There has been a lot of ground covered lately in the search engine wars. One headline is particularly fetching, namely, “Yahoo exceeds Google in number of pages indexed.” The report proclaims that Yahoo’s index is now larger than Google’s, with some obscene number being quoted (I believe it was 20-billion versus Google’s 8-billion). While this [...]
Often, through the course of web design, we are given the choice to use absolute or relative URLs within our tags. Some prominent locations that include URLs are anchor tag hyper reference attributes (i.e. link destinations), image source attributes, and source attributes for external CSS and scripting files. Many of us default to relative URLs [...]
Although the extent to which they are counted varies, the file name of the page and that of the server on which it sits both have an impact on search engine placement. For example, a page about bass fishing that’s located at http://bass-fishing-international.com/bass-fishing.htm will tend to rank better than the same page located at http://unrelated-url.com/random-name.htm. [...]
There is a trick to search engine optimization that goes hand-in-hand with the primacy effect. To recap, the primacy effect of search engine indexing is that content closer to the top of the page is weighted more heavily than content that is lower. This fact is widely accepted and fairly straightforward. However, it is also [...]
Until recently, the only viable option for complex website layouts was to use tables. You had to arrange your data in very static rows and columns to achieve sidebars, footers, menus, and the like. And while this method provided some flexibility, it still left the page’s code at the mercy of top-to-bottom, left-to-right supremacy. Thus, [...]
Most web browsers are very forgiving when it comes to improper page coding and bad URLs. Search engine spiders, on the other hand, are picky little critters that tend to rank your site badly or not at all if it has too much of either. Thus, it becomes very important to regularly review your website [...]
One of the primary failings of SE marketing campaigns, and the real reason that webmasters need to focus more on human visitors than spiders, is due to the process of generating conversion. After all, search engine optimization can only bring in qualified traffic. If the content and navigation of the site don’t lead visitors to [...]
Webmasters in recent years have found that a website doesn’t need to sell anything to its visitors to be profitable. This is because of contextual advertising services that allow the participant to feature paid ads on their pages. The webmaster signs up for the program, places the proper code on their web page, and has [...]
Most SEO experts will tell you to avoid websites with fancy graphics, splash pages, dynamic menu systems, etc.. The reason behind this is because search engine spiders can’t read dynamic or graphical page elements. Spiders care the most about text-based content. That is why content-rich sites tend to do better than others. How, then, is [...]
Whoever wears the SEO hat in your organization, that person is probably required to report to a manager or higher-up of one sort or another. Whether or not this person is patient and understanding is variable, but it is doubtful that he or she understands the careful, painstaking process of proper search optimization. More than [...]