11 Really Thin

I’ve got to agree with Dude. This article was REALLY thin. I was expecting a second and third page, but it just ended.

posted at 06:52 am on August 4, 2003 by Mike

12 .

I was looking forward to reading this one, but it was all common sense stuff – nothing new at all really.

I might have been a good article if it had been backed up by some good research, or gave some insight into what effect the position of different (x)html elements withinin the documents had on different search engines.

I think what the most important thing to remember when coding (x)html is to be honest and represent your content fairly. If something is the main header, you mark it up with H1, next level headers get a H2 tag, etc. Use lists to represent lists.

Quite simply, utilise HTML properly, then format it with CSS and the search engines will index your site in the best way possible.

posted at 07:59 am on August 4, 2003 by Michael Ward

13 VSE Be Found

I’ve always used VSE Be Found (http://www.vse-online.com/submit-website/index.html). Although it’s only for Mac (and Classic at that), there’s no better assistant for pre-launch meta analysis/optimization. Plus it submits to all of the major search engines. It also explains the things you can do wrong, which may get you penalized with certain search engines (ie. use of repetitive keywords, etc). Their site is also very informative if what you’re looking for wasn’t covered by this article.

posted at 08:28 am on August 4, 2003 by mschindler

14 ___

This article was in no means meant as a complete guide on optimizing a site. Its primary purpose was to inform the knowledgeable CSS and XHTML author about things they are already familiar with and how implementing them will improve upon their search engine optimization.

Mr. Ward said it best when he states that using (X)HTML properly and formatting it to your design specifications with CSS will result in the best chances of being indexed properly.

One of the greatest benefits of using CSS/XHTML to optimize your website is the separation of content from code. Quite simply, the less code you have in your HTML, the more room your content has to speak for itself. None of these techniques necessarily will guarantee higher rankings, nor are they guaranteed to improve your rankings if you don’t have quality content to back them up with.

Speaking along the lines of using headers, it could be just as simply done by creating a class called .pageheader and styling it exactly the same. The question arisen from that, though, is whether or not a search engine will will be able to tell you that is to be the equivalent of <h1>Title Of Page</h1> – as most if not all search engines know exactly that H1 is used to designate the primary heading of a page.

While it may go against usability standards at times, another benefit of using standards based design to optimize your pages is the ability to order your code in any position you wish and place it appropriately on the webpage with CSS positioning. Quite simply, you can place your heading at the very top of your HTML followed by a paragraph briefly describing your content and then your content. Or you could place your heading first, and then a sidebar blurb, much like the one placed at the top of the sidebar adjacent to ALA articles, followed directly by the primary content. CSS could then be used to place these texts in their respective positions on the webpage.

There are three key factors to optimizing a website: The first, and by far most important, is quality content. Copywriting can be a tedious task which many of us take for granted. Without enough text about the given subject, your page is highly unlikely to be found relevant at all to any search terms. The second is coding your webpages. Using XHTML you can create semantically correct webpages without sacrificng your design schemes. The third, and equally important, is follow-through. Maintaining an optimized page throughout content updates and the like is just as important as your webpage gets re-visited.

Some links for more information:
http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf – Bruce Clay’s Search Engine Relationship Chart
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a.html – Search Engine Optimization – FREE
http://www.searchenginewatch.com – Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchengines.com/

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

15 Was anything said?

When I saw this article mentioned on Zeldman, I thought it might be a great article to send to a client who knows her company home page needs some SEO work and is trying to rationalize a budget for doing it. But, this article offered NOTHING to use. Not to mention the nasty, patronizing tone, such as a reference to “completely dimwitted” grandma. What a waste of bandwidth.

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

16 hide the h1

If you have an image for your logo or keywords, you could also put an h1 containing the company name (for example) above that image. Then just hide that h1 (i.e. h1#hidden {display: none}).

posted at 08:50 am on August 4, 2003 by Stephen Fuqua

17 XHTML directed examples

To be fair – as Sonia pointed out – the title of the article does put emphasis upon use of XHTML, CSS [..Standards..] ect to improve SE ranking – so in that respect the article does explain that quite well, but I think all conscientious standards advocates out there will be doing everything stated in the article anyway so doesn’t that put all [to coin a sub-set of continuously used phrases] ‘lean, low bandwidth, elegant XHTML’ front ends on an immediately equal ranking ? It would have been nice to see some ‘XHTML based’ SEO techniques which aren’t necessarily use by everyone. Something along the lines of that suggested in ‘hide the h1’ post would be an example as used in StopDesign.com [knock out the CSS to see this] – so would this improve SEO ?

posted at 12:10 pm on August 4, 2003 by Dude

18 'tis a good article

The article covers general info that most XHTML/CSS authors already know, although it’s always interesting to see how someone else does it. I teach an HTML authoring class, and always get nailed with the Search Engine question, “How can I get my site to rank highest?” I give them a two part answer: a) Lots of $$$ (ads, etc.) or b)structuring their xhtml well, letting css do the presentational work, and writing good copy. The b part of the answer gets mixed results, but when it works it works well, and you save that yearly fee to rank your site. Thanks for writing the article, my students read ALA and the Daily Report and this will help…

posted at 01:47 pm on August 4, 2003 by salvatore

19 Agree

I’d have liked a bigger article but once the point had been made there was no need to repeat it. From my own experience I have seen very good SE results through clean pages that rely heavily on CSS for as much presentation as daringly possible.

I suppose once everyone discovers it’s additional benefits we’ll be back to square one again with all SEO more or less doing the same thing.

In the meantime reap the benefits from the search engines while you can.

posted at 02:04 pm on August 4, 2003 by Mark Orbit

20 Useful Info

This article is very timely. I’m planning on mentioning this very topic (SEO benefits of clean XHTML and CSS) while talking to the Macromedia User’s Group I belong to. Any articles like this that point out benefits, regardless of what they may be help a great deal.

Thanks for putting this together, Brandon.

posted at 03:59 pm on August 4, 2003 by Keith Burgin

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