Webmaster forum - On content and SEO

Author

On content and SEO

Ed Jay

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

I'm informed that to enhance SEO I should have a lot of content, etc. That
makes sense to me. My question is where does the content want to be to
enhance SEO? Must it be on the home page, or can it be embedded within the
child pages?
--
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

Toby Inkster

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com alt.www.webmaster:505562

Ed Jay wrote:

> I'm informed that to enhance SEO I should have a lot of content, etc. That
> makes sense to me. My question is where does the content want to be to
> enhance SEO? Must it be on the home page, or can it be embedded within the
> child pages?

Forget SEO as a concept.

You want your site to be successful, so work on increasing the quality and
quantity of your content; work on increasing your site's usability and
accessibility for *people* not search engines.

Create a quality site that people will want to come back to time and time
again. They'll tell their friends; they'll link to your site from their
blogs; and the search engine results you wanted will come. And as more
people are able to find your site in search engines, the more people will
come to know and love your site, and tell their friends, and link to it,
and the higher up you'll climb. It's a virtuous circle.

Don't listen to those SEO websites -- there are about 60 million hits for
"search engine optimization" on Google. And do you know what? They're
all[1] behind Wikipedia -- a site that's never done any real SEO -- just
created compelling content that people keep coming back to.

____
1. OK, all but one.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact

Charles Sweeney

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Toby Inkster wrote

> Ed Jay wrote:
>
>
> Forget SEO as a concept.

Y'know Toby, I think I am now quite happy to leave 99% of new webmasters to
be slaves to SEO. It will make life easier for those with an eye on the
real picture.

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com

Ed Jay

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Toby Inkster scribed:

>Ed Jay wrote:
>
>
>Forget SEO as a concept.
>
>You want your site to be successful, so work on increasing the quality and
>quantity of your content; work on increasing your site's usability and
>accessibility for *people* not search engines.
>
>Create a quality site that people will want to come back to time and time
>again. They'll tell their friends; they'll link to your site from their
>blogs; and the search engine results you wanted will come. And as more
>people are able to find your site in search engines, the more people will
>come to know and love your site, and tell their friends, and link to it,
>and the higher up you'll climb. It's a virtuous circle.
>
>Don't listen to those SEO websites -- there are about 60 million hits for
>"search engine optimization" on Google. And do you know what? They're
>all[1] behind Wikipedia -- a site that's never done any real SEO -- just
>created compelling content that people keep coming back to.
>
>____
>1. OK, all but one.

Thanks for all the good advice.
--
Ed Jay (remove 'M' to respond by email)

Red E. Kilowatt

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Toby Inkster <usenet200610@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote in message:
6pi204-3ir.ln1@ophelia.g5n.co.uk,

> Ed Jay wrote:
>
>
> Forget SEO as a concept.
>
> You want your site to be successful, so work on increasing the
> quality and quantity of your content; work on increasing your site's
> usability and accessibility for *people* not search engines.
>
> Create a quality site that people will want to come back to time and
> time again. They'll tell their friends; they'll link to your site
> from their blogs; and the search engine results you wanted will come.
> And as more people are able to find your site in search engines, the
> more people will come to know and love your site, and tell their
> friends, and link to it, and the higher up you'll climb. It's a
> virtuous circle.
>
> Don't listen to those SEO websites -- there are about 60 million hits
> for "search engine optimization" on Google. And do you know what?
> They're all[1] behind Wikipedia -- a site that's never done any real
> SEO -- just created compelling content that people keep coming back
> to.
>
> ____
> 1. OK, all but one.

SEO is not substitute for quality content, but SEO is a way to increase
visibility for new sites, so that the quality content can do the rest a
lot faster.

--
Red

DoobieDo

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

"Ed Jay" <edMbj@aes-intl.com> wrote in message
news:433ti2hld0ibmdpaeed62f5hv3a5evi6al@4ax.com...
> I'm informed that to enhance SEO I should have a lot of content, etc. That
> makes sense to me. My question is where does the content want to be to
> enhance SEO? Must it be on the home page, or can it be embedded within the
> child pages?

anywhere relevent.
describe item A on it's own child page and B seperately on it's.. if that is
the way the site works.

Dan

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Ed Jay wrote:
> I'm informed that to enhance SEO I should have a lot of content, etc. That
> makes sense to me. My question is where does the content want to be to
> enhance SEO? Must it be on the home page, or can it be embedded within the
> child pages?

How about putting content where it logically fits, in the structure of
the site, and let SEO take care of itself organically, rather than
trying to contrive something to try to fool the indexers into indexing
you?

--
Dan

William Tasso

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

Fleeing from the madness of the jungle
DoobieDo <doobie@do.dah> stumbled into news:alt.www.webmaster
and said:

> "Ed Jay" <edMbj@aes-intl.com> wrote in message
> news:433ti2hld0ibmdpaeed62f5hv3a5evi6al@4ax.com...
>
> anywhere relevent.

yep - KISS works.

> describe item A on it's own child page and B seperately on it's.. if
> that is
> the way the site works.

yep - follow the simplest route to information distribution
o tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em
o tell 'em
o tell 'em what you just told 'em

make it obvious (bleedin' obvious) how your site works - especially
navigation, s-p-e-l-l it out with simple words.

--
William Tasso

http://williamtasso.com/words/what-is-usenet.asp

Matt Probert

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:43:15 -0700, Ed Jay <edMbj@aes-intl.com> wrote:

>I'm informed that to enhance SEO I should have a lot of content, etc. That
>makes sense to me. My question is where does the content want to be to
>enhance SEO? Must it be on the home page, or can it be embedded within the
>child pages?

Did you not see the concise post I made about this recently?

You need lots of pages, think 5000+ static pages, each appropraitely
interlinked.

Content on each should be tightly focussed, so each page deals with
just ONE product/topic

The home page naturally is more general, but keep it that way. With
links to the specific child pages.

Matt

--
Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Matt Probert

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006 20:48:22 +0100, Toby Inkster
<usenet200610@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:

>Don't listen to those SEO websites -- there are about 60 million hits for
>"search engine optimization" on Google. And do you know what? They're
>all[1] behind Wikipedia -- a site that's never done any real SEO -- just
>created compelling content that people keep coming back to.

Er, I'll disagree. Wikipedia doesn't provide compelling content, it
provides an outlet for people's egos. It allows ordinary people to be
published, and people like that, they like to feel they are part of
something big, no matter how illusionary

Matt

--
Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Matt Probert

2006-11-05, 11:42 pm

On 12 Oct 2006 13:46:35 -0700, "Dan" <dan@tobias.name> wrote:

>
>Ed Jay wrote:
>
>How about putting content where it logically fits, in the structure of
>the site, and let SEO take care of itself organically, rather than
>trying to contrive something to try to fool the indexers into indexing
>you?
>

Boys, boys, boys!

SEO is not by neccessity about "fooling", "tricking" "deceiving" or
about ignoring the readers.

The two work together. Obviously or perhaps not, a site must be
designed for the reader. But then you can do a lot that will also help
search engine spiders. This doesn't harm the reader usability in any
shape or form.

A reader looking for data about blue widgets, is going to be quite
content to receive a page dealing solely with blue widgets, and with
links at the bottom or wherever to other pages dealing with red
widgets, green widgets etc. And so is a search engine. What neither
wants is a large page dealing with all colours of widgets separated
into paragraphs or sub sections.

And, as Toby mentioned my nemesis, I shall also. Wikipedia uses
sophisticated SEO techniques: separate pages for articles, and pages
named with the article heading eg:

blue_widgets.htm, red_widgets.htm &c

Matt

--
Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Dan

2006-11-05, 11:44 pm

Matt Probert wrote:

> And, as Toby mentioned my nemesis, I shall also. Wikipedia uses
> sophisticated SEO techniques: separate pages for articles, and pages
> named with the article heading eg:

I don't think they do this on purpose for SEO; they just organize their
information in what they believe to be a logical structure, and the
indexing just comes naturally.

> Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
> http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Give it up... you'll never get anywhere with an online encyclopedia
written by one person when you're competing with one written by
thousands!

Try a truly *original* idea instead... start a late-night comedy TV
show called "The Probert Report" (both "t"s silent)! :-)

--
Dan
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/

Mark Goodge

2006-11-05, 11:44 pm

On 14 Oct 2006 14:17:51 -0700, Dan put finger to keyboard and typed:

>
>Matt Probert wrote:
>
>
>I don't think they do this on purpose for SEO; they just organize their
>information in what they believe to be a logical structure, and the
>indexing just comes naturally.

Indeed. In fact, Wikipedia is almost a textbook refutation of most SEO
techniques, as it uses nothing other than simply being well-structured
and popular in order to dominate the search results.

Mark
--
Visit: http://www.GoogleFun.info - fun and games with Google!
"Advertising lies that are whiter than yours"

Matt Probert

2006-11-05, 11:45 pm

On Sun, 15 Oct 2006 13:34:49 +0100, Mark Goodge
<usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:

>On 14 Oct 2006 14:17:51 -0700, Dan put finger to keyboard and typed:
>
>
>Indeed. In fact, Wikipedia is almost a textbook refutation of most SEO
>techniques, as it uses nothing other than simply being well-structured
>and popular in order to dominate the search results.
>

ROTFL!

Yeah, I'm sure you are correct Mark.

Matt

--
Woe to him that willfully innovates, while ignorant of the constant.
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

Dan

2006-11-05, 11:45 pm

Matt Probert wrote:
> ROTFL!
>
> Yeah, I'm sure you are correct Mark.

Since Wikipedia people (editors, admins, developers, etc.) conduct
nearly all of their decision-making in a completely above-board, public
manner, if you wish to actually pursue a research project of
determining on what basis they made their decisions of how to code and
structure their site, and whether and to what extent search engine
optimization figured into these decisions, the talk pages and mailing
list archives relevant to this are out there for you to scrutinize.

--
Dan