new seo ideas?

[susielou]

Hi there. I have already gone through the basic SEO stuff: keyword density, alt tags, meta, img names etc... but I haven't been reading up any changes that have occurred int the last 6-8 months. I have begun to focus more on optimizing the actual on-page attributes and file naming and paying less attention to meta but I was curious if anyone has read anything recent and good about SEO'ing for Google and Yahoo. We seem to have a pretty good pagerank for certain things and others not. I would like to keep our page rank good on what we have and maybe improve on other stuff
Thanks.

[critter]

Hi there. I have already gone through the basic SEO stuff: keyword density, alt tags, meta, img names etc... but I haven't been reading up any changes that have occurred int the last 6-8 months. I have begun to focus more on optimizing the actual on-page attributes and file naming and paying less attention to meta but I was curious if anyone has read anything recent and good about SEO'ing for Google and Yahoo. We seem to have a pretty good pagerank for certain things and others not. I would like to keep our page rank good on what we have and maybe improve on other stuff
Thanks.Well it looks like you might be abit out of the loop. Alot has happened in the last few months. PR has little to no bearing on your Google rankings anymore, Link Building has become even more important with the focus on well themed link partners and GOOD, QUALITY content building is also vital to any success on Google...

Cheers

Critter

[Nick W]

Welcome to the forums mate :cool:

Throw that meta crap out the window for starters, personally i can hardly be bothered with a description these days it does so little...

Here's a pretty good set of forum and article links, it's quite a bit of reading but well worth the effort: Search Engine Marketing 101 (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2086)

Nick

[Marcia]

Welcome to the forums, susielou!

I have already gone through the basic SEO stuff: keyword density, alt tags, meta, img names etc... but I haven't been reading up any changes that have occurred int the last 6-8 months.
That's a good foundation you've got there, and the basics pretty much stay the same over time. What happens is that different things start to carry a different amount of weight. Some things become more important, while some others that were working don't work as well any more.

I have begun to focus more on optimizing the actual on-page attributes and file naming and paying less attention to meta but I was curious if anyone has read anything recent and good about SEO'ing for Google and Yahoo. We seem to have a pretty good pagerank
Always keep the PR as good as you can, we can never know how much or little importance any factor will have down the road; but it isn't something to stress over. Links are important - and proper anchor text both in inbound links and in the internal site navigation as well.

With Google there's more of an emphasis on links, though modifications on the page can affect rankings. With Yahoo it's more "old-fashioned" optimization basics, and you can do a lot with adjusting on-page factors - you need links, but on-the-page seems to be where more of the emphasis is. And of course with MSN Search coming along any time now, it's a very good idea to take a well-rounded approach, which is what you seem to be doing.

Craft good page titles, use a good meta description of about 25-30 words, and for the keywords meta tag, use the main keywords and phrases for the page, separated by commas.

One of the factors that seems to be important now is semantic diversity - breadth of content in a site, with rich varied vocabulary. Google announced las November that they had started to use stemming, so it's a good idea to use different forms of words, including singular and plural.

There's more - but is there anything else specifically you're wanting to know more about?

[tomslick]

Don't spend a lot of time on the keywords tag but do be careful with what you put in the title and description tags. True, the weight SEs give these tags is greatly diminished but these are still important.

The title and description are what users will see if your page ranks on Yahoo. It is still important to communicate to the users why your site is relevant and why they should click-thru to visit.

[sebastian]

here's a couple of new things i have learned: (you never know for sure, but i am pretty convinced that these are all true)

- Better coded pages (i.e. strict html and even better, xhtml) pages will help rankings when all else being equal between two sites.

- Linking not only is a major factor for google. Yahoo has 'kicked it up a notch' with regards to linking as well. more links = more eyeballs ...not only from a ranking perspective, but also from the sites that link to you.

- <Title> is the most powerful tool you have in your coding arsenal. stay below 60 characters - 40 is best (IMHO)

- Content should directly reflect the <title>

- Coding to the DOM coupled with CSS will help immensly (see #1)

- Name bombing works. If you want to garner additional traffic, build pages comparing your product or service to a competitor. It works. Some people have issue with it - I think it's perfectly legit as long as you stay legal and do not slander, libel ...whatever.

EXAMPLE: My company is Encore Tickets and my local, retail competitor is Empire Tickets ::: Go to GOOGLE and type: "Empire Tickets" ...you'll see me right there with them in natural results.

thank you.

[fathom]

Well it looks like you might be abit out of the loop. Alot has happened in the last few months. PR has little to no bearing on your Google rankings anymore...

While correct - it's also incorrect. PageRank is good for appreciating crawl rate, and deep crawl rate ... and both are extemely important for "surfing the fresh wave".

In a good PR6 to predominently PR5 pages website (and above) ranks are achievable in 48 hours for new pages. This is exceptionally beneficial and moreso today since Google PR updates are quite unpreductable or possibly going to quarterly changes.

3 months is a tad bit long for gauging successfulness of any strategy thus the two most important things to do today:

1. if solid PR focus more on new content/copywrite > less on links

2. if new and no PR, focus more link development early and less for internal content/copywrite (external copywrite tends to capture a little of both though e.g. gaining links thus PR and relevancy for topic.

[Marcia]

We seem to have a pretty good pagerank for certain things and others not. I would like to keep our page rank good on what we have and maybe improve on other stuff
First let's make sure we know what you're referring to. Are you talking about the PR (Page Rank) of the site, as in PR4, PR5 as shown on the toolbar, or your rankings at the search engines?

How are you doing at Yahoo as compared with your Google rankings - rankings, not PR? It's a bit different between the two.

And a separate thing, what is the PR of the site on the homepage and the interior pages?