FAQ: Search Engine Optimization

[mntoner]

Question: my site is PHP based and the home page is index.php
There is also a file called index.html which is a simple javascript forwarding to index.php

Is this search engine unfriendly??

[stymiee]

I would recommend using a 301 redirect to do that for you. It will have the same effect, will work in browsers that don't use javascript, and forward any PR index.html has to index.php.

[mntoner]

Thanks very much. I've done that

[vinyl-junkie]

Question: my site is PHP based and the home page is index.php
There is also a file called index.html which is a simple javascript forwarding to index.php

Is this search engine unfriendly??

Search engines generally don't like javascript, so don't ever depend on that for redirects.

[MikeWasHere05]

Great post!

[comedyman]

This was a very helpful FAQ. Thanks.

[on_way_to_fame]

One thing you could do is use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling pages with outbound links.

Lets say i have a page where i display ads...but dont want PR to go out...wont my advertisers mind it ? Is there a way advertisers can actually find out, if i am using my robot.txt for stopping the page from being indexed?

Btw a very very helpful post stymiee...you have done a fabulous job.

[stymiee]

Lets say i have a page where i display ads...but dont want PR to go out...wont my advertisers mind it ? Is there a way advertisers can actually find out, if i am using my robot.txt for stopping the page from being indexed?

If they know enough to look for your robots.txt it will be obvious to them if they know what to look for. There's no way to hide that file since, if you did, the search engines wouldn't be able to find it either.

Btw a very very helpful post stymiee...you have done a fabulous job.

Thank you.

[on_way_to_fame]

In other words...doing it..may affect the relation with advertisers...if i am making sense...

[stymiee]

In other words...doing it..may affect the relation with advertisers...if i am making sense...

It may, if they are after PR. If not, you're cool.

[pxLabs]

Stymiee,

AWESOME article. I'm not an expert on SEO, but SEO makes much more sense now.

Good looking out!

[menuserve]

this thread has been quite helpful.... thanks!

[Spacemen]

Hy stymiee,

a very goog explanation of the fundamental SEO-Stuff. :-)

I am from germany and your article made me to joining this forum.

At this point, i want to say a friendly hello to all users of this forum.

How I am?

I am working für the german biggest car-dealing marketplace AutoScout24 (www.autoscout24.de). I am responsible für P4L, Affiliate and SEO.

[rickstar]

First post ever anywhere, so please humor me.

I need SEO help with a website, it just doesn't seem to be getting a good rank on any search engines except of course when I use pay per click options. The website has been online now for almost a year. If anyone would like to take a look at my website and if you have any suggestions you can do so here http://www.autoaironline.com/ .

Thanks,
Rickstar

[stymiee]

Ok,

Here's a quick list. Nothing huge but stuff that could help.

1) <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">
<META NAME="Revisit-After" content="15 Days">

These meta tags aren't doing anything for you. By default search engines will index everything unless you explicitly tell them not to. They also ignore the revist-after tag as they will come around when they feel like they should come around.

2) Your titles are very good. They are as optimized as you can get.

3) Even though META tags are virtually worthless, yours are excellent. So what little weight they do carry you are at least maximizing.

4) Remove the /html/ from your directory structure. Either change it to a keyword you want to rank well for (my recommendation) or remove it completely. At best it does nothing for you. At worst it hurts your keyword density in your URLs (yes, keywords in your URL matter).

5) Change the underscores '_' to dashes '-' in your file names (I see them a lot in your image files and some pages, too). Underscores are not seen as a space so the file name seems like one big odd word. Dashes help them differentiate keywords and help you rank better for them.

6) Good use of the TITLE attribute in your hyperlinks. Not only did you use them for keywords but you made your site more accessible in the process. Very cool move.

7) Your mage filename paths are currently like this: '/assets/images/autogen/something.gif'. Try using keywords for your directory names. Something like: '/images/automotive/parts/condensers.gif' or '/images/automotive/parts/compressors.gif'.

8) Use <Hx> tags for headers. Header tags help in rankings. Try changing:

<P STYLE="text-align: justify;"><B><SPAN STYLE="font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">AutoAirOnline - Automotive Air Conditioning Parts Specialist</SPAN></B></P>

to:

<H1 STYLE="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;font-family: Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,Helvetica,Sans-serif,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;margin:0;padding:0;">AutoAirOnline - Automotive Air Conditioning Parts Specialist</H1>

9) Good use of the ALT attribute in your image tags. Good for SEO and accessibility.

10) Get Backlinks! You just don't have a whole lot right now. Plus the ones that are linking to you aren't using keywords in their anchor text which is killing you. If possible, try to get incomming links to use text like, 'Automotive Air Conditioning Parts'. That will be probably the biggest thing you can do.

One semi-off-topic note: You should take advantge of stylesheets more then you currently have. A lot of your code can be removed and simplified with proper stylesheet usage. This also can benefit your SEO as it makes the crawler's life a lot easier by having less code to sift through.

[rickstar]

Hi Stymiee,

Thanks so much for the help, and fast to. I will try and but this information to good use.

Rickstar

[Webnauts]

John I do not think using irrelevant and unnecessary META tags make sence.
Therefore I do not recommend using <META NAME="Revisit-After" content="15 Days">

[stymiee]

If you read a little bit closer you'll notice I told him to remove them.

[Webnauts]

If you read a little bit closer you'll notice I told him to remove them.

Oh, my apologies John! I misunderstood that.

[timothy567]

Thanks for the great tips. I seem to be following all of these rules, lets just hope traffic will eventually pick up.

[rjn]

stymiee,

Thanks for putting this information together in a single location. While I have been spending most of my time trying to put together my first web site, I have tried to learn a bit about about SEO so I wouldn't (hopefully) have to redo a lot of pages.

Since I am still building content (~10% completed), I welcome any suggestions that I should incorporate now.

I did submit to Google (the right column will be used for advertising) - the site has been spidered once but my site is not in Google. Yahoo found my site (I didn't submit) this past week and the site is listed in Yahoo. Go figure.

Thanks for any advice.

[Alex]

Great stuff here guys. Lovin' it!

[olvign]

5) Change the underscores '_' to dashes '-' in your file names (I see them a lot in your image files and some pages, too). Underscores are not seen as a space so the file name seems like one big odd word. Dashes help them differentiate keywords and help you rank better for them.

Is that really so? By me, Google able differentiate keywords in URL even without "_" or "-".

Please, let me know what do you think. Because, if that is true, I'll must correct my scripts.

Thanks,
OlViGn

[Mrlinux]

"Should I submit my website to the Search Engines by hand or use software?"
I`m not with that, is not good using software to submit on search engine.

[stymiee]

"Should I submit my website to the Search Engines by hand or use software?"
I`m not with that, is not good using software to submit on search engine.

Isn't that what is says in the FAQ?