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302 Redirects Appear As 200 Status

May 14, 2008
If you're a true techie geek, you will like this High Rankings forum thread where member "doughayman" notices some weirdness in his server logs. With some probing, forum moderator and all-around server wizard "Randy" helps diagnose the problem, and all is well again. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Too Many Hits for My Custom 404 Page

April 30, 2008
Forum member "johking" posted that her 404-error page is getting tons of hits, and wonders if it's set up incorrectly. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Using Nofollow: Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

March 26, 2008
Now that the nofollow link attribute has been around for awhile, and even sanctioned by Google's Matt Cutts for "PageRank Sculpting," forum member "nethy" is wondering what your thoughts are on it. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Data Feeds and Duplicate Content

January 2, 2008
A lot of my clients pull data/products from semi-public databases to populate their websites, similar to how real estate agents show listings of homes on their sites. I've been ensuring that each client has unique valuable and professionally edited content whenever possible on the rest of the site, but I’m afraid that if I make the portions of the site that use the semi-public data accessible to the search engines, they will find duplicate information on other sites and my client site(s) would not be indexed. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Need Some Input on Site Outline

January 2, 2008
Forum member "ronfrank" is new to SEO and is having trouble figuring out how to categorize his site based on keyword phrases. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Changing URLs

November 28, 2007
I am in the process of changing all my URLs from things like news123.html to OurCompany_Announces_New_CEO.html Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Changing Homepage URL

November 28, 2007
For those looking for some advanced SEO info, we have a ton of it in our “Technobabble” area of the forum. There’s tons of great info on dynamic sites, as well as mountains of technical info on redirects, mod_rewrites, etc. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

DMOZ Description

November 14, 2007
It appears the text Google is now showing [for a particular keyword phrase] is from our DMOZ directory listing. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Static-seeming Sites

November 14, 2007
My company is considering building some new sites where content is loaded from a database. We plan on using static URLs no matter what, but we are wondering if it matters whether the content comes from static, unique HTML files, or if the HTML page is served from a database. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Multiple Informational Sites

October 3, 2007
I have a plastic surgeon client who specializes in many procedures and has spent a fortune on developing a very nice site that has been done in Flash. In efforts to get him some traffic, we are doing a double campaign, one with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and one using SEO tactics. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is a FrontPage Website Search Engine Unfriendly?

September 26, 2007

I am a small business owner with a circa 2003 website that needs an overhaul both in terms of SEO optimization and visual appeal. I have no time or talent to do this and want to hire a company.

 

I have received a reply from one company that said the problem with my website is that it was written in FrontPage. They implied that that was a problem both from a design perspective and for SEO. Do you agree? And if so, does my website need to be recreated in HTML?

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Is SEO an Extra Skill or a Prerequisite When Designing a Website?

September 26, 2007
Forum member "rolf" told the community of a website design company that created a brand-new site completely in Flash for a client, even though the client expressed an interest in having the website found in the search engines. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Submitting to Google or a Sitemap?

September 25, 2007
I submitted our website sitemap to Google a while back, but I was reading a forum this morning where somebody was saying you have to submit every page to Google. What is the real procedure and are sitemaps important? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Does Graceful Degradation Really Work

September 19, 2007
At the place where I work as an e-commerce copywriter, we are about to take a pretty successful, basic, unpretentious e-commerce website and guck it up – er, I mean, enhance it — with fancy Flash animation on virtually every page. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Revisited: The Art of SEO

August 29, 2007
Hey everyone! I’m back from vacation and the conference and raring to go. Today’s article is an updated version of one I wrote back in 2004 on the art of SEO. I recently reviewed it and was surprised at how accurate it still is today. I figured there are many of you on the list who never read it the first time around, and for those who did, you’ve probably forgotten it by now. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Matt Cutts Giving Out Clues via Google Webmaster Central?

July 25, 2007
Forum moderator Jonathan Hochman (jehochman) noticed a post on Matt Cutts’ blog asking people to vote for what features they’d most want added to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Jonathan thought it was curious that one of the proposed features would tell webmasters which pages on their sites don’t validate. He wondered why Google would do that if they don’t care about pages that validate. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Getting Into Google - New Unavailable_after Tag and More!

July 11, 2007
Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour. As I sat there listening to him (yes, I actually listened to this one!), I was struck by what an awesome opportunity it was for everyone in that room to be provided with such important information — straight from Google. It was clear that the 100 or so people in the room agreed. In fact, at 7:30 on the dot, everyone spontaneously stopped their networking activities and simply took their seats without being asked to. These folks definitely came to hear Google! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Does a Site Redesign Spell Trouble for Rankings?

May 30, 2007
In another post, "DannyAFC" says he feels that his site needs a redesign but isn't sure what elements he can safely change without hurting his search engine rankings. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Avoiding Duplicate Content on eCommerce Site

May 30, 2007
Forum member "Brandon C" asks, "I want to be able to offer a true breadcrumb for customers in an ecommerce store, but I am afraid that the product page will get penalized for duplicate content if I'm not careful." Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Why Have We Gone From <br> to <br />?

May 29, 2007
Forum member "Doogie" wonders why we've gone from <br> to <br />? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Best Place for a Blog

May 23, 2007
Our site has a blog which is www.blog.domain.com — should it really be www.domain.com/blog ? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Display: None

May 23, 2007
I have to create some pages for a client. They are full of images and little to no content and have no title tags…however, they still want SEO services…*groan* Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Best Practices for 50 Micro-sites

May 9, 2007

I wanted to discuss the possibility of developing a best practice/checklist
guide for our company to follow.  Our new  initiative will be to launch 50
or so micro-sites focused on our key product categories.  These sites will
need to be rolled  out quickly.

Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

HTML vs. Joomla

May 9, 2007
What if you have 2 identical websites with the same Meta tags and same content, but one is “100% HTML web design (clean code, CSS design)” and the other is “100% Joomla, fully loaded with SEO options”? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Lost Rankings Due to Site Redesign or Spam?

April 18, 2007
I started answering this question with the usual answer, but as I looked at the site in question, I realized there was more going on than meets the eye. Please read through the entire question and my response to see what I mean! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Pauline’s Poll of the Week

April 18, 2007
What is more important to you and the other major stakeholders within your organization? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Creating a New Site Based on One Product

April 4, 2007
We have a website with tips and advice about health products. The competition is quite tough in this field, but we have one product that is doing extremely well in search engines and other websites are starting to link to it as well. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

What’s Important to Search Engines and What’s Not

March 21, 2007
I recently had an inquiry from someone who was looking for some possible SEO consulting with me. He was in the process of a redesign and wanted to be sure not to make any mistakes along the way, which is super-smart! The time to be looking at SEO is definitely in the beginning stage of any design or redesign project. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

CSS Better than Tables?

March 21, 2007
Are Sites Created with CSS Better than Those Created with Tables? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Hiding Links Behind a Flash Menu

March 7, 2007
Forum member "joeeee" asks if it's okay to hide a link behind a Flash menu. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Expanding Services and SEO

February 28, 2007
Your email newsletter is one of my favorites, and I get a bunch of them from SEO “experts” and others. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Adding a List of Keywords

February 28, 2007
Great newsletter. My business partner is developing our site and wants to put a list of keywords at the bottom of some of our shop pages (i.e. below the text) in the hopes that this will get the search engines to notice us slightly more. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Anyone Know of a Good PHP Calendar?

February 21, 2007
"Johking" is looking for a PHP calendar he can add to his website. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Meta Tag Includes

January 31, 2007
I have a question relating to Meta tags and the head document. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

New CMS Changing File Extensions

January 3, 2007
Our web site has been around for many years and we are switching over to a content management system coded in JSP, but with extensions ending in .do as opposed to what we currently have, .asp. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Optimizing Flash Sites

January 3, 2007
I am working for a Flash site that is brand-new. How can that be indexed and come up in the SERPs? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Wrong Code

January 3, 2007
I recently met with a company that provides SEO as one of their services and I was told point-blank that our site is written with the “wrong code,” and therefore the search engines can’t read it. I use FrontPage and have nothing more fancy than text, tables, pictures, and some links to other industry sites. Should I be suspicious? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Cold Fusion Pages

December 13, 2006
I have a client whose web site has been created in Cold Fusion. I am not all that familiar with these types of pages but right now most of their page text and metas are being pulled from another document and are not actually part of the “live site code.” Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Content in Tables

December 13, 2006
If my pages are in a table, and if I add a header to that table for a caption, put my main keyword for that page in it, and make it a bold and big h1 tag, will it help? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack

November 29, 2006
As you know there are a lot of so-called SEO/SEM experts/gurus claiming all
sorts of things. The analogy to me is like "quack" doctors compared to the
genuine article.

Are there 6 or a dozen questions that would expose those purporting to be
experts? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Project Management eBook Site Questions

October 25, 2006
Sixty-year-old newbie here with his first e-book! My site is unlinked --
just "up there."   I teach project management for a living -- but ill health
is forcing early retirement, and I have an urgent need to keep paying the
mortgage! Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Tables and SEO

September 20, 2006
I have been a regular reader of your newsletter for some time. I hope you have time to give me your thoughts on the following comment that I received from a website designer. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Website Maintenance

August 30, 2006
In case you were on vacation during the last newsletter and haven’t had a chance to catch up yet, I wanted to point out my quick recommendation for website maintenance from Pop2.net. Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>

Keywords in URLs

August 2, 2006
Do you know if repeating keywords in the URL will help increase rankings within search engine results? If so does it have a big impact? Read More >> Related Forum Posts >>