1 interesting, not groundbreaking

while this article is mostly common sense tips, it is nice to know that there are added benefits to authoring simple markup with xhtml/css.

posted at 11:44 pm on August 3, 2003 by j

2 Figures

I wish you had figures to back your arguments.

posted at 03:26 am on August 4, 2003 by Laurent

3 img as h1

I’ve employed <h1>x.gif</h1> for a bit, though with nagging suspicions that this is less than commendable. It does validate just fine, thank you, and Google does see the alt text. Any reasons to avoid this technique?

posted at 07:05 am on August 4, 2003 by David

4 re: img as h1

David, there’s nothing wrong with that technique. It provides design control while maintaining accessibility and avoids problems some screen readers have with the Fahrner/Bowman CSS image replacement technique.

ALA and Brandon, thanks for this article. I knew most of these arguments but it is nice to have them posted here … it gives me more ammunition when persuading clients that clean XHTML markup and CSS layout are good for them.

posted at 07:14 am on August 4, 2003 by AdLad

5 re:

For those in the know on CSS/XHTML, most (if not all) of these ideas presented will be second-nature, and things you’ll most likely be doing already.

Re: David’s H1 title image: While David’s technique is sound in that it provides textual information for spiders as well as the proper placement of a header image, the H1 status does not follow through to the alt text. A search engine spider will see it only as alt text, not as a main level heading or title of page. Since I have not tried this method before, it is hard to say if this method would prevail over <h1>Title textual information here</h1>.

posted at 07:35 am on August 4, 2003 by Brandon

6 A bit light on the useful information

As Brandon said, all of the techniques presented in this article are in the arsenal of the XHTML/CSS-savvy already. The typical ALA reader will certainly be well-versed in such techniques.

For a more complete guide to search engine optimization, as part of a comprehensive look at web site optimization in general, let me recommend Andy King’s book “Speed Up Your Site: Web Site Optimization.” The accompanying web site ( http://www.websiteoptimization.com/ ) seems to be down at the moment, but the book can be found at Amazon.com ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735713243/103-3673928-6194224 ).

posted at 08:14 am on August 4, 2003 by Simon Jessey

7 Dimitted!

You could have replaced “completely dimwitted” with “”

Thanks!

posted at 08:31 am on August 4, 2003 by Your Grandma

8 A bit thin.

It could have been a good article – the intro suggested this, but it ended up being /very/ thin on information. Hmm use H1 – H6 contexts? Ok. what else ? Use of Keywords ? Importance of links ? although mentioned their importance wasn’t signified where it counts. How did this get OK’d to be published ? Its hardly worth reading!

posted at 08:32 am on August 4, 2003 by Dude

9 Re: Figures

laurent@bearteam.org asked for figures to support the claims. This site: http://www.einfachfueralle.de/ was relaunched in early May and through the use of h1-h4, FIR, (almost) no text-GIFs and whatever is recommended in the article we made it from somewhere around page 20 to positions in the lower single digits for all relevant keywords. Go figure.

/T

posted at 08:41 am on August 4, 2003 by Tomas Caspers

10 SEO

[em]“I wish you had figures to back your arguments.”[/em]

Not hard numbers, buuut… We designed a site without paying any attention to SEO, just standards, and it did very well on that alone. A little extra SEO and now it’s #1 for it’s main search terms.

[em]“Use of Keywords ? Importance of links ?”[/em]
The title says it all. What you mention are SEO strategies, nothing to do with CSS or XHTML.

Another excellent resource for SEO would be http://www.webmasterworld.com.

posted at 08:46 am on August 4, 2003 by Sonia