SEO Questions

KieranTaylor0403 · 11-25-2006, 09:12 AM

Hi there,

What SEO technique would you say is the most important? Do you use SEO?

The reason why I ask this is because I try to use all aspects of SEO although I know people that abandon certain practices - and can still reach same levels sometimes as the more avid SEO users. Would you say this depends on the search engine...I would think so.

And for the second question...I know some sites which appear to have absolutely no SEO practice, although the still reign high in the SERP's. Would you say this is luck?

I just would like to know your ways and means of SEO, and if you even use it.

Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

BingoBalls · 11-25-2006, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

I know some sites which appear to have absolutely no SEO practice, although the still reign high in the SERP's. Would you say this is luck?

There are probably two reasons why they rank well with one be the age of the site and the second being quality incoming links. I know a site that over 5 years, no on-page SEO factors done, broken links and no content on some pages but yet ranks #1 on Google for some great keywords.

My own belief is that incoming links is the most important factor of SEO. You can have a site fully on-page SEO'd just sit there and not rank but you can have site with no on-page SEO with amazing back links rank very well.

LazySEO · 11-25-2006, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BingoBalls

My own belief is that incoming links is the most important factor of SEO. You can have a site fully on-page SEO'd just sit there and not rank but you can have site with no on-page SEO with amazing back links rank very well.

I'd have to agree with that. If a site gets a ton of good backlinks, that can easily outweigh any on-page factors.

I guess that makes sense - if a site really is an authority site that everyone links to, it shouldn't matter that they don't know how to use <h1> tags.

Webfu · 11-25-2006, 03:10 PM

Werd....

Its all about the Quality IBLs....

so much drama in the lbc sometimes its tough being d o double g.

hhheng · 11-27-2006, 12:29 AM

The most important SE is google, and the most important seo for google is backlinks, so get as many backlinks as possible.

For the second questions, maybe those people adopt one of the following 2 techniques: doorway pages, or cloaking. These 2 ways can make a non seo friendly page ranks higher in SERPs.

martyan · 11-27-2006, 01:02 AM

I would love to see a site with no optimization. Does it mean no meta tags with key words? It's not important any more. No key-word optimization for different pages? Just can you give an example, plz?

BingoBalls · 11-28-2006, 01:16 PM

There are many sites out there that have no SEO done at all and there are even sites that sit at number 1 on Google with broken links, broken head tags etc etc.

For the most part many of these sites are old and have gained back links naturally so they have all the Google trust they need to sit on top which can be very difficult for any site to out rank.

Sideways · 11-28-2006, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BingoBalls

For the most part many of these sites are old and have gained back links naturally so they have all the Google trust they need to sit on top which can be very difficult for any site to out rank.

This is one of the things I love about Google.

If you started paying your dues a long time ago, it still helps today.

euro · 11-28-2006, 03:46 PM

To much SEO is a bad thing, it shows all your intent is to try and rank high without thought for your actual visitors. Keyword stuffed pages, not very good reading really.

KieranTaylor0403 · 11-28-2006, 03:53 PM

Hi there,

Thanks people for your inputs, I find it very interesting to see different people's techniques.

It seems that age and backlinks are everyone's favorite techniques.

I would like more ideas and opinions to be posted, it is very informative for me to discover better/new SEO techniques.

Thanks again people.

Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

BingoBalls · 12-01-2006, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

I would like more ideas and opinions to be posted, it is very informative for me to discover better/new SEO techniques.

There really isn’t much to SEO but people make it out to be some scientific mathematic formula that only the best knows, my reply to that is 100% BS.

I couldn’t care if my site ranks #1 or #30 on Google but what I do care about is overall profit, that’s what drives my site.

I laugh when people call themselves SEO Experts but yet why isn’t their name Profit Expert? What’s even funnier is when an SEO “Expert” has a crappy SEO site and the links are clattered in credit card links, my space backgrounds and any other link they managed to sell…..this says a lot about their expertise.

Heck, I am not even an SEO expert even though I worked full time doing SEO for hotel sites in Europe out ranking travel loge & bookings.org and sure I even quit that job to work in a Data Centre (says a lot about me). The member in this thread that says it all (with his name) is LazySEO, what a flipping name and I love it cause that’s all it is, Lazy SEO!

Look at the SEO blogs and you'll see more posts about Search News rather than actual SEO methods, why? Because there really isn’t many methods needed for SEO and either they know that already or they are really not knowledgeable about SEO.

Right less of a rant about SEO heads and more to answer your question, sorry but I had a so-called SEO expert on the phone today giving out about his IP range….ugh!

Your main source of traffic will probably be Google so your winning factor with them is going to be trust which is gained by age and the quality of back links pointing to the site.

The SEO that I do on my pages while Google learns to trust the site is:

Decide to use either www.yourdomain.com or just yourdomain.com. Use the htaccess to do a redirect so if someone types in yourdomain.com the browser redirects to www.yourdomain.com.

Lets say you decided to use the www (which I always do) then you need to redirect www.yourdomain.com/index.html to www.yourdomain.com/

These two examples show duplicate urls which Google can have issues with: See how to redirect domain address for some help.

Page name - I personally go for keyword.html or keyword-phrase.html

Page title - Use a good title that will catch someone's eye on the keyword they search for, use the keyword in the title.

Meta Description & Keywords - Not overly important but still, some Search Engines use them and just maybe the bigger ones will bring them back into ranking play more.

H1, H2, H3 tags - if you use sub titles on the page then apply the H tags correctly to them. I use the same keyword in the h1 tag that also appears on the page title. Do not over cook these tags with keywords.

Internal navigation - Very important as you want the bots to be able to crawl the site without any confusion, this is where the HTML sitemap comes into play. Make sure every page is no more than two clicks away from the main homepage. When linking to another page use keywords in the anchor text , don’t use “click here” is it’s a waste.

If you have images on the pages use the ALT attributes but use them for users who can see images. The ALT attribute should describe what the actually image is but it does give you a chance to throw in a keyword - again don’t over cook these either.

Outbound links - when you link out from your site make sure the site you link to is relevant to yours. I hate to see a site that might be about arm chairs link out to site about ringtones or cancer drugs, this is not relevant is doesn’t help your visitors in the slightest, who after all want to read about the topic your site is based on.

Don’t over load pages with links. With Google 100 is limit but I personally keep it to 25 as it is more user friendly.

Google also imply that you don’t link to a site that’s in a bad neighbor hood or is banned. To check this make sure the site is indexed in Google before linking to them just as a rule of thumb.

Back link baby! Probably one of the most important factor for climbing ranks but getting them can be a problem. Each week a spend one or two nights hunting links from different sources such as good directories and good sites. If I find a page of links that has all sorts of different link topics I usually skip it and move on but that’s me. Take this for an example. Let’s say you have a site about cafes in London. What I do is hunt down sites that are based around tourism in London. The site doesn’t have to be UK based, it could be built by someone in Spain who may have visited London, really like it so decided to build some pages about their visit and if they have suggest links on places to visit in London then its like shooting darts at a bulls eye

Another great source to get back links is forums that allow sig links (like V7N...Thanks John

). Although we can place our link on V7N what’s the point in having a link on here for site about cafes in London? OK its a back link but it isn’t going to drive traffic to your site for people wanting to read about cafes in London. See using forums for site traffic
. With me adding my link to this post is a perfect example of driving traffic to my site via a forum. I couldn’t post that link on a forum about London but I could do it of the site was about Cafes in London, you catch my drift?

As Euro said too much SEO can hurt a site and by even applying the above to a new site can be like waving a red flag to a bull that could end up with Google slapping a filter on your site so it won’t rank until its trust....step carefully.

Now in saying all the above although it has worked for one of my sites it doesn’t mean it will work for yours or even Charlie sitting over there in the corner. So really, keep building the content (for your visitors) and gain good back links, forums are a great bonus for grabbing traffic so go with that.

Hope all this makes sense…..right I am going for a beer!!

ninjashoes · 12-03-2006, 02:56 AM

^^^ wow great post

Noon_an_Night · 12-03-2006, 02:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

Hi there,

What SEO technique would you say is the most important? Do you use SEO?

Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

If I had to choose one technique that is most important...

It would be without a doubt, High Quality, Relevant Backlinks

KieranTaylor0403 · 12-03-2006, 08:54 PM

Hi there,

Thanks guys for carrying on this thread, you are all sharing personal techniques with each other, and most of them come with the same conclusion - - - Good Quality Backlinks. Seems like backlinks are like taking out insurance.

Much respect to BingoBalls for that great post, sorry I never thanked you earlier I have been majorly busy with some work. But yeah...thanks and enjoy that beer.

Nice inputs from everyone else too. What directories (paid ones preferably as they seem to be better) would you suggest? I am mainly wanting directories which output lots of traffic, and are generally good for Google's PR system.

Oh and a little disclaimer incase someone says anything, I ain't that bothered about PR, it just isn't nice having a new website(s) with a PR of 0

.

Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

TE75 · 12-03-2006, 09:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

Thanks guys for carrying on this thread, you are all sharing personal techniques with each other, and most of them come with the same conclusion - - - Good Quality Backlinks. Seems like backlinks are like taking out insurance.

I think this is a chicken and egg sort of thing. If you do loads of SEO and content work, then you will have a valuable site and people will link to you naturally and you will have a high ranking site. If you spend all day collecting valuable back links, people will come to your site and you will have to have good content to keep them there.

googlesuccess · 12-04-2006, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

What directories (paid ones preferably as they seem to be better) would you suggest? I am mainly wanting directories which output lots of traffic, and are generally good for Google's PR system.

Well, if you are paying for getting included in the directory, you better make sure that the directory has a high page strength (a metric developed by SEOmoz.org). There is a good compilation of such directorries ordered by pagestrength at

http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/

And it makes sense to get a backlink from a page with high PR. So you better check that the internal category page where your listing will appear also has a high PR. An SEO friendly directory will have high PR for its internal pages too. Also select a directory which does not have many listings on internal pages; fewer the better as you can get more pagerank juice from that page.

**Cricket** · 12-04-2006, 01:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by euro

To much SEO is a bad thing, it shows all your intent is to try and rank high without thought for your actual visitors. Keyword stuffed pages, not very good reading really.

SEO does not equal keyword stuffing, nor does it automatically mean that the visitors needs are ignored.

Noon_an_Night · 12-04-2006, 07:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by googlesuccess

Well, if you are paying for getting included in the directory, you better make sure that the directory has a high page strength (a metric developed by SEOmoz.org). There is a good compilation of such directorries ordered by pagestrength at

http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/

googlesuccess - great list

thePro · 12-04-2006, 08:03 AM

http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php

parusa619 · 12-07-2006, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KieranTaylor0403

Hi there,

What SEO technique would you say is the most important? Do you use SEO?

The reason why I ask this is because I try to use all aspects of SEO although I know people that abandon certain practices - and can still reach same levels sometimes as the more avid SEO users. Would you say this depends on the search engine...I would think so.

And for the second question...I know some sites which appear to have absolutely no SEO practice, although the still reign high in the SERP's. Would you say this is luck?

I just would like to know your ways and means of SEO, and if you even use it.

Regards,
Kieran Taylor.

1.) Build Quality IBLs and unique content. I am an SEO for a tv shows on DVD site.
2.) Maybe, depends on the keywords used.