The Wholesale Forums

[Casy04]

I've been reading quite a bit of material on Google recently and I've personally come to the conclusion that sooner rather than later, search engines such as google will almost dismiss the current SEO techniques used today with a couple exceptions. I would think that Keyword rich content, Titles, links etc are and will always be very important, but the older Google gets possibly 99.999% of it's results will be based on content and interaction only? Think about the difference from 2001 to 2006 and how much less value h2 tags etc give to SEO now. (this is all of course an assumption).

Question-!

My question is, from what you all know, is it really worth the time to label images and make sure h1 h2 tags etc are labeled with Keywords ?? and if so what % would you give to the "tried and true techniques" ? At this point I think it's still important enough to spend some time on, but what do you all think??

Thank you for your input! =)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Casy04

Question-!

My question is, from what you all know, is it really worth the time to label images and make sure h1 h2 tags etc are labeled with Keywords ?? and if so what % would you give to the "tried and true techniques" ? At this point I think it's still important enough to spend some time on, but what do you all think??

Thank you for your input! =)

Well firstly - Labelling your images from an accessibility and usability point of view is a must. Secondly labelling them can add value to them when the search engines are on your site and additionally get you ranked in the "image" search listings which sometimes can provide a considerable amount of traffic depending on your sites industry ect.

Using H1 tags has always been something that I have tried to do as most of the "pro's" and Search Engines recommend doing it. Once again it's one of those aspects of SEO that has quite a heavy value in your overall SEO score. H1 tags aren't particularly difficult to implement and you can style them just as you would normal tags within CSS or in the HEAD part of your HTML document.

I think SEO will get even more competitive as the years progress. As more and more people get better at the current techniques, new techniques will be established and more than likely tighter restrictions will be actioned by the Search Engines.

Interesting debate this one.. let's hear some more people's thoughts..

[ollie35]

I seem to get very involved in SEO as it is something I am very interesting in, maybe its the fact that I don't want to pay for advertising

Seriously though, I thnk the main points you made there about titles, descriptions links etc will stand the test of time. I actually know someone who went to seminars on the subject in the U.S and the people from google did talks on the subject and you could have informal chats aferwards. (This ladys job was critical to learning all she could and her work paid for her to go).

They told her they do change all the time, but only when they think pople are abusing or trying to trick them. Like when links were known to be important, so up pop link farms and people start linking with each other. O.k now the subject must be relevant and one way links are now key and god forbid anyone who joins a link farm. So they say keywords are important, so people start putting the same coloured text in and hiding them, if google find people doing this now you can be banned. It is a simple theory, google want to give the best sites for people to search for, they are a business at the end of the day. If you keep getting poor sites that have cheated the system everytime you put a search in, then you will use another search engine, their profits from adwords then go down. So this is why they try and stay one step ahead.

I always say if you don't try and break any rules and run a nice informative, clean site, with good titles and descriptions, some good quality links and update it from time to time, then you will not go far wrong.

Certain things you mention like h tags and alt tags may or may not hold as much weight as in the past, but they can do you no harm, I always include them.

[MustHaveMobiles]

I have a site that runs without meta tags , I set it as an experiment and Google still ranks it well for the targeted keywords.

Content will always be important as this is the principle that Google was founded upon, H tags and image alts are basic web practice that has SEO (h tags) and legal (image alts for DDA compliance) and so it is recommended that they are used although I always forget the image tags to be honest as I am stupid!!

The simple thing to remember that content, more content and more content is what the search engines (not just Google) want. Provide great content, whilst avoided duplicate content practices and your search engine survival will be almost guaranteed unless you do some naughty practices..

[YNWA]

Mod Edit: Removed - Let's keep on topic for this thread, use another thread for this if you want..

[huzayltrading]

Originally Posted by MustHaveMobiles

I have a site that runs without meta tags , I set it as an experiment and Google still ranks it well for the targeted keywords.

Content will always be important as this is the principle that Google was founded upon, H tags and image alts are basic web practice that has SEO (h tags) and legal (image alts for DDA compliance) and so it is recommended that they are used although I always forget the image tags to be honest as I am stupid!!

The simple thing to remember that content, more content and more content is what the search engines (not just Google) want. Provide great content, whilst avoided duplicate content practices and your search engine survival will be almost guaranteed unless you do some naughty practices..

I totally agree with you on this! .......

[MustHaveMobiles]

Search Engine Optimization is not a short term task. It is one of an ongoing refinement after refinement and hour after hour of working on your website. Producing unique content, checking it, validating, listing and checking the search engines and making sure they have it listed correctly. Do not think for one second that you can optimize your site thoroughly ever and do not ever think that just because you are number one for a search term that it will indefinitely stay that way. Search Engine Companies are always changing their ranking and rating systems and coupled with this there are always other people out there gunning for your top spot. Keep looking to improve and learn more and don't sit back and wait for others to take your top spot. Be proactive, seek out new content, links and keep ahead of the curve.

A few tips to keep you busy:

Unique Content is King, don't simply regurgitate someone else's work as search engines penalize duplicate content. Also unique, valuable and interesting content will boost your rankings and also please your visitors.

Keep adding content, Search Engines live on information and the more your site has additional information on it the more the Search Engines will keep coming back to index your information. Avoid simple and excessive minor changes as this wont help at all.

Never ever remove a page when it has been indexed, you have worked hard to get that page up and it will attract visits so work the content to support your site as opposed to deleting the complete page.

Emphasise your keywords with bold or italics, do not go silly though as a human still has to read the page and to much just makes it unreadable.

If your content is extensive split it up into a number of pages, more pages give more targetable keywords and therefore more pages that can be indexed which will mean more traffic.

Utilise your keyword(s) in your "Title Tag", this is what shows in the search results on the engines and is your opportunity to draw the viewers attention to your page. Don't go overboard as this is blatant keyword spamming and will get you nowhere, keep the tag short (no more than 10 words) and always have your keyword(s) at the beginning of the phrase.

Always utilise your keyword(s) in the page name, separate them by a '-' or a '_' as both of these are recognised by the search engines to define your phrase. Also make sure that they are relevant to the topic on the page. It is a myth that hyphens are bad in Search Engine terms, under scores are treated the same.

Keep your keyword density to between 6-9%, write your text as you would hope to read it and write for a human not a search engine bot. Densities above this tend to look like keyword stuffing and the search engines do not like this.

Never mask your keywords by making the text the same colour as your background or by putting lots at the very bottom of your page with hundreds of lines of whitespace before them.

Always use anchor text when posting a link to your page and always use your keyword(s)

In your headings, for example H1 and H2 etc, always use your keywords. Again write for a human not a search bot.

Always apply 'ALT Tags' to your images and use your keywords, do not go stupid hear and treat them like you do your 'title tags'

Utilise secondary keywords to support your Primary ones, less competitive words still bring that valuable traffic.

Do not bother with targeting misspellings, it may give you some hits but the impression that it gives on your web page can kill any creditability that you may have.

Inbound links are the votes for your web page/website and as such always aim to get links from related authority sites, ensure that these are also utilising you anchor text. Links from non related sites won't actually do your site any harm, they may even generate a few visitors but from a search engine optimisation point of view relevancy is important. The more inbound links that you get the better for you sites ranking.

Always use keyword specific text for your links, Search Engine bots cannot read images (other than the alt tag).

Internal links should always utilize anchor text, these are still counted by the search engines and always use your keyword(s) as opposed to, for example, 'page 1, 2 etc'. Again relevancy of the pages text to your anchor text is also important.

Links should look as natural as possible, link buying/selling is a popular Internet process but gaining lots of incoming in a short period of time will raise alarm bells at the search engines.

Link directories still work but only submit to relevant high PR ones, DMOZ used to be the holy grail but has dropped in importance recently.

The fewer outgoing links on the pages that link to your site the better, for one the viewer can find your link easily and this also give weighting to the back link in search engine terms.

Inbound links from link farms etc will do you no harm as long as they are not reciprocated.

Link masking should never be used, same colour links as the background, single pixel links etc will all be seen as attempts to manipulate the search engines. This is a black hat technique and will get you removed from the indexes quickly.

Broken links will stop the Search Engine bots from revisiting as they cannot index what they can't get to.

A site map is a Search Engines favourite meal, a simple HTML one will suffice but a Google Site map is much better.

Search Engine Bots cannot index session ID's, always convert these to allow proper indexing.

[BillyA]

Mike - you should write a book.

John Reese, sort of a visionary on the internet, wrote this a few months back. Its worth reading.

The Rebirth Of Internet Marketing

[Pete]

Back in the pre-internet days I would preface my company name with an A (space). But only for the Yellow Pages, since I would then be first in the listings for any category. And to make it official, my phone bill would come as A Mr Auto. The A (space) came before AA or AAA or even A-, so I stayed at the top of the listings.

When I first went online Yahoo and that strtup Google were listing like the yellow pages. In stead of alpha-numeric, it was number-alphabetic (if there is such a term). So, my first site was 10,001 Gifts and Specialties, a name I still use. But not the URL, it got lost to a hosting company that liked to hold you hostage by not turning over your domain. Live and learn.

Within about 90 days the SE's began to get sophisticated and I've gone from "ahead of the curve" to "behind the eight ball". Content it the key, no doubt about it. And while you see all sorts of "death of META" stuff, it takes 3 minutes and I still do it on the main pages (usually).

I think one thing has been true for most of the years I've been online - give good quality content and things will work for you.

And I've always been a niche player. Instead of the keywords getting 348,892 searches a month, I'll go for those in the 100 - 1,000 range with the overture listings. Not rocket science, but it's worked well for me over the years.

[BrandDirect]

I do thoroughly agree with all the above posts. I only really started seriously looking at SEO recently.

I have probably over 1000 products still to add to my site. To be honest after months of searching and finding great suppliers on babies nursery products and their associated products i came to a crossroad.
Do i enter all 1 thousand products and then again start at the beginning and do the necessary optimisation or do i enter a few, optimise and continue so forth.

I decided on the latter and bought me an expensive subscription to Wordtracker. Great tool but not so simple for the novice. Anyway i decided i would research each product and its competitor on google and felt i did a good job.

One product i did forget to do was a double buggy. I had simply entered the accompanying photographs and it description but left out any SEO work and low and behold a few weeks later once i came out of the sandbox google had that particular item ranked at its highest at number 2. Also number 4,7 and 11. Every item that i had optimised came in at 30 or 40 even 60 but it is funny that with no optimisation that i should find myself with a site with no links barr this one find itself so highly ranked on a product unoptimised.

Being somewhat of an amateur i have read a lot on SEO and i am now swaying towards the fact like many that we may over complicate matters.
I may be on the wrong track here and of course time will tell, but i believe if you write only for the potential customer ( not the search engines) with good relevant articles paired with a good advertising program where it be a sessional sale or an up-sale then i personally hope that regardless whether i get 10 customers a day or 100 i can then actively expand with that as my basis