4 replies to this topic

[johni]

Hi folks,

Thanks very much for developing these forums Jill. The questions and responses provide a wonderful resource and timesaver for us new students of SEO and all of the contributors are terrific.


My question(s) revolve around my current attempt to assist a friend in optimizing his existing Cold Fusion website.

Here's what I'm currently seeing on the site:

All of the links on the site currently have '?' in them.

The navigational stuff throughout the site is all in JavaScript with the links buried in the .js, or there are graphical links with less than descriptive ALT tags.

There is no site map currently present on the site.


In my own newbie, simple terms my first act in optimizing this site would be to install a '?' conversion program like Spider Safe URL on the server and add a site map which would be linked to the front page.

Then I would remove the JavaScript navigational code to another page and also link to it from the main page similar to the way a style sheet works.

Wherever possible I would turn graphical links into html links and all graphics would use specific ALT tag descriptions containing keywords whenever possible.


Are the above good SEO techniques for existing Cold Fusion sites?

What am I missing? (A lot I'm sure!)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

John

[Scottie]

Welcome to the forum, Johni!

You don't necessarily need to remove all ? signs in order for the URL's to be crawlable... only if there are more than 3 criteria after the ?.

It sounds like you are on the right path. I wouldn't worry too much about removing graphical links either- they are fine. Text ones are better but a graphic link with an alt attribute will be OK as well.

[Matt B]

Are the above good SEO techniques for existing Cold Fusion sites?

It all depends on how the CF is written. The same as if it were ASP or PHP.

The main problem with CF is how much code was generated by the program as opposed to how much was actually "programmed." The more the program is allowed to generate the program, the more complicated the query strings tend to be. On large part, ColdFusion generated query strings are more lengthly and too difficult for search engines to spider. I have seen a few search-friendly CF sites, but not many.

[johni]

Many thanks to scottiecl and Matt B. for your very helpful responses to my initial SEO and Cold Fusion questions. I apologize for not responding sooner!

Thanks again for reading folks.

John

[Jill]

Welcome, John!

Jill