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Went Hot: August 30, 2007 - 9:03 pm
Posted By: Syzlak 311 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
12 Comments
Went Hot: August 30, 2007 - 9:03 pm
Posted By: Syzlak 311 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchengineland.com)
Category: SEO
12 Comments
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Comments
Thank you. Now that someone else (credible) said it, I can get my boss to believe it.
That's exactly why I chose to Sphinn the article. Everyday my bosses (I have 9 Bob) proclaim from on high "We should submit these sites to the Search Engines!" or "We need to have all the keywords in the META tags."
Sadly, Jill didn't mention if commas are required in the meta keywords tag. I heard a rumor they are. Joke!
When people ask these kinds of questions, I think they're basically wondering "how do I rank higher"? The answer? SEO is a popularity contest, just like American Idol. Grab those votes and you'll survive till the next elimination round. How do you get those votes? Look for bribe opportunities? Swap votes with another contestant? Screw around with Paula Abdul? Or just be damn good looking, sing like Celine Dion, and be entertaining as hell?
Boy is this every true - and it is also true about PPC:
"Mixing up cause and effect is one of the most common things new SEOs do. If it were affecting only their own work, it wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately, the clueless often spread their misinformation to other unsuspecting newbies on forums and blogs, which in turn creates new myths. It's always interesting to see how people are so willing to believe anything they have read or heard without ever checking it out for themselves."
What, everything written isn't true! :-o (Said with tongue firmly in cheek to make the point.)
Even before the Internet, mistakes spread in printed form too. When researching a book, many rely on previously published information as "fact". Years later, it looks like there are three independent sources of a particular "truth" when actually each of them assumed the first was correct.
While I have not been able to confirm it, it appears that Google may consider e-commerce product pages with relevant titles to be of a higher "quality" than those without them.
That was a great list. It's amazing how many some of these continue to turn up like bad pennies, year after year.
I only take issue with one of the bits of advice here, laughingly:
"Just don't do anything strictly for search engines that you wouldn't do anyway, and you'll be fine."
I think this needs to be re-written:
Just don't do anything strictly for search engines (except for adding nofollow to paid links) that you wouldn't do anyway, and you'll be fine.
Heh heh
Miriam
Guilty! I was still believing the H tag myth.
Great list, number 1 in particular floats my boat. It's amazing how many agencies, and some of them very reputable state as one of their key offerings "weekly resubmission to search engines". However, like planetc1, I still use H1 tags, with the philosophy that it can't hurt.
I agree with all of that apart from the stuff about heading tags; which I would rephrase.
"Headings are not required for good rankings but they sure do not harm things. They can help bots to understand the main topics of the page, as well as convey that same information to the human visitor".
It is good design methodology to make pages from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables and forms. That is the basis of semantic markup of a document - describing what each element is.
Headings on web pages are like headings in a newspaper. They sit above, and introduce, the following content.
The SEOmoz Ranking Factors chart shows that the authors believe that they can help at least a little, and Shari Thurow does a piece about them in her Successful Site Architecture presentations.
Use headings where it makes sense!
I do not agree with the "don't optimize for long tail" : it is possible to optimize for the long tail, by developping and variegating content.
Neither do I agree with the h1 tag. A well structured content using semantic markup will indeed rank higher.
I agree with some of your myths, but wholeheartedly disagree with your comments on H1s and Long Tail. Of course nothing is 'necessary', but every little on-page factor when done well is a catalyst in boosting rankings. I have worked with hundreds of clients, large and small, and H1 tags were a key part of the equation in boosting rankings.
As far as the long tail, it's not a given that you will rank well just because you write an article that mentions some long tail phrases in it. If you are specifically going after long tail phrases, then you will be writing specific content for them and optimizing the pages accordingly. Sure, some rankings are just achieved but in a professional environment, research and effort is specifically focused on targeted a set of long tail phrases in order to receive consistent results.
Just to elaborate on your PPC comments, while it does not boost or deter rankings, it does play a factor in visibility and triples your chances of a potential customer clicking through to your site (according to stats by Google).
Oh, I also disagree with the idea of targeting 3-5 phrases per page. In my experience, that worked a few years back but now 3 seems to be the max, with many competitive phrases necessitating 1 or 2.
-All the best
i think g1smd put the heading tag debate the best. Perhaps Jill should reword that portion of the list, as i agree that although they may be effective, i don't think they're needed either.