News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Nov 13, 2008 - 03:21 pm
Story Found By: hugogill 1186 Days ago
Category: SEO
23 Comments
Sorry this site requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. See the following guide on How to enable JavaScript in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Safari. Alternatively you may be blocking JavaScript with an advert-related or developer plugin. Please check your browser plugins.
News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Nov 13, 2008 - 03:21 pm
Story Found By: hugogill 1186 Days ago
Category: SEO
23 Comments
Upcoming Conferences
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
- SMX West - Feb. 28 - Mar. 1, 2012
- SMX Munich - Mar. 27-28, 2012
- SMX Toronto - Apr. 25-26, 2012
- SMX Sydney - May 1-2, 2012
- SMX London - May 15-16, 2012
- SMX Advanced Seattle - June 5-6, 2012
- SMX Paris - June 7-8 2012
- SMX Melbourne - Aug. 2012
- SMX East - Oct. 2-4, 2012
- SMX Stockholm - Sept. 15-16, 2012
- SMX Social Media Marketing - Dec. 2012
Latest News From Marketing Land
- Marketing Day: February 10, 2012
- Report: iPhone, iPad Now Drive More Web Traffic Than Mac OS
- Drawing Out Your Affiliate Program Marketing Plan
- Is Yahoo About To Make Another Big Mistake — With Its Display Ad Business?
- Google Analytics For The Enterprise: Perception & Reality
- - See more news at Marketing Land -
Upcoming Webcasts
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
- The Inside Scoop on Automating and Optimizing Your PPC Campaigns - February 21, 2012
Latest News From Search Engine Land
- Google’s Recent Domain Registrations: Labs, Screenwise & AdWords
- Google AdWords Gets Shared Lists To Eliminate Duplicate Data Entry
- SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 10, 2012
- Now, Mitt Romney Has A Santorum-Like Bing & Google Problem
- Search In Pics: Google Sugar Cube, Yahoo Valentines & Chrome M&M’s
- - See more news at Search Engine Land -
Comments
If you are actually trying to objectively study Semantic HTML struture’s effect on rankings in Google, testing your ideas on a blog would be the last place that I would try.My first, choice would be testing it on a static website. Naturally, if you every managed to SEO optimized a static website in the real sense of the term then you would already know the correct answer to this question.SEO static websites have a big advantage over dynmaic websites. On a Wordpress blog, using correct sematic HTML sturture would make next to no difference simply because Google treats all blogs like third class citizens.Give me a static website over a Wordpress blog any day, and I could take it from not showing up at all to being in the top ten simply by working on all this invisible HTML coding.
"On a Wordpress blog, using correct sematic HTML sturture would make next to no difference simply because Google treats all blogs like third class citizens."Thanks a lot for the comment! I would love you to expand on the above though...
Simply my working experience. It is a heck of a lot easier to rank a static website with a couple dozen web pages in the top ten, then a Wordpress Blog with over a hundred posts. I am talking about regional businesses. Rarely is link building necessary unless you are going after a very competitive keyword.
I highly recommend all those interested in the melange of SEO, accessibility and standards watch the talk by Bruce Lawson and Vasilis at Fronteers 2008 Amsterdam via the following link: http://sphinn.com/story/75250 and Sphinn it if you like it.The talk is an hour long, but worth it. You may like to grab some food and drinks and bring friends too. Bruce has a great sense of humour. Enjoy!
Doing things the right way certainly won’t hurt your rankings in Google. But doing things the wrong way doesn’t necessarily hurt you, according to Google. On multiple occasions Google has said that semantically correct HTML or even somewhat correct HTML is not a condition they enforce on the web.
Using correct HTML may not be important for SEO or achieving higher rankings, but it is pretty damned important when building a web site. Think about it: would you want a house built with a foundation that was put together haphazardly by a contractor that has been out of practice for 20 years? Or, would you rather have an up to date contractor that uses the latest technology, builds 5 houses from scratch per year, and is up to date on all of the latest city ordinances, electrical, and architectural codes? The same should apply to web sites, but unfortunately not all designers are well versed with W3C standards and/or they just choose to ignore them.It’s important for a few reasons: 1. cross platform compatibility, 2. Limiting your legal liabilities (remember the blind vs. Target web site lawsuit?), 3. cross developer understanding, 4. long term web site stability, 5. decreasing long term costs, and 6. Not to mention which, using bad coding practices is just low quality work overall. Why not put forth the best possible impression by using semantically correct HTML from the start? In my mind, it’s always worth it, and always important to building a better web site. Even though it tends not to matter much when it comes to gaining higher rankings. Unfortunately.
On my SEO Wordpress blog, I am using the method advocated by Nathan Rice. Which is basically how Microsoft Word documents should be written. There is only one H1 header. And, the H1, H2, and H3 headers are always displayed sequentially and in order. On the the Home Page, the H1 and H2 tags are constants, while the posts listed keep on changing and use H3 headers.Personally, makes my SEO theme satisfying, but it really doesn’t make a rats ass bit of difference in Google.
JohnHGohde,My take is that if properly constructed a WordPress site can look exactly like a static site to Google and anyone else looking at it. So the "easy" rankings you’ve achieved, I think, are less about WordPress and more about site structure and content.
Has anyone taken semantic HTML a stage further and embedded the class declarations so that that each page is also hAtom compliant? I mean things like:h2 class=”entry-title”anddiv class=”entry-content”I think this can only get more important as search engines try to make sense of the semantic web.
@ MariosAlexandrouGoogle has a very long memory. There are so many things about Wordpress sites, blogs or not, that clearly identifies them as being Wordpress that that would be next to impossible to do. You would have to go to extremes to do what you have suggested, from day one, for Google not to figure out that it is looking at a Wordpress site.
Have you ever looked at the code of some of the top ranking, old sites out there? It’s scary stuff, but clear proof that Google doesn’t care much about this issue, in my opinion.
I still think it’s all about links. I’ve seen sites with the worst titles (page_title_1), no descriptions, no H1, H2 and nothing but flash for content rank very well.Proper structure certainly helps but there’s nothing like a few links from high ranking authority sites to boost your rank.
good code + weak optimization = a waste of a good siteweak code + good optimization = the majority of top ranking sites ;( sadly enough!good optimization + good code vs. good optimization + bad code = no difference in search rankings. (I’ve done the experiment on static sites - not blogs)Like the majority of people here I agree that coding your site well has advatnages and should be done properly - but has little effect on rankings as long as you don’t code your site completely wrong in a way that makes it difficult to crawl.
@ JohnHGohde regarding the statement:"Give me a static website over a Wordpress blog any day, and I could take it from not showing up at all to being in the top ten simply by working on all this invisible HTML coding."...and..."It is a heck of a lot easier to rank a static website with a couple dozen web pages in the top ten, then a Wordpress Blog with over a hundred posts."I think that those kind of statements could be miscontrued by a newbie looking to develop a blog and learn about optimising websites. The statements are too generalistic to mean anything in my opinion. For newbie’s, content creates keywords, keywords help boost traffic, creates a link-worthy website, builds interesting flows of information and keywords around the site (more algorithmically complex than I understand sometimes: "why the hell have I ranked for that?!")....not wishing to pick a fight, I realise that a semantically written page / site, with controlled link equity has value, of which is vital to understand for any developer or SEO...but it’s limited in the keyword opportunities and possibly a little short-termist, that’s all. But then again it depends on what the site was set-up for of course...Just my 2 pence!Ben
You guys should really try reading the TITLE of this sphinn. May, I suggest the use of a good English dictionary?People who respond to Sphinns by talking about "picking fights" belong in jail, IMHO. Plain and simple. Along with anyone else who engages in shady SEO.
Sorry, I’m a little confused? I said "...not wishing to pick a fight" - i.e I was trying to offer an alternative perspective and little more depth to the discussion, and, "not wishing to pick a fight"...sigh...
John, What in the world is Wordpress doing bad to make it third class citizen or a bad neighborhood?A blog post was never meant to be a permanent highly competitive navigation page. For all the newbies out there: Wordpress is always a great tool. You just have to understand the internal linking structure and link building from external sources to every post before you launch a competitive seo campaign when starting with a blog.
Google doesn’t look down on any one particular platform or CMS. There is absolutely no evidence I’ve ever seen that convinces me of the contrary. Wordpress is an extremely popular platform and there are millions of sites that use it and the other blogging platforms. However, there are a lot of shitty sites powered by Wordpress, Blogger, etc. I’ve seen plenty of sites that rank very well for highly competitive terms that are built on Wordpress.Popular CMS’s are second class citizens only because their extreme populatrity has attracted a lot of crap. Lots of crappy sites = lots of low ranking sites.
Getting back to the actual TOPIC of this sphinn, social media marketing sometimes doesn’t matter at all. The following old sphinn discusses a perfect example of invisible HTML coding making a major difference in Google. http://sphinn.com/story/8883#c58287Semantic HTML Structure does Matter, but ONLY when your webpages are NOT likely to treated like 3rd class citizens. In other words, Semantic HTML Structure is NOT going to be the deal breaker in most Wordpress blogs. Semantic HTML Structure coding structure is far more likely to have a major impact on static websites, IMHO.Therefore, trying to test the effectiveness of Semantic HTML Structure coding structure on a WordPress blog is totally ill conceived on a number of different levels.
Hi John,I’m still unclear as to why Wordpress is a 3rd class citizen. It is a simple php cms, that can be managed in a whole host of ways. It just seems that you are building your argument around the fact that Wordpress is a 3rd class citizen...I have read things that make similar assumptions but still looking for a little more detail to varify why this is the case.Could you clarify, as I think that is the point we are missing? Thanks,Ben
"Semantic HTML Structure is NOT going to be the deal breaker in most Wordpress blogs"Gee, could Most mean A of Lot of ...?"there are a lot of shitty sites powered by Wordpress"
@ andymurdDo you probably mean XHTML+RDFa markup?
ross developer avatar oyunlarıunderstanding, 4. long term web site stability, 5. decreasing long term costs, and 6. Not to mention which, using sünger bob oyunlarıbad coding practices is just low quality work overall. Why not put forth the best possible impression by using semantically correct HTML from the start?yeni oyunlar