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kology
Joined: Mar 25, 2005
# Posts: 2
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Posted: 2005-Mar-25 18:53
The SEO company like many I've encountered have no idea what they are saying.
The use of too many embbeded tables from my experience may actually hurt the ranking.
From personal experience across many different client sites, converting their site to valid XHML actually signficantly improves ranking even when content hasn't been rewritten. Of course using XHML you start using h1 and h2 tags, and position content in oder of improtance.
For more info, please read
The Dollars and Sense of Building to Standards
[link]
and
SEO and Your Web Site
[link]
Both articles reference the benefit of Standards and the impact on SEO
This may be some ammunition for you to use with your client.
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pixelpyro
Joined: Mar 09, 2005
# Posts: 20
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Posted: 2005-Mar-25 20:52
Hi Guys thanks for all the comments.
I have been in contact with the client and explained the situation and feedback/response from this thread and have been advised that the SEO company is still in the early stages of optimisation and that is why several of the points have mentioned don't seem to have been done (page titles, headers, etc)
I was finally given contact details for the SEO company yesterday and zipped them off an email outlining my concerns.
In reference to my concerns about why the site was changed from XHTML / CSS the response was that there are "questions (problems) that the pages are not indexed by Google. It is very easy to make a mistake in the code of XHTML/CSS pages so that Google will treat this as a spam and/or will be banned and/or not indexed"
It was also stated that "In our opinion the coding is not in the first priority in the web promotion and of course we have our own “no-how” methods which will be used on (the site).
My main concern has always been the need of the SEO campany to completely redevelop the site due to XHTML/CSS not being "search engine friendly" and so it can be integrated into a CMS. Of course this raised several issue for me in that I only create sites that are XHTML/CSS and as such am effectively shooting myself in the foot when it comes to optimisation.
Obviously the only way we can really see how effective this approach will be is to give it time and assess the results. I have no idea how long that would be but......
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10438
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Posted: 2005-Mar-25 23:17
>> It is very easy to make a mistake in the code of XHTML/CSS pages so that Google will treat this as a spam and/or will be banned and/or not indexed" <<
Err, that is complete rubbish. Any code (XHTML/HTML) that is badly malformed could end up not being spidered. However, your code was validated XHTML so that doesn't apply. For really badly formed code, it might not be spidered, but it would never be banned. These idiots use FUD as their main marketing strategy by the look of it.
>> advised that the SEO company is still in the early stages of optimisation and that is why several of the points have mentioned don't seem to have been done.. <<
Why the hell would they upload unfinished work to a production server? In most companies you could be fired for doing that. The new site should be developed and tested completely offline on a development server, or online in a development sub-domain that is blocked to all search engine spiders.
>> in our opinion the coding is not in the first priority in the web promotion and of course we have our own “no-how” methods which will be used <<
That's an opinion, not a fact. There they go with that FUD stuff again. They say that they have "no-how". Yes I'd agree with that. It seems like you have the "know-how" and they don't.
An (X)HTML document built from headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, and forms, with clear semantic structure, validated code, and external CSS and JS, will win out in Google simply because the spider has less work to do to find the content, the importance/structure of the content is defined, and with no errors in the code the bot is going to be able to make a straight pass through the page to index the lot in one easy move.
You're right. They're wrong. They sound like bodgers.
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pixelpyro
Joined: Mar 09, 2005
# Posts: 20
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Posted: 2005-Mar-26 18:17
Thanks g1smd - having read all the replies it has certainly given me the incentive to find out more and apply it to my websites safe in the knowledge that I am working from a solid foundation.
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g1smd
Staff
Joined: Jul 28, 2002
# Posts: 10438
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Posted: 2005-Mar-26 19:08
I am just helping someone convert a site now. Their code has a section where there is a span inside a div inside a div inside a div. There is text at every level of the heirarchy, and some pages are styled using CSS classes on the divs and the span, whilst others have tons of inline font tags inside this mess.
The new code has a <h3>...</h3> heading, followed by a <p>...</p> paragraph, followed by a paragraph with a class name <p class="sig">...</p>. The amount of HTML code on the page is reduced by about 80%. The content now has a logical and semantic structure. The bot has less work to do. The page loads slightly faster. The page looks exactly the same in the browser! I know it will rank higher in a few days time - no idea why; but I have seen it happen several times before.
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yellowwing
Joined: May 21, 2002
# Posts: 2526
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Posted: 2005-Mar-26 20:20
I am curious as to how your client XHTML pages parse out in the Lynx Viewer.
If it looks okay, you can optimize it without wrecking the code, (assuming this Lynx Viewer can render the code).
pixelpyro, this could be an opportunity. Learning how to how to get rankings with XHTML could be profitable.
I don't know the first thing about XHTML. I just look at a client site and make recommendations on content and keyword placement and prominence. Their developers implement it. If it doesn't look right, or can't be done, we come up with an alternative that can be done.
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Vinnie
Joined: Nov 03, 2003
# Posts: 66
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Posted: 2005-Mar-27 16:07
Why the hell would they upload unfinished work to a production server? In most companies you could be fired for doing that. The new site should be developed and tested completely offline on a development server, or online in a development sub-domain that is blocked to all search engine spiders.
My sentiments exactly. This whole thing sounds like a company trying to play at being SEO with no knowledge of coding.
Unfortunately this is becoming more and more of an issue. We see it many times, we arrive at a website to troubleshoot why it's not working too well in search engines when the site owner has had it looked at by an SEO company.
We usually find these issues and not in no particular order:
Code has been tampered with and a mix of inline styles and CSS has caused the site to no,longer validate.
Spammy keywords
no logical layout
too many tables been added making it useless for a spider to reach the content
misuse of titles (or rather not structured properly)
Link flow (usually worthless inbound links from the same IP block or c-class)
url addressing (usually not knowing when to use a hyphen or underscore to emphasis a product page)
The list is endless. A lot of these people who are jumping onto the SEO bandwagon because they have done a bit of reading do not realise that optimising comes in knowing how to code or working with a person who does know how to code right. The taking into account structure bad how it will be read by a spider.
Then moving onto SEM to implement it live and work it through the search
engines,
The list is endless. In this case it sounds like a company trying their luck. Did anyone check to see how they ranked in the search engines themselves?
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bruno1378
Joined: Mar 28, 2005
# Posts: 1
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Posted: 2005-Mar-28 14:37
I just got to this thread for a link at Search Engine Watch.
I honestly hope you can convince the client that they have been taken for a ride by this SEO company.
Explain to them that by using semantic code and CSS, their site can be easily modified whenever they want. By the SEO company reverting back to a table based layout, essentially what they have done is made it so if the client wants to update any look/feel items of the site, they can bill more hours for it.
You might want to show the client CSS Zen Garden, as an explanation of how the semantic XHTML CODE you have created will never need to be changed to update the look and feel of the site. Explain to them that that way, any SEO that is done to the content never even needs to be touched! All design elements are in the CSS.
And most of all! Firmly suggest that they contact another SEO company to get another opinion - I am sure if you find another reputable company, they will back up that your code is certainly better than what this SEO company has done to it.....why is an SEO company messing w/ the code anyway, unless SEO is not their main priority, development is?
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