Search Engine Optimization

[Loaded]

Hi all and thanks for reading,

I have a website, am based in CM and would like to improve my search engine rating ie get on page 1. I'm currently reading about meta tags, key words etc but would like to outsource this task. One company quoted around 50K for the first month - aaahh!!

Any ideas?

[udon]

Try getafreelancerdotcom

[Tywais]

I also have a commercial website but in my case the web hosting service I use automatically submits every 2-3 months my site to a very large list of search engines. Used to do it manually myself then signed up for their service. Also had purchased a program that automates the task of submission and has a hugh database of sites. Will have to try and find the name, in the meantime - research, research and more. It is a hugh task to get a site up and recognized and I spent probably 6 months learning the ropes of site exposure and management. A few sites you might look at.

http://www.submissionpro.com/

http://search-engine-secrets.net/

http://www.softwaresubmit.net/

http://www.1stsearchranking.com/articles.htm

[Oswulf]

Hi all and thanks for reading,

I have a website, am based in CM and would like to improve my search engine rating ie get on page 1. I'm currently reading about meta tags, key words etc but would like to outsource this task. One company quoted around 50K for the first month - aaahh!!

Any ideas?

The key factor in getting a good ranking on modern search engines such as Google isn't to do with meta tags and keywords, but rather is the number of sites which link to your site, and the perceived "quality" of those sites. The quickest way to boost your ranking is to get yourself listed with the DMOZ directory and with Yahoo! - though you're going to need a lot of other sites linking to you to get a number one ranking.

A quick way to drop to the bottom of the ranking is to employ the services of a "link farm" to provide a large number of spurious links to your site. Before you pay someone to boost your ranking, make sure they're not simply going to put links to you on a farm.

[OlRedEyes]

Submission to search engines aint going to help much, except maybe for Yahoo and MSN, once.

What type of site is this. If it's a very competitive field, you're gonna pay/work hard. I would suggest staying away from anyone that promises top rankings, unless you only pay on performance. And then you have to take care they're not using black hat techniques...

[tjo o tjim]

The best way to improve your rankings, especially with Google, are to have descriptive links. Don't use pictures (exclusively) for your links, and use links like (say) "book your hotel reservation for bangkok here" rather than "book here." Or, if you are selling something, use descriptive and generic names for things in the product links.

Basically, you have to remember that Google is trying to catalog useful information. If your site has useful information to someone searching for something on the internet, make sure you make it easy to look for...

[sting01]

The best way to improve your rankings, especially with Google, are to have descriptive links. Don't use pictures (exclusively) for your links, and use links like (say) "book your hotel reservation for bangkok here" rather than "book here." Or, if you are selling something, use descriptive and generic names for things in the product links.

Basically, you have to remember that Google is trying to catalog useful information. If your site has useful information to someone searching for something on the internet, make sure you make it easy to look for...

First SEO is hightly technical work, second very difficult, third mostly people claiming they can do infact can do not that much.

Just reading the answers given, even if all are accurate, they give only a amall part of the trick than can be used to have a decent ranking.

SE use several ways for the ranking, as : how many other webpages are refering to your site? so the fact to do banner exchange will help (a bit) , but as posted, SE also do not love much image that are also link.

PHP is underratted if not totally not rated by SE. Mean if you have site with the page that have the extension .php, mostly they will be mis considered (php = dynamic page, so content can change, so a SE can NOT honestly give that page when answering to a search). A Flash website was recently totally ignored by the major SE (I suppose it's still the case).

A good SEO consultant will first investigate your site to remove all that will limitate or totaly block the referencing (At least you will be referencing), then will use the usual trick to help you to climb the referencing (make it better), then and after one or 2 month (time to have some accurate result), the consultant will have to go far in the coding and work on . that is mostly corner hacking (some consider it's ugly), and at that point there is no science, but mostly it's the experience who speak. At the opposite of a Java programmer who have learn in uni, a SEO consultant is more a seasonned Jack of all trade of the IT (sometimes the use of PERL in the middle of an .asp is a way to go, sometimes not, a good consultant will feel it, a newbie even with a PhD will not).

If you do not mind, you can send me a link to your site by PM , I will take a look during the week (for free), give you some trick and eventually give you also some address of people that I consider competents (I used to work with them at one point or another). But as I do have work, and as I am not trying to lure a new customer (I have enought already), it will take a week before I give you those result.

But in all case, the guy/society who say you will beranked in the top 10/50/100 of google are simply bullshitting, and it's easy to demonstrate : if you are in the business, you have to have customers, so if you have 2 or 3 years of existence, you will have way more than 100 customers, so how all those people can be ranked in the top 10 ( assuming you are not the only one who know how a SE work). On the other hand, as stated, a good consultant will allow you to be ranked at your just place, or maybe in a better place (if some other sites did not do any SEO).

[Loaded]

Some good info and suggestions.

Thanks.

[Crushdepth]

I really don't think you need a consultant for this sort of thing. Check out Google's info for webmasters, read it carefully and you will know 90% of what you need. Save your money.

Two things to remember are that i) NOBODY can guarantee you a good ranking in a search engine (anyone that claims they can is a crook or a crank) and ii) by far the best way to get a high ranking is to provide high quality content and/or services. Don't lose site of that. If your content sucks, no amount of SEO can help you.

[sting01]

I really don't think you need a consultant for this sort of thing. Check out Google's info for webmasters, read it carefully and you will know 90% of what you need. Save your money.

Two things to remember are that i) NOBODY can guarantee you a good ranking in a search engine (anyone that claims they can is a crook or a crank) and ii) by far the best way to get a high ranking is to provide high quality content and/or services. Don't lose site of that. If your content sucks, no amount of SEO can help you.

Agree, and corresponding to what I said (but in better english lol). None can decently ask for money in case of SEO. The only point to ask money is when implementing solution choosed by the client. I will give a precise exemple, that irrelevantfor that case (I choose it because of that).

Client X use OSCommerce, but as it's .php, the rating in google is not the one needed. So Client X ask me to implement some extramodules, precisely identified by him. So I will charge him as I charge when installing a banking gateway. When a client ask me to check for SEO, I wil not charge him, the main reason is I can not promise he will be amongst the top 10 /50 /100 during 1 year, and it's obvious. What I can simply do it's to point on some weakness, give a broad range of possible solutions, but often solutions mean also changes, so the client have to think wisely, and do choice. Another exemple, a site fully made in flash will always be rated bad, so the way to go is obvious, the site must be not fully in flash, the downfall is also obvious, it imply deep change of the website. It would be wrong to advice the customer to do so, it's better to say that is because of that. The client then will choose to keep flash (because he choosed flash for thhis or that) or use another technology, maybe mixed with flash (because SEO exposition is a key point of is commercial strategy).

If the client write a wrong SQL statement, a competent coder will say : it's wrong here, it must be like that. It's simply not possible to do so for SEO, when the basic is rightfully made. People claiming they will boost your rating are or implying the coder who did the site were moron, or they are tryin to scams.

Also, a boost in the rating will show really after some month. I can boost any websites for one week, but after that week, the site will return to its old place. Accuracy in SEO is after at least 3 month (average positioning) compared to the average positioning the year before.

Last point, all the answers already given were accurate, and have to be used. The fact to say that show how tricky the SEO can be, the most tricky is what is accurate with site aaa.com will be wrong in site bbb.com.

Just some thoughts

Edited April 10, 2006 by sting01

[tom yum goong]

Some ok advice given in this thread and also some very bad advice.

If you're lucky, following it won't do anything at all, most likely it will permanently harm your website's rankings in the major search engines.

Before you consider hiring someone or trying to do it yourself, head over to Webmaster World dot com and browse through the "New to web development" forum, the Marketing World forum, and the Google world forum.

This will give you a starting point to understanding whats involved.

[techie]

Getting top page on google isnt hard loaded.

if you want more advice we would need to know your url, 4 comp sites and your keywords.

we regulary have sites on top page within a month. (depending on content)

My top tips would be.

1. get in directories (dmoz-yahoo) and get in the right catagories, this can take up to 6 months it the category hasnt got an editor.

2. get in all free search engines.

3. links (good quality, two pr 8 are worth 100 pr2-3)

4. content, a good site will do well.

there are obviously many other things such as anchor text, meta, page title, xhtml transitional..etc,etc..

you can read forums and ask advice all day long but the real fact here is no one knows how the google mind operate. the crawl sequence, page rankings, page position differ so much..

ive seen a page at pr5 that we put adsence on go down to pr3, then back up to pr8 when the ads have been removed..no one knows

The only answer is time....create a good clean site with good content and quality links and it will come out good.

webproworld.com has a forum section on your very issue.

good luck

p.s if you do seek help make a deal based on results, if you page doesnt come out on page 1 with the keywords you chose then they havent done the job. No company i know of can guarentee results (unless its any easy field) as the truth is no one knows how google deals with the info and requests.

Edited April 11, 2006 by techie

[xty]

One more tips: keep all content in plain HTML or text if possible.

Forget about full graphics description, dynamic content, Java, or Flash. Otherwise those search engine bots will not be able to 'crawl' your site's content. This works for my sites, especially for CV/resume site.

Edited April 12, 2006 by xty

[~G~]

Myths, myths, myths:

1. PHP/ASP are bad for rating (makes one wonder why the page ranked #2 in google for "Thai Visa" is a PHP page, or #1 in Google for "DVD" is an ASP page)

2. Don't use Javascript (then how come the pages ranked #1 in google for "hotels" and "books" are full of Javascript?)

3. Don't use Flash (Why the #1 in Google for "Movies" has flash?)

4. Submit submit submit (that was actually true 10 years ago in search engines such as InfoSeek)

Top points:

- BackLinks from other sites which are rated high on Google.

- Good, rich content with the relevant keywords in correct density thoughout the content and title (meta tags are less significant). "Correct" density is not absolute it changes per Search Engine.

- Link structure which allows easy crawling of all pages in the site.

You can actually use PHP/ASP/Javascript/Flash as much as you like, as long as there is enough textual content and those objects/scripts do not obstruct or replace crawlable textual links structure (you may also have a site map instead of textual links).

[sting01]

No myths ,

if the first 100 lines of your page are only flash, it will be not referenced. Obviously the flash movie will have to start from 101 th line, it does not mean you can not have a flash movie displayed at header, but it mean you can not insert the applet anywhere.

php (not sure for .asp, I do not work with outdated and unsecure technology sorry) will always be bad ranked (basically), because google or other search engines have to be give RELEVANT link. A .php is by definition dynamicaly generated. But there is way to avoid that, and for exemple in case of forum like TV there is an easy fix that was well explain in phpBB forum. Search there and you will find (in fact it's to make the spider think it's .html page even it's the extension is .php)

Javascript? Same flash, if over used in the first 100 lines that is discarded. Use external javascript.

The modern search engines compare the relevance of the key words with their appearance inside the first 100 lines (I say 100, maybe it's 150 not sure). So if Flash, no relevance, if javascript, no relevance.

All that I have affirmed is the result of work on directories, and directories engines (more particulary in-link where I had modify the internal algorytms to made them fit what the clients needed, did several times). To modify something and let it work correctly (namely get answer in less than 1 sec with a DB that have more than 100 millions of rows) you have to understand at least, be fluent is better, how the directory work. Directory is how a search engine is called byt people who own it.

Last, and not the least but the most important, you simply pay google or other to be well placed

[~G~]

php (not sure for .asp, I do not work with outdated and unsecure technology sorry) will always be bad ranked

I am sorry, but the facts just do not go hand in hand with your above statement: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=thai+visa

(in fact it's to make the spider think it's .html page even it's the extension is .php)

Trying to trick search engines this and that way will not work in the long run. I will be happy to read about that trick if you provide the link, but I'd find it quite remarkable if you claim Google cannot even diffrentiate between file extensions.

And by the way, I will be even more surprised if the Thai ministry of foreign affairs (php page, rated #2 in the above search) is that sopisticated in its SEO.

The modern search engines compare the relevance of the key words with their appearance inside the first 100 lines (I say 100, maybe it's 150 not sure). So if Flash, no relevance, if javascript, no relevance.

What lines? Try number of words. Number of lines are arbitrary and dependent on site design.

Last, and not the least but the most important, you simply pay google or other to be well placed

Well, if this is the advice you give clients asking you about SEO, it's good you don't charge.

[sting01]

a line = or "\n" or"\n\r", or 4096 bytes.

That is a line for any C++ languages like php, perl, java.

So yes a directory engine count the lines, or count how many time it encounter the regex"\n" or how many time it got to 4096 (it's OR, not AND).

But certainly not the usual return carriage as we can have in word, or ultra edit.

About the link :

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t...9&highlight=seo

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=152036

The first is a clevert hack, due my level in english , and as it seems you have knowledge is coding, better to download the zip and take a look to the php, you will understand it immediatly. The same hack is succesfully used for OSC.

The second explain several points, better that I can do. Even if it's indeed for one particulary soft, it's still true for every .php based application.

One year ago, they had a direct line to a theorical handbook about SEO, but as I never do that I did not kept it, nor I have right the time to browse them to retrieve the link (it was in the middle of a discussion, but was interresting about how SEO must be understood.) I do not do SEO, the 'no charge' was related to a simple 'take a look at', nor a work that I do not the time nor skilles to do. lol

For the thaivisa, what I said about .php is not relevant if you type thai + visa . That was choosed because the hight relevancy (hightly relevant maybe more correct to use). Same like if you type Bangkok + post I suppose.

It will have a interrest if yo usearch for exemple Lanna, Chiang rai + rice , for search like that who do not have obvious results. Do a search about patents, 2 years ago one client of mine jumped from 120 000 place to the 6 000, just by using the mode rewrite. But I repeat SEO is NOT my business, nor my skills.

[John_Betong]

(in fact it's to make the spider think it's .html page even it's the extension is .php)

>>> Trying to trick search engines this and that way will not work in the long run.

Hi ~G~,

Is this what you are looking for?

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls

>>> I will be happy to read about that trick if you provide the link...

Were you happy?

Chokdee,

John_Betong

[sting01]

(in fact it's to make the spider think it's .html page even it's the extension is .php)

>>> Trying to trick search engines this and that way will not work in the long run.

Hi ~G~,

Is this what you are looking for?

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/search-engine-friendly-urls

>>> I will be happy to read about that trick if you provide the link...

Were you happy?

Chokdee,

John_Betong

Another way to explain why I obviously have hard time to say.

Anyway the article, even if confirming what I advanced, have some minor problems (Apache also has a global variable called $PATH_INFO that is created on every HTTP request. ). There is a need to precise the followings, or some users will get it worng and complain :

1) global variables are php features , but not Apache features.

2) Since php 4.0 (5 years ago, maybe 6), it's strongly advised to tun the global variable off (register_globals off in the php init file) and use the superglobals variables for an evident security problem. register_global is off since php4.2 if I recall well.

3) The good use must be : For instance, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] in a script at the address http://example.com/test.php/foo.bar would be /test.php/foo.bar.

take a look at : http://th2.php.net/manual/en/reserved.vari...ariables.server

Anyway John, thanks to have help to make point more clear (I was wondering if I was turning crazed).

[techie]

You guys are just going far too deep here.......

much of what i have read on the net about seo is just pure myth..or people opinions

the only people who knows how the bots work are the people who run them...there is nothing set in stone..

Ive seen a pr6 go to the sandbox for 6 months for no reason

we always used to advise clients on external code but now dont bother, we just work with what they have as if we start saying they need to make changes they useually go elsewhere, we moniter sites and rank and it makes no difference...

Top points:

- BackLinks from other sites which are rated high on Google.

- Good, rich content with the relevant keywords in correct density thoughout the content and title (meta tags are less significant). "Correct" density is not absolute it changes per Search Engine.

- Link structure which allows easy crawling of all pages in the site.

thats the best advice on here.....

I will give you an example of how strange a world seo is....a while back i was engaging in a post on an seo forum about meta tags, The post was very much against the use of meta tags with many people all slating thier use and stating how they just are not used......the strange thing to me was that when i did a quick view source on every participants site and it just showed they all in fact used meta and some had over 50 descriptive words....

directory listings

domain name.

title

relevant content

good content (your content) (copy and paste from someone else will not help)

backlinks to high pr sites are really essential

anchor text

good useable site

Do the above and you will win through..

The most important factor with google is time.....

[xty]

Two more tricks I applied on my sites:

• Add meta tags for page rating (icra.org, rsac.org), use the safest page rating so some page control software (CyberPatrol, NetNanny) may still get the pages. Something like this:
  

  <meta http-equiv="pics-label" content='(pics-1.1 "http://www.icra.org/ratingsv02.html" l gen true for "http://www.yoursite.com" r (cb 1 lz 1 nz 1 oz 1 vz 1) "http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html" l gen true for "http://www.yoursite.com" r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))' />

  
  

• Don't use an introduction page (flash intro or "Enter the site" link) to go to your main pages. Who knows some bots may not crawl your site deeper than 1 page.
  

Well, frankly I don't know if they really work, but logically make sense to me, and at least this is what I see in my site statistics (awstats). In the end almost everyday I get new job offers because of my plain-HTML-one-page CV site

Edited April 17, 2006 by xty

[sting01]

Well you say :

You guys are just going far too deep here.......

much of what i have read on the net about seo is just pure myth..or people opinions

the only people who knows how the bots work are the people who run them...there is nothing set in stone..

True, but who run the bots? And first what are the bots? Google is not the only one, and google technology is not a secret, as stated In-Link if widely based on google coding. So if you have knowledge of In-Link, or fluent in In-link, you have necessary a good idea on how google work, not only to get the URL, but how google will proceed for the relevancy algorythm.

Fact, there is 2 steps :

1) collect of URL, mostly there is no problems and nothing have to be made, IF the pages are standart to W3C recommandations. I personnaly never read the W3C doing a recommendation to insert a flash movie in the header, or to have a movie as only page content. So the help is to simply make the page follow W3C (that is not a myth, but that is how and what any professional should act. If not the so called professional have better to go to feed the monkeys).

2) relevancy calculation. Here nothing is fixed, everydays in every Directory, people are working to improve that. So there is only if you know well how is the relevancy calculation, how it work, what it's looking for, that you can overlook changes on the way to present your site to the bots. .php will always be lighter than .html. Because since some years google and other try to propose accurate contents (that is also the reasons of the cache in google, true one week ago, maybe not true today, but we still have it in stock).

So yes, a bunch of 6 SQL statements left jointed on 6 tables cross calling maybe 30 columns is a bit complex, but imagine that 6 nested statements are not static, but are dynamically created following what are searched, and what was the result of a first quick query looking only to the hash index of a table of 150 millions of rows? Real case. If you got it how it work, you can say about SEO, and certainly as I did/do say that is not a science, but more a hacking touch for seasonned coder.

[techie]

No google technology is not a secret, its how they use the technology that is the problem...

Please have a good read of this....google seo and you can get a feel of what goes on, can you find any consistent advice here??

Im not sure what you are getting at concerning the W3c or flash in the page as all the opening post was asking for was advice on seo, cost and keywords???

The obvious truth is IF a customer needs seo if they give us a good site with good content, validates, no trick forms, external scripts, no flash pages (especially no intro page), and the site is in a field which is fairly untouched then we are extreamly happy..

However the site is not ours so we work with what they have and from tracking of page ranks of several sites we have yet to see any difference in a good and bad (made)site...it is as simple as that....

directorys...very important....we have noticed that unless you are in dmoz you will have problems and it really can hold you back...in all se

the truth about dmoz is that it is run by volunteers, many categorys dont have editors and it can be a pain getting in, nearly all seo providers will have an editor amonst their ranks, we have two...

Im not disagreeing with you here sting01, im just trying to point out (as i have said in two previous posts) that there are more important things than worying about flash or extra script...

Unless we know the op's url, what keywords and his competitors then it is imposible for anyone to give advice above what has been already written..

[sting01]

No google technology is not a secret, its how they use the technology that is the problem...

Please have a good read of this....google seo and you can get a feel of what goes on, can you find any consistent advice here??

Im not sure what you are getting at concerning the W3c or flash in the page as all the opening post was asking for was advice on seo, cost and keywords???

The obvious truth is IF a customer needs seo if they give us a good site with good content, validates, no trick forms, external scripts, no flash pages (especially no intro page), and the site is in a field which is fairly untouched then we are extreamly happy..

However the site is not ours so we work with what they have and from tracking of page ranks of several sites we have yet to see any difference in a good and bad (made)site...it is as simple as that....

directorys...very important....we have noticed that unless you are in dmoz you will have problems and it really can hold you back...in all se

the truth about dmoz is that it is run by volunteers, many categorys dont have editors and it can be a pain getting in, nearly all seo providers will have an editor amonst their ranks, we have two...

Im not disagreeing with you here sting01, im just trying to point out (as i have said in two previous posts) that there are more important things than worying about flash or extra script...

Unless we know the op's url, what keywords and his competitors then it is imposible for anyone to give advice above what has been already written..

Agreeing or disagreeing is not a problem, anyway SEO is not my business, because it's maybe too aleatory to do accurate previsions about rating.

Anyway, I repeat, in search engine technology, thing with what I am a bit fluent, there is 2 factors :

1) the URL itself. Here to etablish a rating, the search engine with use algorithms to check how the URL is formed (extension, the use of 'special characters as ? or & ....) that is a part of the rating. I do strongly affirm a .php will more be rated after a .htm page (due the fact the content could have change since the spider went, so the search engine can not affirm visitor will get the right content)

2) the relevance (relevancy? sorry I am french so there is words compicate for me to type) or the accuracy of the page. That will give a weight, and by so will be also used to calculate the rating. What is the relevancy or accuracy of a page?

Since one or 2 years , it's how the search engines proceed : they compare the META key words with the first part of the page coding (the famous 100 lines that I gived). If those key words are find, they got a good weight, if they are not find so they got a bad weight. They it will be an average weight calculate. That immediatly disqualify any flash .swf, because , well, how to say .... most part of people are not able to reverse engineering a .swf to know what is inside (the word used I mean), and even people like I who are able to do it will never implement that for a search engine because it will kill it (CPU cycles will be enormous).

That is not finish, you have to understand also how a parser work. Basically a spider can be considering as a very evoluate parser. IT will follow a set of rules to find the data it is looking for (as the META keywords). So if a page is not compliant with W3C recommandation, therating will be worst than a page who is compliant with W3C. Obviously.

So yes, if someone have a well formed website (passing throught the W3c verificator for exemple), if the site is compliant IE, FF, Netscape, so that easy work I think for company like you My own opinion, and certainly because I avoid SEO like the plague, is at this point there is nothing much to do. Do not worry, when I proposed to check the site for free, it was really just take a look a the coding, give some advices and let the OP do his work (btw us I already did it). I do not look for job in TV, my own rules are to avoid as much as I can to have local clients (let say I dislike paperwork, do billings, taxes invoice and 'tutti quanti') and I do not have time to spend right now to a new customers. So do not worry I am not a new competitor (not new after 4 years here), nor competitor at all if you do not do outsourcing coding. But I strongly stay on my postions about well formed pages according to W3c recommandations, and I do not think you can give me technical evidence I am wrong. Maybe you can think I am pedantic or playing Mr Smartass, but following our conversation I asked peoples who are (like I) members of the IETF (www.ietf.org) , and it seems they agree with what I said. Even if they are not all in the SEO business, they are seasonned enought to give an accurate answer.

[techie]

sting01..

I do not think you are playing "Mr Smartarse" at all...in fact some of what you have stated is indeed credible..

I just dont feel i can offer much more because to be honest i have great problems understanding your posts, so feel any reply would be unfair to you..

However i would be interested if you could point me to an OFFICIAL source which goes more in to the top 100-150 lines relevany rates/compared to metas. as this is something i am very interested in..

Any information on this area would be appreciated..

[techie]

xty...

im not surprised you are recieving daily contact about possible employment with a c.v like that..

Very impressive, do you have much knowledge of mysql.?

[udon]

xty, that is some cv.

I'll bet you've had some good offers for your domain name

[sting01]

sting01..

I do not think you are playing "Mr Smartarse" at all...in fact some of what you have stated is indeed credible..

I just dont feel i can offer much more because to be honest i have great problems understanding your posts, so feel any reply would be unfair to you..

However i would be interested if you could point me to an OFFICIAL source which goes more in to the top 100-150 lines relevany rates/compared to metas. as this is something i am very interested in..

Any information on this area would be appreciated..

Understanding me ... well you point out on some realities. People in thailand, because native speaker of english, have the tendency to be confuse between the fluency in that language and an eventual IQ ('how stupid he is, he can not speak the usual american english/slang'). Mostly people do not think I can be from a non speaking english country (France), and/or the educational system privilegied 20 years ago german (english was reserved to those who were supposed not able to learn german, it was the rules up to the mid 70'). Funny, frustrating also professionaly, because it mean a lack of credibility when meeting with potential employers or clients. Funny also, as member of 2 top level non profits organisations related to internet (namely IETF and ARIN), I never got amongst the year this reaction from my pairs, some of my comments were simply redirected to a secretary who formated then correctly. But those organisations are international, so people are not shocked by the languages problems much.

To point you to an accurate and correct URL about that, I will ask you to allow me some times. SEO is not my cup of tea (as stated several time), I am more on scrpting languages and relational DB. So I think I remenber the site who pointed me to that article, but I willl be able to search this week end. But the good new is it was in english, so you will not have a language problem (funny how people have problem with foreign language, but can not accept foreigners to be not able to speak as William (the Sheakspeare one I mean).

About credible, thanks to say that lol. I thought what I said was obvious and evident for seasoned IT professionals. But I repeat, I work mostly 'server side', so maybe it's why it's obvious for me, server side implying to know how a search engine work to make it work better or faster, rather than working 'client side', mean feed the spider in that case. But knowing how the DB is feeded, and how data are extracted from the DB (from google DB for exemple), will allow you to guess how the data must be presented (formatted) before to be presented (according on how the weight is calculated).

To explain more simply, if I know before to meet you, what you are looking for; when we will meet I will immediatly focuse on that, so you will more easily accept my sayings and get my point. Reported to a search engine, that is the same : if you know whatthe spider is looking for and why it's looking for that, you will guess easily what you have to do to make it happy. Spider = parser = regex = chunck of data = feed database = extracting data with a complex statement (left join mostly) with a group by clause and a ORDER BY. Go there correctly and the work is made.

[sting01]

I finally did not take my lunch but looked around.

SEO is definitevly not my business, I said 100/150 lines, in fact it was 100K/150K , so bad of me, but it was an article read somewhere sometimes ago and I remenbered the number.

Full Body Text

All of the major search engines say they index the full visible body text of a page, though some will not index stop words or exclude copy deemed to be spam (explained further below). Google generally does not index past the first 101K of long HTML pages.

I did not find the full article , but I found that citation. But the idea is the same, the first part of a page will be challenged against the META, and if a key word appear in the page, it will get a good weight, more it appear, better the weight will be, if not appear the weight will be bad, if too many irrelevant key words exist, it can lead to the non referencing by the search engine (Google). That is for the porn websites who used 'innocent'word to attrack innocent visitors. Google explain it in perfect english here : http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html.

bytheway, I can also advise to read that one, basic advices I do agree, but should be followed :

http://www.searchinnovation.com/seo-website-architecture.asp

The author point the usual lack of accurate infos for the ALT and TITLE sub tag in the <img tag.

Last, but not the least, a very quick and brief page on the spider. You will notice it'strully credible to consider a spider to be a parser (the author say so).

http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html#info

Sorry to provide only those links, but I allow myself only 30 mn as lunch break, so limitate in time, and as I mis remenber (100lines for 100K), anyway I do not have so much to defend, assuming the rest of my sayings is obviously evident.

Finally , as I feel good mood (a girl smilled at me this morning, and no kids tried to throw rock at me), I will give you a last advice (I used that when doing some SEO work in the past) :

http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php#4

P.S. are you looking for mysql wizard? Or any other SQL (read relational) databases (Oracle maybe). That could interrest me. I have some small and very limitate knowledges in parsers and directories/search engines.

[~G~]

>>> I will be happy to read about that trick if you provide the link...

Were you happy?

Extremely happy. Let me quote from your link:

"Well, most search engines (with a few exceptions - namely Google) will not index any pages that have a question mark or other character (like an ampersand or equals sign) in the URL."

So if this is not relevant to Google, frankly I don't see many reasons to bother? By the way, I know for sure that Google does index those kind of URLs.