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"I would love to hear others opinion on this as I have never heard of this nor seen it happen."
I would definitely love to hear others' opinions on that too as I personally saw this twice with two of my sites with identical symptoms. Though it defnitely doesn't make sense - I'd consider it to be rather a glitch than some part of logics.
This is one of the reasons I like the SEO community so much. It is very hard to get us to agree on ANYTHING, yet we still expect regular guys to trust us with their websites and money.
Lol, nicely put! I love it how Hamlet formulates his ideas.
Actually as far as I noticed there are very few people who never agree with anyone... most SEO people are eager to accept many (even contradicting) points of view as only profoundly stupid people (sorry) think they are always right.
Guilty of "over-optimization" myself :( sometimes you just use words without much thinking - sadly - as it really never occurred to me "optimization" comes from "optimal"...
As for this one:
What I mean here are phrases such as "search engine penalty." People bandy this one about to describe all sorts of things beyond the scope of what it actually means.
I guess this can be forgiven... no one exactly knows what penalization is (and what filtering is, etc), so people just need any generalizing term... anyway, guilty of this one too :)
And really there are many more great ones: attributes vs tags, SEO optimization and others mentioned above. And what is the correct word for the link without "nofollow" attribute? :)
"Does Ann Smarty think through the implications of the tools she is recommending? Do you really want to support dropping your pants and bending over for this service?"
Well, yes, she does :) and trust me I first go through long process of testing and collecting information before I review a tool to readers (and I do recommend test it and share your honest opinion).
No one encourages you to verify your site, you can pay and check backlinks of your competitors.
If you think it's too expensive, well, that may be true but my opinion is it is well worth the money it costs - and before making any conclusions I do try everything...
If you have any evidence that these people use the information in any other way advertised (e.g. use any private information), I will be happy to share it with the huge audience of SEJ and Sphinn and warn everyone against the service. I can't blame people only based on anyone's assumptions.
One great question unanswered (I guess) is what's the name of the crawl to let people block it if they want (as this is there's right for sure). I am trying to find this info now and will share it with you.
To clarify (again, as far as I understand): by blocking the crawl you prevent it from seeing sites you are linking to. Still, your competitors can see your backlinks (which they would have seen in any case using YSE) until all sites linking to you block the crawl either...
@DarkMatter, I knew it :) I did use the word "keyword prominence" on purpose and emphasized that those tools were good for checking keyword usage in title and meta tags, alt text, headings, etc
Besides, like SEOHolicc correctly pointed out, kwd density can be used for diagnostics perposes (to get an idea which words were used more often throughout the page).
@Kim, thanks for the comment. I added link to cre8asiteforums accessibility section in the original thread.
"This post covers a number of accessibility issues, buts fails to even mention the FireFox / IE compatibilty problem"
This is yet completely different story...
@Tanner, I understand that, believe me, I tried to make it sound a bit shorter than "DIV with an ID of "header"" as it is repeated throughout the article... no, of course, they are not Meta tags, I am pretty sure they don't sound as if they are in the post...
@Brian, actually the header div is part of page body content ;)
But I see your point of course. Firstly, I never said, it's most important element, and secondly, my point about why it is so important are explained in the post right after the sentence you cited.
But of course (and you are surely right as usual) text content being unique element of each page is the most important on-page element.
Lol, Brian, you didn't sound disagreeable :)
John, Jill : actually, it's not only about the logo, but the whole page element...
@John, even though you consider it not so important, I see no reason to ignore it compltely. Like any other page element, it should be optimized...
Actually, you are quite right, I must agree, that it is not as important as it used to be, as it was heavily overused and abused but it does still make the difference. The only example that comes to my mind now is SEObook's post on optimizing it and the difference it can make. So, no, I am not the only person who thinks it makes sense to pay attention to this page element...
And no, I could not call it either "logo" (as text link cannot be called so), or page header (to avoid confusion with HTTP headers and simply because it is not right).
@Brett, sorry to hear about your problems... we should ping Joost on that issue...
No harm doesn't mean it should be done. If we talk about low-quality (extra) pages (otherwise, why would we want to get rid of them?), what's the point in redirecting them? Doesn't it would be more natural to just delete them and clean up the site and that's it? I insist that every method should be based on common sense: if we have the reason to redirect (links, traffic, etc), then do it, if not, then why would you do that?
Again, the post is about deleting the pages (most often it must mean, if you delete a page, it was of not much quality/ use) - in this case, a properly managed 404 page is really the best choice, I insist (except for those pages that still managed to accumulate some power which you don't want to lose).
Rae, which method would you choose in this case? Would you really use 301 across the board? Does it make sense, you think?
Everything should be done for a good reason: good page => redirect, bad page => just get rid of it but mind you 404... What's wrong with the approach?
Sorry, missed a good part of this party (due to time differences).
@Rae, as far as you insist on my sharing my experience, I can tell you that I never saw any penalties either from using 404 or 301 - tried both in various cases. I've had cases when plenty of 404 popped up in a day and no ranking (or other) change followed. So, no, I don't believe that 404 can be harmful or that it is not user or bot friendly (I mean proper 404).
So yes, you were correct saying I was citing other people's experience (just because I agree that they might have seen something I failed to see) - and I gave the link to the related discussion and emphasized that 301-penalties are just rumors ("might cause penalties").
The solution I offered for the discussed case still seems most reasonable as there should be a good reason behind using 301 (related pages, pages created as substitute, etc).
@paisley: the thread at Google blog came just in time - thank you for link to it here - much food for thought.
@Rae, I am sorry I sounded the way you just pointed out - I didn't mean to. I also have no problem with disageeing at all but I do have problem with people deliberately misinterpreting my words which I hope you didn't.
@Rae, my concern was that you "were citing" what I did not write. I did not say "use 404 or get penalized" like you posted above, similarly, I honestly linked to other people's opinions and never said that was the only way to go.
The goal of the post was not only to represent the only possible solution (which is impossible) but also to outline different related opinions because, unlike you, I don't believe there is one definitive answer to the posed question.
I believe you were trying to disagree politely but to me it sounded like misinterpretation (just like to you I sounded like digging).
@Rae, ok, now this is proper citing - out of context but still citing.
As you say there was no deliberate misinterpretation, there wasn't - you know better.
Your points about losing traffic because of 404 are clear - I say in some cases it is against user experience. 301 should preferably be used for highly relevant pages: when I want to see page B and get to an absolutely other (unrelated) page, I get distracted...
Besides, 301 for multiple pages would be a headache (if not impossible) to redirect.
All in all, on the second thought, the title of the post is really misleading (I can admit my mistakes) but the reasoning behind the method I suggested is still valid.
Brian, I do have a bit different approach to Sphinn. Sphinn is not all about news. It's also sharing experience and ideas. Not all people know as much as you do so far, and for many this is new too.
@MarketingGuy : those "dubious" conclusions are there so that we could discuss them :) Thanks for the feedback btw!
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