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SEO sorta...?
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 12:40 pm
by alex.barylski
What "elements" of a web site do you consider most important for proper ranking in search engines...
Obviously the body of a web site and the title...
But what about META tags? are they really important still???
What do you think
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:03 pm
by John Cartwright
Meta tags have been seriously abused by various industries such as porn sites, where they would flood the meta tags with as much crap as possible. In turn, meta tags have not been weighted as much as they were in the past, but it doesn't hurt to have them there anyways. The most important thing by a long shot is having relevant content. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT. If you have solid content, relevant to your website then you should automatically get a pretty decent rating.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:20 pm
by Buddha443556
I'm with the twitchy polar bear. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT.
Re: SEO sorta...?
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:02 pm
by Roja
Hockey wrote:What "elements" of a web site do you consider most important for proper ranking in search engines...
In order:
Valid HTML.
Content (HTML) styled using CSS.
Valid CSS.
A decent title.
Meta tags with very few exceptions (http-equiv, for content type and content language) are fairly worthless.
Most search engines give them extremely little weight.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:02 pm
by alex.barylski
I agree

Re: SEO sorta...?
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:06 pm
by alex.barylski
Roja wrote:Hockey wrote:What "elements" of a web site do you consider most important for proper ranking in search engines...
In order:
Valid HTML.
Content (HTML) styled using CSS.
Valid CSS.
A decent title.
Meta tags with very few exceptions (http-equiv, for content type and content language) are fairly worthless.
Most search engines give them extremely little weight.
I'd argue that...from a search engine standpoint anyways...
I can't see google, MSN, Yahoo, etc...favouring any web site over another (even if equal) based on XHTML validity...???
If you know of an credible article or resource/whitepaper posted on say, Googles website...please...let me know!!! I'd be very interested in hearing this right from the horses mouth
I've often wondered this...by always sided with...probably not
Cheers
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:19 pm
by shiznatix
also, what would a search engine care about your website being styled in css? does css all of a sudden make your website better than one just using tables and everything? that does not make sence. the content, i would imagine, would be the most important thing always.
Re: SEO sorta...?
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:27 pm
by Roja
Hockey wrote:I can't see google, MSN, Yahoo, etc...favouring any web site over another (even if equal) based on XHTML validity...???
I didn't say XHTML validity. I said HTML validity.
Hockey wrote:If you know of an credible article or resource/whitepaper posted on say, Googles website...please...let me know!!! I'd be very interested in hearing this right from the horses mouth

Here are some resources that agree with my position:
http://evolt.org/w3c-compliance-and-seo
http://seodoneright.blogspot.com/2004_1 ... chive.html
From the horses mouth:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:34 pm
by Roja
shiznatix wrote:the content, i would imagine, would be the most important thing always.
I put Content above CSS, so I agree that it is more important, but most important? No.
If a spider cannot read and parse the page - which with invalid code it might not be able to - then all the content in the world doesn't matter. It cannot rank what it cannot see!
shiznatix wrote:also, what would a search engine care about your website being styled in css? does css all of a sudden make your website better than one just using tables and everything? that does not make sence.
Several reasons. First and foremost is size. Because a site styled using css is typically faster to load, its also faster to parse for the search engine - which means it gets more done. Bonus.
Second is "semantic meaning". Typically, the process of styling a page in CSS results in you changing the page to have more semantic meaning. Its easy to put a style on a h1 tag, so instead of a table heading, you use an h1, and suddenly, the page has more meaning. That matters because Google rates h1's and h2's higher in their algorithm. So, if you are trying to make a page about online games, you probably want a h1 with that in the tag. With tables, you don't get that.
Third is accessibility. Google specifically recommends using a text browser to test your site. Why? Because you see what the spider does. In html, you mix style, layout, and content, and its hard to see what the spider does. With css, you seperate style from content, and get a much better view of what the spider sees. As a wonderful side-benefit, you ALSO see what a screen-reader sees, which means better accessibility for visually impared users.
Fourth is more users. More people able to see your site, able to point to it as an example of good html design, able to get to the content means more people that link to you - which boosts your ratings.
The list is long, but don't trust me - trust google. They explained it in their page, and they MAKE the search engine.

Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 2:38 pm
by John Cartwright
If a spider cannot read and parse the page - which with invalid code it might not be able to - then all the content in the world doesn't matter. It cannot rank what it cannot see!
Interesting point, to be honest I had never really though about that. More incentive to write valid html (not that I don't

)
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 3:01 pm
by onion2k
Add one relevant, high quality page of content to your website each day and you'll soon get plenty of visitors. It's simple.
Except that's a lot harder than it sounds.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 3:44 pm
by shiznatix
the google site lists content and content-esqu stuff much higher than valid html. i understand saying valid html is important because if you do somtin like
Code: Select all
<img src="all my content suddenly went here>
then ya ok. but if you forget a </table> or a </p> somewhere then im positive its not going to make google not list your site. also, the google site said nothing about using css, as a matter of fact the google homepage itself does not use css.
The list is long, but don't trust me - trust google. They explained it in their page, and they MAKE the search engine. Smile
google did not even mention "css" a single time on the page you listed.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:05 pm
by trukfixer
Another point for css Vs. Tag soup - Google and others will look at the first 36K of your page - that's the "above the fold" part - if you fill all that up with table tag soup, you're devoting a great deal of that 36K to layouting.. if you can reduce the tag soup by even 10% using css instead, then you are going to get *MORE* content picked up and indexed in the search engine..
So.. Css is a GOOD thing to do.. the more actual content you can pack into that 36K "above the fold", the better your indexing results can be
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:08 pm
by onion2k
trukfixer wrote:Another point for css Vs. Tag soup - Google and others will look at the first 36K of your page - that's the "above the fold" part - if you fill all that up with table tag soup, you're devoting a great deal of that 36K to layouting.. if you can reduce the tag soup by even 10% using css instead, then you are going to get *MORE* content picked up and indexed in the search engine..
If your HTML is more than 36k then you have much bigger problems than SEO.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 7:46 pm
by Chris Corbyn
Are most people here coding "web sites" as opposed to "web applications" ?
-- BTW: Yeah meta tags in terms of SEO these days are not an advantage.