Seo

[James Quillian]

Has anyone who has a web page had any luck with SEO efforts?

Or, is it a waste of time?

[Wiz Feinberg]

I'm your huckleberry!

I practice SEO on every web page I write, unless it is not to be indexed.

[James Quillian]

I'm your huckleberry!
I practice SEO on every web page I write, unless it is not to be indexed.

For learning about SEO what in your opinion is step one?

All of my sites are non-commercial so I do all of the work myself.


I always do better with computer stuff doing one thing at a time. In other words, I would worry about step 2 only after step one is accomplished.

If you know a good source of reading material that would be helpful, of course.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Basically, SEO means optimizing the text and headers on each web page that you want indexed by search engines, so that they will rank as high as possible in search results shown to users looking for the same information or product. Ideally, this means page one of the search results. The higher up the better.

SEO also helps to get your content properly understood and categorized by the search engines. That way if somebody is searching for cornflakes, you won't benefit if your copedent page is listed as the first result, and vice verse.

Head text includes the title and meta description tags. In the old days it also included a keywords tag, which is no longer used by pros or considered by search engines.

By the proper choice of keywords in the body text and in the anchors of links, one can achieve higher ranking in search results for matching terms. The best results come from matching phrases, rather than single words. The longer the phrase the better the possible match. This is known as "long tail" seo.

That's all for today's lesson.

[Richard Sinkler]

Wiz... I saw a video lesson for SEO, and they mentioned adding a paragraph to the top of the first page, list all the key words you can think of, and put a large left or right margin on the paragraph to put it out of view. I tried this during the lesson and it worked, but does it really work in real life?

[Georg Sørtun]

Wiz... I saw a video lesson for SEO, and they mentioned adding a paragraph to the top of the first page, list all the key words you can think of, and put a large left or right margin on the paragraph to put it out of view. I tried this during the lesson and it worked, but does it really work in real life?

You risk being punished by search engines for "keyword seeding" if you use such an off-screen method to lie about a page's actual content.

The correct use of the off-screen method is to add important information for users of Screen Readers and other Assistive Technology software ... information that would otherwise clutter up the view for "regular" visitors.

FWIW: I rely on relevant and (hopefully) well-written content for Search Engine Optimization and visitors experience - avoiding all SEO trickery, and do at times include off-screen content for visitors in need of extra information.

[Richard Sinkler]

They didn't say to lie about the content. I always thought it was a waste of time since the websites I have done are for targeted audiences and not the casual Google dude. And I knew about doing it for assistive devices.

[Wiz Feinberg]

Richard;
Any seo website that recommends keyword stuffing, or using text that matches the background color, so as to be invisible to the normal eye, is promoting blackhat seo. Goole, Bing and Yahoo all know how to detect and penalize any website practicing blackhat seo tactics.

If a webpage having AdSense ads is found to be practicing BH-SEO, the publisher risks being booted from the GA network.