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.

Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee expressed his views on the importance of web standards and accessibility, among other aspects of the World Wide Web’s future during the 15th International World Wide Web Conference in Edinburgh on Wednesday, the 24th of May. The article Berners-Lee applies Web 2.0 to improve accessibility gives a brief synopsis of his comments. Great reading for anyone interested in the aspect of Accessibility as it relates to the Internet.

We have all experienced it before while browsing the web. You click on a link, and immediately, a new browser window opens to contain the page you were linking to. Why couldn’t it have stayed in the window you were using? It turns out that there are some very good reasons why links should not open in new windows. Read the article Avoid forcing to open in a new window on Webnauts Net to learn more about this issue.

Skip Links: You’ve seen them in various places, but unless you are using on-standard browsing means, you probably wondered what they’re really for, and why they are useful. Read the Webnauts Net article Skip to Main Content Links are Important to find out more about who uses these links, and why they should be included in your web site.

So you’ve put your page through all of the validators you can find, checked all of the code numerous times, corrected every error (even the ones that the corrections caused!), and it’s ready for the world. Or is it? What about usability? Even a perfectly valid page isn’t very helpful if a person has difficulty using it. Read the Webnauts Net article Why usability is important to you to learn more about the aspect of usability and how it relates to your web site.

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.