SEO Dave.......
Sam
A question; Do you think it makes a difference to google if a page is
done in tables format? Someone here once mentioned that they believed
google disliked tables in sites. What's your opinion on this?
By the way I checked your back links and thanks for those blogs. If you
want some good high pr blogs try Howard Dean's blogs. He has quite a
bunch of thme with pr6-8 and ripe for the posting.
Peter
"Sam" <.@mail.com> wrote in message
news:82f7f39aee0113ef...@news.teranews.com...
> Dave
> A question; Do you think it makes a difference to google if a page is
> done in tables format? Someone here once mentioned that they believed
> google disliked tables in sites. What's your opinion on this?
I'm not Dave but this is almost certainly crap. I still design practically
all pages for clients using tables and have many no. 1 positions for good
keyword phrases.
PeterMcC
If I can chip in, it's my belief that tables don't present any significant
difficulties for the bots, apart from a bit more chaff in the way of the
text. My only reservation is that excessive nesting of tables can render
badly and that might be reflected in the bots ability to "read" the page.
--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.
Philipp Lenssen
> Dave
(Sometimes I get the feeling I got access to SEO Dave's inbox, browsing
this newsgroup.)
> A question; Do you think it makes a difference to google if a page is
> done in tables format? Someone here once mentioned that they believed
> google disliked tables in sites. What's your opinion on this?
>
Some believe a lot of HTML-garbage decreases ranking. Table-layout can
make a page quite cluttered. I don't use table-layout because there are
many other pros to it. Since most pages online still use table-layout,
I don't think any half-serious search-engine can put any negative
weight on it. It wouldn't help users too much.
--
Google Blogoscoped
http://blog.outer-court.com
SEO Dave
>Dave
> A question; Do you think it makes a difference to google if a page is
>done in tables format? Someone here once mentioned that they believed
>google disliked tables in sites. What's your opinion on this?
Hi,
Almost everything makes a difference, question is how much of a
difference does each variable account for a good/bad SERP. when you
have a good idea what the order is you know where to put most of your
efforts.
My experience and research tells me the formatting of a page is far
less important than inbound links, anchor text, title, keyword rich
body text in various tags. So I don't think it will be THE deciding
factor if you get a top 10 listing or not.
I think the reason a lot of people who understand SEO shy away from
tables is because they tend to bloat the code, and anything that
bloats your code should be used in moderation as it pushes your
content down the page. Also with some HTML creation programs they
create tables, within tables that are within tables and it's a right
mess!!
I'm not 100% sure this matters that much, I suspect Google ignores all
the formatting code and bases the on page part of the SERPs on the
'readable' content giving a 'bonus' where a tag or whatever gives that
bit of content a boost (i.e anything in a <h*> </h*> tag or ALT text
of image links).
That said I could be wrong and so if you are using a lot of tables
think about reducing them. The Shopfactory templates I use for the
Lingerie Shop are all based around tables for formatting (a lot of
tables) and I currently don't have the time/skills to replace them
with CSS formatting (that's on my list of things to learn/do :-)) most
of the pages on my Lingerie site are therefore filled with tables
(I've managed to halve the number so far with the same results).
I've found removing as much of the extra table attributes and placing
them in an external file can change something like this-
<table height="100" width="100" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
etc...
To something like this-
<table class="table">
etc...
and the rest of the formatting in the external file.
So you end up with a lot less bloat, I'm currently working on a new
site design and implementing this type of change as much as possible.
Like I said I don't think changing a site from tables to CSS alone
will result in a top SERP, but if you are already in the top 10 it
might result in a move from say 10 to 9.
Overall though it's not something I'd put on the top of my list of
things to do if I were just about to optimise a site.
>By the way I checked your back links and thanks for those blogs. If you
>want some good high pr blogs try Howard Dean's blogs. He has quite a
>bunch of thme with pr6-8 and ripe for the posting.
:-))
David
_
Free Search Engine Optimization, SEO and
Search Engine Placement Tips (updated 10/10/2003)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/
Adrienne
news:82f7f39aee0113ef...@news.teranews.com:
> Dave
> A question; Do you think it makes a difference to google if a page is
> done in tables format? Someone here once mentioned that they believed
> google disliked tables in sites. What's your opinion on this?
>
I'll add to what others have said, tables = more bloat.
One of the nice things about CSS is the ability to absolutely position
things like headers, footers and menus below the content.
<div id="content">
<h1>Page Title</h1>
<p>Keyword rich content here</p>
</div>
<div id="menu">
<ul>
<li>menu item</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="header">
<img src="companylogo.png" alt="Company Logo">
</div>
<div id="footer">
<p>Footer information</p>
</div>
Properly set up visual browsers will display the header on the top, menu
on the side, then content. Text browsers will get the most important
information first, the content.
--
Adrienne Boswell
Please respond to the group so others can share
http://www.arbpen.com
Sam
remove those links to opera, google etc that don't link back to you.
You're leaking pr to them. You're making one of the most common errors
people make, thinking that if you link to big sites it will help you in
some way and it's just the oppossite if they don't link back to your
site from their index pages.
Adrienne
Actually, I'm the only reason I'm linking to Opera is that I really like
the browser. The Google link, you're right, I killed that one, but Opera
stays.
SEO Dave
wrote:
>Actually, I'm the only reason I'm linking to Opera is that I really like
>the browser. The Google link, you're right, I killed that one, but Opera
>stays.
Javascript it then, your visitors will still see it (or 90% will) but
you don't waste PR.
Sam
too but not enough to give up a drop of my pr. If you javascript those
links on your site asap I'll bet you any amount within one month your
site pr will go up to a pr6.
Peter
I always heard that links on a page do not leak PR from that page, that it
gives PR without losing any. Instead what happens is that the PR that the
page gives to other pages is _divided_ between the links on the page meaning
that the more links on the page the less value each link receives in terms
of PR.
Of course I cannot be 100% sure of this. Do you have one or more links
explaining your theory?
Brothermark
> I'm not Dave but this is almost certainly crap. I still design practically
> all pages for clients using tables and have many no. 1 positions for good
> keyword phrases.
That is not proof. That is just saying you managed good serps with tables.
The question asked was whether it makes a difference. I think it probably
does but only a very small difference.
Brothermark
> I always heard that links on a page do not leak PR from that page, that it
> gives PR without losing any.
That is true. The people you are replying to understand this too.
Its just that, like you say, PR is leaked away from the internal pages of a
website which are linked to from that page
Gateway Farm Alpacas
"Brothermark" <yonne...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:boiqpo$1ff9ji$1...@ID-132564.news.uni-berlin.de...
Search engines attempt to return the most relevant results from the
perspective of the end user. Links (internal and external) contribute to
the site's relevance.
I have seen one (very) limited example demonstrating a "leak" of PR via
external links. I am not convinced that the hypothesis is valid, or that
the phenonenon is major enough to precipitate the concerns raised by so
many.
Additionally, Google does not appear to be emphasizing PR as much as in the
past.
And, Google is not the only SE out there. Nor is it likely that it will
always be the dominant player that it is now. Some SE's (Teoma for example)
like external links. In Teoma a lot of external links can actually make one
an "authority hub" and increase one's ranking.
The quest to "preserve" PR may well be much ado about nothing, and in the
long run may be counter-productive. When I am asked about how to get a top
listing in the SE's, my response is always the same - "Build a site that is
worthy of being ranked at the top."
This means building a site that is relevant and authoritative. Not only is
such a site easier to promote, they have a tendency to generate lots of
inbound links without any real work on the owner's part. Other sites will
link because of the relevant content.
A site worthy of top rankings will be long lived, and will require minimal
upkeep in regards to SE placement. A site designed around the latest theory
of SE algorithms will require constant tweaking and will be vulnerable to
dropping from the SERPs like a rock whenever the algo's change.
--
John Merrell
Gateway Farm Alpacas
http://www.gateway-alpacas.com
Alpaca, a natural elegance...
Sam
link and I'm lately finding that maybe they don't. I have some special
sites with pr (4-6's) that I use to link to my real sites but don't link
back to those pages and they haven't dropped in pr and a couple of them
went up from 4-5 recently. So you could be right in what you say but I'm
always afraid to take a chance and find out. One thing I do know as you
said the more links on a page the less pr each link gets. That I've been
able to text completely and also know that for a fact. But I still have
more to learn about google linking and somehow need to take a chance one
day and try experimenting. For instance I origionally started out by
link farming 8 sites together and got all 8 sites from pages 20-30 up to
pages 4-8. When I stopped link farming and picked two favorite sites for
6 sites to link to and the 2 sites not linking back those 2 sites jumped
up to page 1 and page 2. I've also had a big jump in a site recently
from page 20 to page 2 simply by creating 40 internal new pages a month
ago and went from a pr3 to a pr5 in one month with that site but I did
also post at certain sites as well I have to admit.
Imagine if you had the money to buy about 200 urls and hire a few
hundred people to create about 5000 pages for each site and another
group to post to blogs, lists, guestbooks etc all day. You'd own
whatever area of google you chose to list your site at. There are some
big companies doing that right now and it's the problem with google as a
viewer. Their system is very bad but I admit I'll take advantage of it
as long as I can and make money off of it. To me it's as bad as search
engines that just use key words. What the net really needs is a search
engine based 90% or higher on content, not links or keywords as the main
thing.
Sam
I just checked your back links at google and you have 68 of them with
roughly 90% being internal pages of your website. I wouldn't exactly
call that winning a popularity link contest and give me a break about
content since nobody would have created a 68 page website a few years
back to improve the content of their website. People do it today only to
get lots of back links from google because of a very fucked up system
google has.
I do agree with you in theory that it should be based on content and
true link exchanges may be a way of doing this if google didn't give
back links to internal pages of a site nor back links to guestbooks,
memberlists, blogs etc. None of those thing have anything to do with
popularity and people linking to your site because they like it. It's
simply voting for yourself as President 1000 times. Then again that
sounds like something our mr. bush would do here in the US. mr. bush
would make a good webmaster today.
SEO Dave
>Imagine if you had the money to buy about 200 urls and hire a few
>hundred people to create about 5000 pages for each site and another
>group to post to blogs, lists, guestbooks etc all day.
Hi,
If you think about it long enough you can arrange the above yourself
without needing to spend much money or an excessive amount of time on
it.
In the new year I'll be starting new sites that within a year should
have 100 000 pages spread over a lot of domains and sub domains,
generating income in their own right and feeding each other for PR
etc....
I don't see a problem achieving this in one year with no help and my
only real costs being my time and hosting/bandwidth fees (and domain
names). Even 200 domains is less that $2000 though you don't need that
many domains since you can do the same with sub domains. I estimate
I'll need less than 20 new domains next year.
>You'd own
>whatever area of google you chose to list your site at.
You can 'own' an area with one site and a lot of sub domains. Question
is do you really want to 'own' an area (I assume you mean top ten
results for main phrases are yours) since it looks like really bad
spam (which it is) and so likely to draw attention to your sites. Much
better to have one good listing (top 3) for each SERP since most
visitors will find you from that.
Sam
Yeah you're probably right about that. I just look at all those pages I
have to do instead of just taking them one at a time.
Let me ask you this; Have you pretty much given up on posting to
memberlists, guestbooks (I found a bunch that google gives back links to
by the way), blogs etc in place of creating lots of internal pages? If I
didn't do external posts at all and instead did internal pages would I
do just as good?
I can see the advantage of internal pages over external posting because
at least you're in control of it.
One last question; I'm in an adult field and would like to start
something new that doesn't have to be adult but I keep comingup with the
usual stuff where there's tons of competition. What do you think are
some good ideas for a business or service over the net that wouldn't be
too competitive and someone could make $500-$1,000 a month from?
Peter
This can only be a discussion club - only Google can give definite answers,
not any of us (though some like to believe it). I did not present it as
proof.
I'm guessing you are right in thinking that tables make a small, but close
to insignificant difference. The reason being only that slightly more code
is needed. Not the same as saying Google dislikes tables though.
Peter
> Dave,
> Yeah you're probably right about that. I just look at all those pages I
> have to do instead of just taking them one at a time.
>
> Let me ask you this; Have you pretty much given up on posting to
> memberlists, guestbooks (I found a bunch that google gives back links to
> by the way), blogs etc in place of creating lots of internal pages? If I
> didn't do external posts at all and instead did internal pages would I
> do just as good?
>
> I can see the advantage of internal pages over external posting because
> at least you're in control of it.
Yeah, control is key. Better to buy one pr7 and control the anchor text than
to spend time chasing thousands of close to insignificant links IMO. And a
lot can be done internally on a site as well - and since each page of a site
is treated as independant pages they count just as much as links coming from
external sites.
Gateway Farm Alpacas
> John,
> I just checked your back links at google and you have 68 of them with
> roughly 90% being internal pages of your website. I wouldn't exactly
> call that winning a popularity link contest and give me a break about
> content since nobody would have created a 68 page website a few years
> back to improve the content of their website. People do it today only to
> get lots of back links from google because of a very fucked up system
> google has.
Well, you should probably check ATW also, and while you are at it, try to
figure out the 302's from my old site that are now redirected. Then, you
might want to look at some of the deep links that my site has - a side
effect of meaningful and unique content.
The site is far more than 68 pages by the way.
You are correct in one sense. Much of this content was broken out into
smaller pages from the original format. This made sense, first from a user
perspective, and second from an SE perspective. Numerous studies have
concluded that surfers do not like to scroll.
>
> I do agree with you in theory that it should be based on content and
> true link exchanges may be a way of doing this if google didn't give
> back links to internal pages of a site nor back links to guestbooks,
> memberlists, blogs etc. None of those thing have anything to do with
> popularity and people linking to your site because they like it. It's
> simply voting for yourself as President 1000 times. Then again that
> sounds like something our mr. bush would do here in the US. mr. bush
> would make a good webmaster today.
If a deeper page has backlinks, should its value not contribute to that of
the overall site? Again, if you examine my site closely you will find that
there are deep links from off-site.
Finally, you remain fixated on Google. I want to rank well in Google, Ink,
MSN, ATW and Teoma. I still have some work to do...
Best regards,
Gateway Farm Alpacas
>
> One last question; I'm in an adult field and would like to start
> something new that doesn't have to be adult but I keep comingup with the
> usual stuff where there's tons of competition. What do you think are
> some good ideas for a business or service over the net that wouldn't be
> too competitive and someone could make $500-$1,000 a month from?
Use inexpensive adwords to draw traffic in, and use expensive adsense to
direct traffic out.
High risk. High return. Not my bag of tea. Hear rumors of folks making
$5k a month doing this though.
Jacqui or Pete
@mail.com says...
...
> One last question; I'm in an adult field and would like to start
> something new that doesn't have to be adult but I keep comingup with the
> usual stuff where there's tons of competition. What do you think are
> some good ideas for a business or service over the net that wouldn't be
> too competitive and someone could make $500-$1,000 a month from?
Fishing tackle: biggest sport in the UK, high margin, not much in the
way of competition.
Frozen maggots by post, anyone?
SEO Dave
>Dave,
> Yeah you're probably right about that. I just look at all those pages I
>have to do instead of just taking them one at a time.
>
>Let me ask you this; Have you pretty much given up on posting to
>memberlists, guestbooks (I found a bunch that google gives back links to
>by the way), blogs etc in place of creating lots of internal pages?
Hi,
I'm concentrating my efforts on useful forum posts and new sites of my
own. Currently working on a big site design change to make it more
appealing (so not been chasing links last ten days or so), was
recently told my design skills suck big time, so time to make an
effort towards the aesthetics of the site as well as SEO.
>If I
>didn't do external posts at all and instead did internal pages would I
>do just as good?
You still need external links as otherwise you'll have very little PR
to play with. If you can get a few pages to PR6 from external links
and then create 10,000+ pages you should be able to make a handful of
PR7s (probably more).
>I can see the advantage of internal pages over external posting because
>at least you're in control of it.
That's why I'm going down that route, they also open up other
opportunities to make money in their own right and if you create
interesting sites as well it's another way to get natural links.
>One last question; I'm in an adult field and would like to start
>something new that doesn't have to be adult but I keep comingup with the
>usual stuff where there's tons of competition.
What's wrong with competition? Lingerie, sex toys etc... is supposedly
highly competitive but I've had no problems getting visitors. I'll be
offering SEO services in the new year and so will be seriously going
after the main SEO phrases then. The site in the sig is mostly fun and
doing OK, when there is money involved watch my SERPs climb :-))
BTW what adult field are you in? (feel free to email if it's not
appropriate for this group).
>What do you think are
>some good ideas for a business or service over the net that wouldn't be
>too competitive and someone could make $500-$1,000 a month from?
If I had the answer to that I'd do it myself, almost everything I'll
be doing next year will take a fair amount of work. Personally I like
a challenge, I don't do lotteries for example since I want to earn my
first million not win it (also gambling is a waste of money)!! There's
a sector (gambling) that has a lot of money to be made from.
Big Bill
>To be honest I'm not sure if links on a page leak pr if there's no back
>link and I'm lately finding that maybe they don't. I have some special
>sites with pr (4-6's) that I use to link to my real sites but don't link
>back to those pages and they haven't dropped in pr and a couple of them
>went up from 4-5 recently. So you could be right in what you say but I'm
>always afraid to take a chance and find out. One thing I do know as you
>said the more links on a page the less pr each link gets. That I've been
>able to text completely and also know that for a fact. But I still have
>more to learn about google linking and somehow need to take a chance one
>day and try experimenting. For instance I origionally started out by
>link farming 8 sites together and got all 8 sites from pages 20-30 up to
>pages 4-8. When I stopped link farming and picked two favorite sites for
>6 sites to link to and the 2 sites not linking back those 2 sites jumped
>up to page 1 and page 2. I've also had a big jump in a site recently
>from page 20 to page 2 simply by creating 40 internal new pages a month
>ago and went from a pr3 to a pr5 in one month with that site but I did
>also post at certain sites as well I have to admit.
>
>Imagine if you had the money to buy about 200 urls and hire a few
>hundred people
In case you don't know it, Sam, this kind of thing is already
happening. Big bucks are being used to manipulate Google results. It's
difficult to see how we one-man-bands can compete.
BB
SEO Dave
wrote:
>In case you don't know it, Sam, this kind of thing is already
>happening. Big bucks are being used to manipulate Google results. It's
>difficult to see how we one-man-bands can compete.
>
>BB
Hi,
I do all the SEO for my sites, spend no money and I'm doing fine. You
have to make opportunities to improve your sites rankings.
Philipp Lenssen
>
> The quest to "preserve" PR may well be much ado about nothing, and in
> the long run may be counter-productive. When I am asked about how to
> get a top listing in the SE's, my response is always the same -
> "Build a site that is worthy of being ranked at the top."
>
> This means building a site that is relevant and authoritative. Not
> only is such a site easier to promote, they have a tendency to
> generate lots of inbound links without any real work on the owner's
> part. Other sites will link because of the relevant content.
>
> A site worthy of top rankings will be long lived, and will require
> minimal upkeep in regards to SE placement. A site designed around
> the latest theory of SE algorithms will require constant tweaking and
> will be vulnerable to dropping from the SERPs like a rock whenever
> the algo's change.
Very well put. Will add this to my blog.
Big Bill
<ooar...@AMntlworld.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 06:23:46 +0000, Big Bill <kr...@cityscape.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>In case you don't know it, Sam, this kind of thing is already
>>happening. Big bucks are being used to manipulate Google results. It's
>>difficult to see how we one-man-bands can compete.
>>
>>BB
>
>Hi,
>
>I do all the SEO for my sites, spend no money and I'm doing fine. You
>have to make opportunities to improve your sites rankings.
>
>David
I can't escape the feeling, SEO Dave, that despite your good
intentions you're swanning around in some kind of amateur universe.
When you get out there with the grown-ups you may find your opinions
change.
BB
Big Bill
What are we, not adult enough? I've done an adult site and the
conclusion I drew is that it was a valuable experience. All concepts
of morality and ethics are out the window with adult sites, the gloves
come off from an SEO point of view. All in all, an education.
BB
SEO Dave
wrote:
>>I do all the SEO for my sites, spend no money and I'm doing fine. You
>>have to make opportunities to improve your sites rankings.
>>
>>David
>
>I can't escape the feeling, SEO Dave, that despite your good
>intentions you're swanning around in some kind of amateur universe.
>When you get out there with the grown-ups you may find your opinions
>change.
>
>BB
ERR, are you forgetting I already run a successful site that receives
around 5000 visitors a day, 99% of which are a direct result of me
(alone, paying no money out) doing SEO stuff?
I might add the sector the site is in is considered highly competitive
(selling adult products) and it's not just a case of receiving high
traffic for lots and lots of obscure search terms, but terms most
people looking for the products I sell. For example the one word
search for Lingerie gets my site over 700 visitors day.
Also by the nature of SEOing a site you also receive a lot of traffic
from obscure search phrases as well, for example 1 hit searches like-
"adult latex baby pants" which I'd of never thought of going after and
not something I'm going to get a sale from IMO. These can add up to
1000 visitors a day.
You tell me if with your site you are even matching that one search
phrase (Lingerie 700 visitors) with all visitors to your site a day?
How many unique visitors does your main site (or sites) receive a day
(and prove it)?
Pull your head out your ass and get creative, anyone with time and a
little lateral thinking can get reasonable traffic (over 1000 uniques
a day) from search engines for a 100+ page site. You don't even need
to be highly skilled at web design etc... (which I'm not) to do well,
since getting traffic from Google doesn't require it.
Out of the 5000 uniques my main site gets a day there are a lot that
come in through the deep content pages (shop pages) which don't have
that much PR and only have internal links pointing to them. A lot of
this traffic is from low traffic phrases that don't require much
optimisation, and certainly don't require paying any money for.
Here's a recent days entry of searches coming to the site, it's the
last 20 out of 1518 different phrases over a 24hr period. I haven't
looked, but bet they are all pointing to deep content pages on my
site.
1,498 vibrating eggs 1 <1%
24.2kB <1%
0
1,499 panty bra lingerie 1 <1%
5.8kB <1%
0
1,500 women saloon 1 <1%
51.5kB <1%
0
1,501 adult+game 1 <1%
23.7kB <1%
0
1,502 64949 1 <1%
6.8kB <1%
0
1,503 leather sex 1 <1%
6.8kB <1%
0
1,504 sexy lingerie for men 1 <1%
13.3kB <1%
0
1,505 PENIS PUMP 1 <1%
54.7kB <1%
0
1,506 bondage chain cuffs collar 1 <1%
33.1kB <1%
0
1,507 penis toy 1 <1%
42.7kB <1%
0
1,508 Veined Jelly Dong with Balls 1 <1%
9.3kB <1%
0
1,509 sex bra 1 <1%
42.7kB <1%
0
1,510 bra sex 1 <1%
42.7kB <1%
0
1,511 "rectal speculum" 1 <1%
4.1kB <1%
0
1,512 open bra lingerie shop 1 <1%
11.3kB <1%
0
1,513 electrical sex 1 <1%
7.9kB <1%
0
1,514 leather lingerie UK 1 <1%
6.8kB <1%
0
1,515 anal vibrator 1 <1%
32.1kB <1%
0
1,516 sexy black shorts 1 <1%
56.0kB <1%
0
1,517 bondage play 1 <1%
27.9kB <1%
0
1,518 handcuffs +women 1 <1%
9.1kB <1%
0
David
Big Bill
Er, I don't have stats on my main pages so I dunno. I don;t get them
from my ISP. Might be worth trying awstats as I think log files are
available.
It occurs that your choice of product is extremely helpful in pulling
in uniques. I've worked only once on a site with one product per page
(the one where you hilariously got confused about the search phrase)
and I don't think the stats told us too much there. So I can't produce
any.
BB