9 replies to this topic

[glengara]

I'm talking about the perfectly above-board stuff that nevertheless indicates the perfect page has not come about by chance.

The ones that spring to mind are:

rel-nofollow on internals

NOODP/NOYDIR

Any others?

[Jill]

This is a great topic!

On nofollows, not sure if you could use that one as many blog software and apparently some other cms's have this built in these days.

Never would have thought of the noodp one though!

[Randy]

Stuffed meta keywords tags. (hey, it's still seo even if it's bad seo.)
Signing up for tools like Google Webmaster Central.
Being listed in <gasp> DMOZ or <double gasp> Yahoo Directory.
A majority of links pointing to a site being those from directories.
Embedded code from places like Traffic Power Sorry, that one was just too easy to leave it out!
Footer links on every page to some SEO outfit.
Silly comments in the code used by some silly seos.
Links on 1 pixel by 1 pixel graphics.
Submission of an xml site map.

The list goes on and on.

[glengara]

I mean the subtle ones Randy, from your list I could only accept:

Google Webmaster Central account.

and even that's pushing it...

[Ignoramus]

I'm talking about the perfectly above-board stuff that nevertheless indicates the perfect page has not come about by chance.

The ones that spring to mind are:

rel-nofollow on internals

NOODP/NOYDIR

Any others?

Not sure what you mean by that.

Are you saying that legitimate and accepted techniques to 'point' the search engines in the right direction indicate that the site or page is not 'perfect' ?

If so, why NOODP/NOYDIR ? These simply instruct the engines to ignore descriptions given by human editors who may not have the time, inclination, or knowledge to describe the site acccurately. In other words, you are telling the engines to disregard humans and make up their own minds based on the content (if they also ignore your own description tag). That's a vote of confidence in your page.

[Jill]

Iggy, he just means signs that you probably put at least some SEO thought into your site.

I think signing up for Webmaster Tools is a definite there. In fact, even signing up for Google Analytics might be in the same boat.

[qwerty]

Do you mean stuff like the content of the h1 being exactly the same as (or exactly the same as a portion of) the page's title?

[glengara]

I didn't mean on-page SEO stuff, everybody knows about it now and it could be down to a gifted or ungifted amateur, I meant more the signs that point towards a professional involvement.

And I'd disagree with including the G analytics Jill, from what I see a lot of SEO clueless designers are using them :-)

[Ignoramus]

Iggy, he just means signs that you probably put at least some SEO thought into your site.

Ah - got it. Thanks.

[Mary Bowling]

Internal linking structure controlling the PR flow.

Well optimized site map.