A question for the experts!

If I create my site using layers so it reads absolutely logically in the
Lynx browser - will this help with SEO optimisation? As it stands it's all
over the place in Lynx. (www.paris-tours.info)

I also have a list of drop down dates - will these get indexed as I really
don't want them to unless I can stick a key word or phrase in front - but
then would this be considered spamming?

Other than that thanks for the ongoing reading - I'm struggling since the
guy who did my previous seo on other sites unfortunately fell off his perch
somewhat prematurely leaving me to get on with this one.

Cheers

Grant

"Buzby" <gb@pumpupthe.net> wrote in message
news:3g8oe1Fb132qU1@individual.net...
>
>
> A question for the experts!
>
> If I create my site using layers so it reads absolutely logically in the
> Lynx browser - will this help with SEO optimisation? As it stands it's all
> over the place in Lynx. (www.paris-tours.info)
>
> I also have a list of drop down dates - will these get indexed as I really
> don't want them to unless I can stick a key word or phrase in front - but
> then would this be considered spamming?
>
> Other than that thanks for the ongoing reading - I'm struggling since the
> guy who did my previous seo on other sites unfortunately fell off his
perch
> somewhat prematurely leaving me to get on with this one.
>
> Cheers
>
> Grant

i take it you mean DIV's not layers (thats a netscape thing)

It should help.

Mark

Buzby wrote:
> A question for the experts!
>
> If I create my site using layers so it reads absolutely logically in the
> Lynx browser - will this help with SEO optimisation?

Not neccesarily - robots probably have a limited opinion on how a page
looks, the only thing about Lynx is that it that it probably shows you a
view similar to an SE robot in terms of text content, title and headers
- the most important on-page elements. The semantics matter little.

Your current home page page needs to drop all those meta tags and move
the content higher up - at the moment it seems to look like a long drop
down list of dates. The ALT text is a bit long for your images too. The
table driven design is also a bit verbose. A lot of the anchor text is
unfocussed - why are thses PB, VVG etc terms included, will people
search on these? Morning tours might better be morning tours in Paris or
something that works well without sounding too spammy. I know you do
this on inside pages but normally you home page has most PR to
distribute so should be more focussed. Also check on
Wordtracker/Overture to see what people search on and check the terms in
Google to analyze the competition for those terms.

Apart from that the site works well for me, easy to navigate and clear.
It may possibly be worthwhile rewriting your URLs to replace the '?'
query string separator with '/' slashes. They will get indexed but this
may make the resources look more specific.

I would be tempted to expand the site to be a resource for Paris with
pages about the River Seine, Versaille, Monet's Garden etc so that you
can have a lot of themed internal linking and hopefully attract IBLs
from other sites. You may need a copywriter and photographer for this -
or just a guidebook or a day with Wikipedia :-).

----------------------
http://www.abcseo.com/

davidof wrote:

> Your current home page page needs to drop all those meta tags and move
> the content higher up - at the moment it seems to look like a long

I still wonder at this: has a bot really a problem with finding content in
an arbitrary page? Eg: does the content have to start at line 7, and does
the menu have to be moved down to the bottom, so it's less "significant"?

Or are bots smart enough to recognize a menu for what it is? And content
for what it is? And be able to skip over an image?

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

> Buzby wrote:
>> A question for the experts!
>>
>> If I create my site using layers so it reads absolutely logically in the
>> Lynx browser - will this help with SEO optimisation?
>
> Not neccesarily - robots probably have a limited opinion on how a page
> looks, the only thing about Lynx is that it that it probably shows you a
> view similar to an SE robot in terms of text content, title and headers -
> the most important on-page elements. The semantics matter little.
>
> Your current home page page needs to drop all those meta tags and move the
> content higher up - at the moment it seems to look like a long drop down
> list of dates. The ALT text is a bit long for your images too. The table
> driven design is also a bit verbose. A lot of the anchor text is
> unfocussed - why are thses PB, VVG etc terms included, will people search
> on these? Morning tours might better be morning tours in Paris or
> something that works well without sounding too spammy. I know you do this
> on inside pages but normally you home page has most PR to distribute so
> should be more focussed. Also check on Wordtracker/Overture to see what
> people search on and check the terms in Google to analyze the competition
> for those terms.
>
> Apart from that the site works well for me, easy to navigate and clear. It
> may possibly be worthwhile rewriting your URLs to replace the '?' query
> string separator with '/' slashes. They will get indexed but this may make
> the resources look more specific.
>
> I would be tempted to expand the site to be a resource for Paris with
> pages about the River Seine, Versaille, Monet's Garden etc so that you can
> have a lot of themed internal linking and hopefully attract IBLs from
> other sites. You may need a copywriter and photographer for this - or just
> a guidebook or a day with Wikipedia :-).

Thanks David

All points duly noted - I'm sort of moving into bandit territory here for
me.

I was pondering the idea of 'static' pages - you've just tipped me on that
one.

With regards content - I've just signed up for an xml feed for hotel rooms,
which will go on once I figured out to deal with it. I'd never looked at
Wikipedia before - I think we will becoming very well aquainted in the not
too distant future . . . . . .

Cheers

Grant

John Bokma wrote:
> I still wonder at this: has a bot really a problem with finding content in
> an arbitrary page? Eg: does the content have to start at line 7, and does
> the menu have to be moved down to the bottom, so it's less "significant"?

It is true that Google, for one, is indexing a lot more of pages now -
I've found pages 500K long that are indexed but I figure that pages that
have less cruft on them will still be indexed quicker and more easily -
it may not make a difference but why take the risk? Bit like Luigi's
insistence on SSL all his pages, it is only going to make a robot's job
more difficult. Do the easy stuff, remove the hurdles, then concentrate
on the rest. Just a PoV.

davidof wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> I still wonder at this: has a bot really a problem with finding
>> content in an arbitrary page? Eg: does the content have to start at
>> line 7, and does the menu have to be moved down to the bottom, so
>> it's less "significant"?
>
> It is true that Google, for one, is indexing a lot more of pages now -
> I've found pages 500K long that are indexed but I figure that pages
> that have less cruft on them will still be indexed quicker and more
> easily -

I meant normal sized web pages (e.g. 10-30K). I can't believe that
Google
wants to see the content start at line 7, and that one gets punished if
one uses 20 lines in the header, then 40 lines of menu, and then
content.

It's not that hard for a bot to see if a page follows:

[ header ]
[ menu ]
[ content ]

or

[ header ]
[ content ]
[ menu ]

Of course I can imagine situations that prefers the latter, for example
when the menu it very unrelated to the actual content, since then you
get something like:

[ widgets ]
[ ....... ]
[ non-widgets ]
[ ........... ]
[ widgets ]

I can imagine that there must be some "optimal" distance between the
title, and the content related to the title. But if the menu is related
to the title (e.g. widgets) I can't see why Google would reward moving
the content to the top.

> it may not make a difference but why take the risk?

Because it means people start to design pages for bots, not for humans.
Ok, some understand a bit CSS, but Google tells us to design for humans.

> Bit like
> Luigi's insistence on SSL all his pages, it is only going to make a
> robot's job more difficult.

For a bot it doesn't matter if a 20k page is in header-menu-content
order or header-content-menu order. It just fetches the page. The
program that assigns meaning to the page (I guess that's a separate
program), already has to find out what is what, and "recognizing" a menu
is not that hard.

> Do the easy stuff, remove the hurdles,
> then concentrate on the rest. Just a PoV.

Agreed with that one, and for some designs it's easier to have the menu
first in the HTML page. Some pages have even more complex structures,
e.g. a general menu, a bread crumb trail, and menus left and right (as
ones sees it in the browser). Imagine that such a page would perform bad
unless someone puts all menus and navigation just before </body> and
uses CSS to position it. It sounds silly, and hence I doubt it's needed.

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

John Bokma wrote:
> Because it means people start to design pages for bots, not for humans.
> Ok, some understand a bit CSS, but Google tells us to design for humans.

I think we basically agree on this. The site in question looked pretty
easy to use so I didn't want to make a big issue about that. The problem
is that some sites are designed neither for humans, google, msn search
or even chimps. A lot of people I see who are having problems seem to
have one thing in common - very poorly structured pages - I'm not saying
a page needs to validate but if there is very little on-page information
about the theme of the site it is going to be hard for a bot to do its
work. This wasn't the case for the Paris Tours site but I would still
remove unneccesary tags.

I will set up an experiment to see which type of page ranks best though.
Will let you know details later.

>> Because it means people start to design pages for bots, not for humans.
>> Ok, some understand a bit CSS, but Google tells us to design for humans.
>
> I think we basically agree on this. The site in question looked pretty
> easy to use so I didn't want to make a big issue about that. The problem
> is that some sites are designed neither for humans, google, msn search or
> even chimps. A lot of people I see who are having problems seem to have
> one thing in common - very poorly structured pages - I'm not saying a page
> needs to validate but if there is very little on-page information about
> the theme of the site it is going to be hard for a bot to do its work.
> This wasn't the case for the Paris Tours site but I would still remove
> unneccesary tags.
>
> I will set up an experiment to see which type of page ranks best though.
> Will let you know details later.

I'm on the case ;-)

Any other suggestions?

Cheers

Grant

davidof wrote:

> John Bokma wrote:
>> Because it means people start to design pages for bots, not for humans.
>> Ok, some understand a bit CSS, but Google tells us to design for humans.
>
> I think we basically agree on this. The site in question looked pretty
> easy to use so I didn't want to make a big issue about that. The problem
> is that some sites are designed neither for humans, google, msn search
> or even chimps.

LOL. Yeah that's very sad. And sometimes it's amazing, the companies behind
those sites should know better.

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html