Webnauts Net Blog

The May 24th SitePoint article Google SEO Algorithm Problems by Rodney Ringler discusses several SEO issues that webmasters and site developers have been discussing in various arenas regarding Google’s algorithms and changes regarding page ranking and indexing. Google is definitely not perfect, and here you can learn more about some of the problems many people run into with the manner in which Google indexes their web sites.

There is plenty of information out there, but SSW - Sydney’s Leading .NET and SQL Consultants have brought it all together to show you some common strategies to influence your Google rankings and improve your website’s “Google Friendliness“.

ATTENTION: To avoid any confusion caused by misleading information, rule #5 from this link is not true. External links do dilute the amount of PR a page can send to internal pages, but don’t actually lower the PR of the page itself. If that were true, it would be too hard to get backlinks. Also, the diagram in #6 is incorrect. PR is not cumulative as is diagrammed…

The A List Apart article, High accessibility Is Effective Search Engine Optimization, by SEO consultant Andy Hagans, is another source that points out how high accessibility overlaps heavily with effective SEO. Citing individual checkpoints of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Andy points out how each of these affects SEO.

Though created nearly three years ago by the Sydney Web Standards Group, the web-based slide show, Google and Accessibility, is still just as relevant today. Providing good examples of “Do’s” and “Dont’s” this set of guidelines does a wonderful job of making things simple to understand for any webmaster or developer. Simiply put, Google likes accessible pages. If you keep accessibility in mind when creating a site, Google will be able to catalog your site much more easily than if you hadn’t.

Google is certainly aware of companies that provide SEO services. They also have advice for people who may have questions about these types of services. Their article, What’s an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?, in their Webmaster Help Center provides a great deal of valuable information for anyone interested in SEO. We hope that this type of information can help people to steer clear of anyone who offers to make their site #1 in any search engine.

There are times when you do not want Google (or other search engines) to crawl certain pages to place them in their index. These could be login pages, or development pages that aren’t ready for public use, temporary areas, etc. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, even for specific links.

The fine people at Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO have a nice article, Googlebot: Keep Out!, describing some of these practices. Should the need arise, there are ways to keep Google from indexing those special sections of your web site.

Have you ever wondered what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about? What does it really do for you? In order to answer a few common questions, I have written an article, Why SEO Should be Important to You, about these issues. Please have a look and let me know what you think of it.