25 replies to this topic

[Webnauts]

No, it's not a problem, which is why I didn't delete them.

It's just that there are hundreds of thousands of SEO resources out there that are not very good, in my opinion.  Which is the a big reason why we have this forum, and why I have my newsletter. 

The resources you posted might be very good, and I'm sure if you posted them you feel that they are.  Unfortuantely, I don't have the time to check out every resource that is posted, so I like to warn people to be careful. 

If one of our moderators says something about SEO, you can generally believe it is good advice.  That's why they've been chosen to be moderators here.  Any outside resource needs to be carefully evaluated, and some research done on the authors to ensure that they actually know what they're talking about.  Most likely they do, but as I said, there's much more bad SEO advice out there than good.  And I've read lots of it.  There are very few things that I read that I agree with 100% for whatever reason.  Doesn't mean I'm right and they're wrong, but it just means you have to take everything you read with a grain of salt unless you know and trust the person who wrote it.

Jill

Got it Jill! You are just right!
Well I will stay tuned here on accessibility and usability issues where I have most knowledge and experience.

[Jill]

Great, Webnauts!

Here's one more usability issue for you. When you post a reply, there's generally no need to quote the entire post you're replying to, as that can get fairly repetitive to the user. Generally it's best to simply paste the relevant sentence or two that you are replying to.



Jill

[Webnauts]

I always had respect for the writers copyright!
Is that really not a problem?

[Jill]

No, it's not a problem. I deleted your quote in the above post. You see, it's still flows nicely in the forum, and everyone knows what you're talking about. No need to quote the entire post, and many times, no quoting is necessary. (It also uses up a lot of forum bandwidth to repeat everything.)

Thanks!

Jill

[braindead]

My personal choice for Title tags is to remove all extranneous words like "your clear choice." That will simply confuse the spiders as to what your page is truly about.

I doubt keywords alone lead to higher CTR. I would recommend including a hook - something to encourage the prospect to click through from the SERPs.

[Webnauts]

No, it's not a problem. I deleted your quote in the above post. You see, it's still flows nicely in the forum, and everyone knows what you're talking about. No need to quote the entire post, and many times, no quoting is necessary. (It also uses up a lot of forum bandwidth to repeat everything.)

Thanks!

Jill

Sorry Jill! I did not understand what you mean!
But now I really got it.

[Jill]

Umm...I don't think you do get it! You've quoted my post again!

LOL...when you reply to someone's post, just hit reply, not quote. That'll do it for you...

Jill

[seo guy]

1 comment about the company name as a trailer, not only is it superfluous to have your company name in the title (unless your keywords are in your company name) or branding is that important to you, however we are not discussing branding we are discussing SEO and so there must be a consideration of the issue of stop text, I believe the stop text for a title is 55 chars but I'd have to look it up but imagine your business name was the "xyz association" and you placed "by xyz assosiation" and you started the "By... at char point 45 then you end up with this in the SERP "by XYZ ASS" hmmm so you used your company name why?
Just my 2 cents

[Tom Philo]

To summarize two points:

Title tags are read by search engines and then displayed.

The SERP are read by PEOPLE and acted upon.

The words used in the title will determine how high up on the SERP it may appear but the English (French, German etc) phaseology will determine if people ACT upon what they SEE.

If a person sees a bunch of related words but no information about the company and see the same words AND a company name -- which one are they more likley to go to?

It is not always about branding, it is about helping the people once they see results is why I talked about putting your name in front on title tags.

I should have put that into my first post.

[seo guy]

Agreed Tom,
But if I construct a page targeting "x" and I do a good job and I have just "x" in the title then when my surfer types in "x" which is the surfer im looking for and they see "x" as the title, and then the description will be pulled containing a portion of my onpage content with "x" logically displayed then my feeling is that is going to be attractive to "x" searcher. Also there is the aspect to consider of that portion of surfers who are impulse clickers, there is a reason 85% of clicks view the first 3 links, they dont actually read them they just click and thus a higher serp position is desired for this user. I am not saying that "just keywords" are always the way to go, but if you are being specific enough with your page content and theme then the actual displayed information should have enough appeal for both type of visitor. Taking it to one extreme or the other of course is always bad.
Noone want to see the title="x"
and desc ="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

That would turn off almost all surfers

[Tom Philo]

Well said.


I wish some of these web research people would not only study how people naviagate in real time web pages but how they use their saved links and what makes them click on one saved link - or save a link - over another covering the same topic - and how they remember what the saved link is really about before clicking on it.

Sigh,

may never know.