009, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DisgruntledOrangatang

Hutchy could you elaborate what you mean by back links with relevant keyword anchor text? Give an example?

Could you elaborate on what a 'correct type and validate using the w3c validator is'.

Also what is an example of number two? No onclick/onrelease? Why not, and how do you get such things to work that you normally would then using those things.

Sorry, I mean't having a link pointing to your website with your keyword in it.

For example lets say your website is selling chocolate milkshake again. If you have a link on another website like Chocolate Milkshake and you can get a lot of these, then it's going to help a lot.

ToeMissile · 09-27-2009, 04:51 AM

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking

Lenas · 09-27-2009, 05:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DisgruntledOrangatang

Could you elaborate on what a 'correct type and validate using the w3c validator is'.

<!doctype html>

and as far as structure goes, start looking into HTML 5.

09-26-2009, 02:29 PM	#1 (permalink)
DisgruntledOrangatang Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 1,402	SEO? I feel like I got a good grasp of SEO, but I think my grasp is only on the highest-level of SEO. Basically here is a list of shit I have come up with for increasing your rankings in the search results: 1. If it's a local business, fill out your google business page to 100% and get reviews on there. 2. Meta Tag keywords are useless, and if you have too many it can actually hurt your ranking. Not sure if i just made this up or heard it from somewhere and can't remember where but no more than 7 keywords per page seems to ring a bell. 3. Make your site structure have a logical hierarchy, probably the easiest thing to do. 4. If your page names have multiple words in them, separate the words by hyphens, don't make them one big string, and don't user underscores. 5. Make sure you have unique title tags for every page. 6. Make sure each page has a unique and descriptive meta description tag. 7. Use proper H1-H6 tag hierarchy on your pages, only have 1 H1 tag, and it should have matching words or phrases with whatever is in your title tag and meta description tag. 8. Put a robots.txt file in the root of the site. 9. Utilize a sitemap.xml file and have a user-oriented sitemap page as well. That is pretty much the jist of what I know about SEO, but I heard stories about how super important SEO is and how someone can make one change to their code and increase their hits to their page by like 20% or something crazy and I was always like really? SEO seems pretty simple to me I don't see how people can't be doing it right, but then again like I said I have a feeling I only know the high level of it or something. Can anyone else provide some insight of more SEO practices to get higher rankings and what are some of these vaunted 'make this slight change and bam' shits. __________________ "Talk all you want, but when I say I'm going to kill you, there's nothing you can do but die"

09-26-2009, 02:35 PM	#2 (permalink)
Hutchy Registered User Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 8 +0 Internets	Domain age and many many backlinks with relevant keyword anchor text are the big ones. As for the tweaks you are suggesting, they are fine. I wouldnt worry about small things effecting your rankings too much, just make sure your keyword densities are correct, for example you want to rank for chocolate milkshakes, make sure you have like 2-4% of your content as chocolate milkshakes. Last edited by Hutchy; 09-26-2009 at 02:47 PM..

09-26-2009, 10:58 PM	#6 (permalink)
ToeMissile more than a feelin' Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: not Vegas Posts: 1,520 -34 Internets	Maybe some helpful info can be found here: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmasters/Site owners Help __________________ Robots?

09-27-2009, 04:51 AM	#8 (permalink)
ToeMissile more than a feelin' Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: not Vegas Posts: 1,520 -34 Internets	Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking __________________ Robots?

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09-26-2009, 05:07 PM	#3 (permalink)
Mixtilplix Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 229 +1 Internets	1. Use semantic (x)html which you kinda touched on in #6. Use the correct doctype and validate it using the w3c validator. 2.Use external style sheets and make your JavaScript unobtrusive. Yes this means you can't call your JavaScript with onclick/onrelease etc event handlers in your (x)html markup. 3. Not sure if this actually helps but a lot of people place their external script calls after the closing body tag of their html files. This allows the bot to go deeper into your content. 4.Never repeat pages of the same content. You will get penalized for this. 5. Use pretty urls if you are using some sort of server side scripting langauge like php, asp.net, coldfusion. 6. Submit your website to dmoz.org.

09-26-2009, 07:37 PM	#5 (permalink)
Mixtilplix Registered User Join Date: Sep 2002 Posts: 229 +1 Internets	The w3c validator is a free service run by world wide web consortium. It's a service where you upload your html pages to verify that they are written in proper (x)HTML according to the doctype declared in your HTML page. The validator will warn you of any errors in your mark up and tell you how to correct them. Here's a primer on doctypes from w3c HTML doctype declaration On to JavaScript. It's totally beyond my capability to explain how unobtrusive JavaScript works. In fact it's a pain in itself to implement with raw JavaScript. Luckily Jquery exists which makes this process sooo easy. Lets say you have a button that changes the picture in a div with a onclick handler that calls a script to do this. To make it unobtrusive you would take out any calls to the script and instead replace it with an id. You retrieve the element in your external js file by using the getElementById() method, after this you can manipulate it how you want and give it an event handler behavior. It's more complicated then what i wrote but that's the jist of it. Jquery abstracts a lot of the steps in making unobtrusive JavaScript but you first have to know why it is that you are doing this. To put this bluntly search engine bots don't care how you style your website(CSS) and they don't care about behavior(JavaScript) either. What they want is content. When you Google a band you like, you don't search for scripts that the band may have running on their page right? Search engines look at your html not what the final display is on your monitor. Remember that bots will only go so many characters deep into a page before stopping, if you have a bunch of JS/inline styles cluttering up your mark up that could have been put into an external file the bot will never get to the real content. If you want to learn object oriented JavaScript I recommend first reading JavaScript, A Beginner's Guide, Third Edition (don't get the old versions BTW) and then DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model \| Book Details. These are two good primers on JavaScript and the DOM with the laymen in mind. BTW actionscript is based on ECMAScript which is what JavaScript is based on as well. If you learn JavaScript the right way you can kill two birds with one stone 'cause it will make learning actionscript much easier since they share a lot of the same ideas and structure. Backlinks are kinda like post farming if you know what I mean. You go around making posts onto other blogs/forums or getting sites to link back to your own website. The more links on other sites that you have linking back the higher ranking you will have.