Website design and SEO
Wildatheart
Posts: 195
A few days ago I wrote Emily Kruze, Parallax Marketing Coordinator, telling her that I missed the familiar and convenient Forums tab at the top of the page on the new website. She responded by saying that they were working toward a solution that would not compromise the site rankings.
Then, a current thread in the General Forums started by idbruce mentions that his desire to combine the sale of patent prints on the same page that includes a directory of interesting sites would negatively impact his sites SEO rankings.
I understand that Props are not forums, and I understand that patent prints are not a list of interesting sites - just as a crematory is not a brass urn, and chicken is not beef, but in each example they could be related.
Is it possible for the websites designer to trick the Search Engine into accommodating dissimilar items on the same page and not take a hit for having done so? Im guessing that if the answer is anywhere near, a professional web designer could mitigate some of the damage, then it would be nearly impossible for a novice to write their own HTML code from scratch to get any kind of ranking at all.
Id sure like to hear some discussion on this from those experienced in website design.
Then, a current thread in the General Forums started by idbruce mentions that his desire to combine the sale of patent prints on the same page that includes a directory of interesting sites would negatively impact his sites SEO rankings.
I understand that Props are not forums, and I understand that patent prints are not a list of interesting sites - just as a crematory is not a brass urn, and chicken is not beef, but in each example they could be related.
Is it possible for the websites designer to trick the Search Engine into accommodating dissimilar items on the same page and not take a hit for having done so? Im guessing that if the answer is anywhere near, a professional web designer could mitigate some of the damage, then it would be nearly impossible for a novice to write their own HTML code from scratch to get any kind of ranking at all.
Id sure like to hear some discussion on this from those experienced in website design.
Comments
No sooner were you off the bus than you had one fellow trying to get you a room, another getting you a meal, and yet another wanting to make you a custom suit with six custom shirts..
Where am I going with all this? Using CEO ratings have very little to do with your product and fulfillment of customer satisfaction. Just look at Google today... you have to go down half a page before you get to a real answer.
It is just like Nathan Road.. You have to wade through the touts to get to anything really worth shopping for. And in many cases, a search will just bring to all touts and no real information this days.
So I fear that the SEO ratings might get you hits, but people may actually be abandoning search engines and seeking other ways to shop. Word of mouth and satisfied customers are still the life blood of any small enterprise. People can and will find you if you do what you do in a way that is far superior to the crowd.
Let's face it, Search Engines have morphed into Advertising Agencies of the new millennium. Try asking Yahoo to locate your Gmail inbox or ask Google to locate your Yahoo Mail inbox. The results can be rather annoying as each has a desire to hide the competition.
Not sure what is happening to the Parallax Forums' destiny. But changes seem inevitable. But people do generally try to avoid and ignore touts over the long run.
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OK let's look at Google today. I enter "zicog" into the Google search box. I get
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/110804-ZiCog-a-Zilog-Z80-emulator-in-1-Cog
Top of the results, Seems to work fine for me:)
But - think about it for a second... Let's say you're surfing the web for Widgets and Foo Bar. Sites about Widgets are saved in a Widget directory and Foo Bar sites are saved in the Foo Bar directory. You find one site that has both Widgets and Foo Bar. Where do you save the site? Probably have to make a new directory called "Widgets and Foo Bar ". This is the same issue web crawler are faced with all day long. In this example, the Widget/FooBar site can have poor rankings for a single query of "Widget" or "Foo Bar" but excellent rankings if both "Widget" and "Foo Bar" key words are used. If "Widget" and "Foo Bar" are very dissimilar what are the odds someone will type the key words in a search?
A butcher's site should not contain content about the Propeller or links to brass urns. The butcher's site should only contain stuff about cutting up and selling meat.
Using "zicog" is hardly a typical or fair example. Try using a more generic term and the first dozen or more results will be useless advertising Smile. Loopy has a very good point in his post. Just as TV programming has become a vast wasteland of two parts "reality" programming and one part advertising, the internet is becoming swamped by hype, advertising, and con artists. Sadly, seduced by advertising revenue, google seems to be leading the way here. So much for not being "evil".
Well, it is really hard for me to use a Google example right now.... I just loaded Linux Mint into my machines as Ubuntu 12.04LTS wasn't working with BST.
It seems that Linux Mint 15 doesn't come installed with Google search engine as a default... I have to do a bit of tweeking.
But that is the point, we are being driven like sheep to go here and use this. I refused to use Facebook and found that I wasn't allowed to post my opinion about anything in the last US presidential election without a Facebook account. The sites did say that Gmail and Yahoo accounts were accepted, but when I submitted me 2 cents worth, they asked me to approve a Facebook sign up.
I don't particularly apprecidate being handled in a Palovian fashion .. whether it is on the internet or McD's is trying to upsize my order.
I see Parallax is working very hard to provide clearer and more user friendly support for the Propeller 1 and the Propeller 2 through their new web site. And I think that may the right thing to do as the Forums get invaded by touts as well. But I am still wary of having to fall into line with Google or Yahoo or whatever to survive as a business.
It all reminds me of how Standard Oil proivded a rail shipping discount for loyal customers, and charged a higher fee from others to pay for the discount. We finally created anti-trust laws to have fair trade. But that seems to have been all forgotten in the Information Age.
I admit "zicog" is a bit off the beaten track.
What about "z80 emulaltor". Nice lots of Z80 emulator links. No advertising. "z80 emulator Propeller" gets us back to ZiCog.
OK, something generic. One of my favorite foods "Fishstick". Sad, I learn that the inventor of the fish stick, Robert Kinney died in May this year. Thank you Robert.
Still nothing I recognize as advertising.
That gets me a couple of wikipedia links about propellers first, And wow Parallax Inc is third in the listing.
There are now advertising links on the right hand side. A place I never look because that where the advertising goes. Not bad at all.
The Ads on the right are paid Ads.
I'm using Firefox with AdBlock Plus and as far as advertising goes, many pages I view look totally different if I turn AdBlock off. Some I don't recognize as being familiar pages if I turn it off or I am on a PC without it. That's kind of scary!
I have found how to add Google in Linux Mint... apparently Mint is not getting any revenue sharing from Google for the Mint users that it provides... so Mint is not including Google in Firefox.
I use a hosts file, it's almost a megabyte so there's tons of stuff Firefox can't get to. I also block almost all JavaScript. There's only about 30 entries in my white list. I hardly ever see any advertising.
From Wiki: Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen.
I am experimenting with the hover event on a web page to display text under an image. According to the rules, is it likely that this mostly invisible text would generate a penalty?
Also from Wiki: In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources.
The hidden content (two or three sentences) I referred to above is a quote from a national news source (with credit referenced). Is this content from another site yet another penalty?
Does this mean that quotes from other sources and hover events need to be used with special care?
Edit:
On another note, if I have a carousel that displays images, is it better for SEO to link the names of the JPGs in the carousel ie., corn seed, grass seed, flower seed, etc. as opposed to img106534, img106535, img106536, etc.?
I believe they mean linked or copied content not referenced or quoted snippets of text. Otherwise, ATOM and RSS feeds would be useless.
Yes, use meaningful file and directory name. Carousels can be tricky when it comes to SEO. Make sure all images are loaded in the client HTML when the page renders. No server side GETs no dynamic Javascript. Remember a crawler's world is text. If the text is not on the page the crawler can't see the text.
I've had to deal with SEO for a number of years in English/Spanish localized sites. In the most simplest explanation, SEO means all site content must relate to site intention. Added to SEO, always implement web accessibility standards.
Web accessibility standards are simple things like always use the "alt" attribute in an "img" tag. Don't use colored backgrounds. Don't use dynamic Javascript menus. Screen readers and crawler have no idea where the dynamic JavaScript window.location.href links.
The best way to get a handle on SEO and Accessibility is to mess around with the techniques. If you have a site, pick a key word(s) for targeting a better ranking. Implement SEO and Web Accessibility standards. Monitor the rankings.
In another post I was asked to prove my SEO qualifications and I used the key word "AX-12" as an example. "AX-12" was my first dedicated attempt to rank the site by key word. That was a good 6-7 years ago. Anyway, I learned a ton. Later in life, I worked with SEO specialists and marketing departments to implement SEO where I learned a lot more. Still - it all boils down to, "Do what you say and say what you do".