Denver SEO Blog: Web Development, SEO & Marketing

1. Hidden text in the name of accessibility
Many web designers are using a CSS technique that hides text - allegedly for accessibility. The technique uses a background-image to replace text. It is a common CSS technique touted as a way to maintain accessibility while still displaying a graphic instead of the text header. Unfortunately, it fails in many screen readers (see above article), and it is considered by the search engines to be hidden text!

2. Unintentionally spamming keywords
Many sites use words in their keywords, title and description that are not ever used on the page. Most webmasters insert keywords into these tags that aren’t used anywhere on the page. The problem occurs when keywords are brainstormed separately from content development. Good SEO involves doing the two techniques together.

Don’t expect Google to just trust that you are relevant for these keywords. How relevant could you be for your keywords if you never use them, anyway?!

3. Excessive Links
Webmasters have become obsessed with their Google Pagerank, and are trading links at an ever furious pace. Having too many outbound links on a single page makes your site look more like a “link farm” than a legitimate website. You should try not to place too many outbound links on a single page.

If you do need to link to 100 or more sites, place the links on separate pages. Instead of focusing on an unhealthy amount of links, create quality content and allow the links to flow in NATURALLY. That is what Google wants to see anyway.

For Google’s webmaster guidelines, visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

What to do if you are banned? Google’s Matt Cutts has the answer: After you have fixed your site, file a reincluson request.

MsDewey.com - The search results seem to be from msn / live, but the entertainment is priceless.

Warning: Men find her entertaining, women tend to find her annoying. Whatever target market they are going for, it is odd that there are no advertisements shown. Is this yet another search engine without a profit strategy?

Do a few searches for “gun”, and watch her performance change each time. She also had some choice words to say about my searches for “dating” and “how old are you?”

Turn down your speakers when you see her with a power tool or loaded weapon. Our office hound thought we were under attack, and a barking fit ensued.

An interesting sets of facts about Google PageRank, originally posted at netconcepts:

“Each web page within a website has its own PageRank score. PageRank scores run from 0 to 10 on a logarithmic scale, meaning that the gaps between the integers increase logarithmically the closer you get to 10. So, for example, the gap between the 3 and a 4 is quite small, whereas the gap between 7 and 8 is huge in comparison. As such, boosting your PageRank from a 3 to 4 would be quite easy, and going from a 7 to 8 would be quite hard. Another logarithmic scale you might be familiar with is the Richter scale. As you probably know, a 5.5 on the Richter scale isn’t such a huge deal, whereas a 7.0 is a very big deal indeed.”

I think going from a 4 or 5 PR is probably very similar to a 7 on the Richter scale - better have your server ready for the jolt!

Posted in Misc, Search Engine Optimization, Web Marketing | No Comments »