ABC's of Outsourcing SEO

[Chris Boggs]

Ok let's get this rolling. I am curious as to what the variety of experts in here will think about my newsletter regarding outsourcing SEO.

Please try and not be too brutal

[orion]

Hi, Chris

Here is my feedback. I didn't do a thoroughly thought audit, but hope this help. I'm currently standarizing my evaluations (Going back through my old nutty prof notes)

Legend
na=not applicable
4=strongly agree, 3=agree, 2=disagree, 1=strongly disagree

Proper Design and Layout = 3
The material is useful = 4
Proper Readability = 3
Code follows W3C standards = 2
Proper use of JavaScript = 2

Comments

1. The ABC entries in the first article are very original and capture the attention of first time readers. This is a plus. My congrats.

2. Font size is too small in screen resolutions greater than 800x600. The reason is that you are using absolute font size in the CSS style lists. You may want to use relative units (e.g. "em" values rather than pixels).

3. Code is not W3C valid but most seo sites are not. If you are not into code validation, ignore this suggestion. This and the next are related with proper programming and coding practices.

4. Layout is table-based. This is a common mispractice for many reasons (a) table-browser interactions, (b) W3C recommendations on tables, (c) table linearization issues, etc. I try to stay away from tables, except for presenting tabular data.

5. JavaScript-based rollover could be replaced with CSS-based rollovers. The rest of the JavaScript is not optimized for file size and speed.

6. One thing is W3C Valid CSS and other thing is CSS optimization. Your CSS are not properly optimized. For example, you are declaring the same font-family several times (font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif). Instead of this, you could simply declare a top-level rule at once such like

html,body{font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;}

Once declared, you don't need to declare it again. A similar approach could be used with tables, div tags, etc.

A cardinal rule with CSS is to know how to exploit inheritance from top elements of the CSS DOM.

With the above CSS rule, inheritance should take place across all the elements. Then, if necessary, you could overwrite the inheritance for a given element with a new CSS rule. In this way, the CSS file is reduced and downloads even faster.

You may also want to use shortnotation when declaring CSS colors, so insteand of declaring this in the CSS

#ffffff, #ff0000, etc

declare colors as triplets

#fff, #f00, etc

The exception are non "standard" colors. There are many things SEOs could do to optimize their CSS's or learn how to exploit the CSS DOM but that may deserve a new thread.

Overall, I'm inclined to say your newsletter is worth a visit, but need to see future newsletter articles.

I honestly hope this help.


Orion

[Chris Boggs]

this is great Orion... now I'm gonna have to talk to the developer that put it in there to explain most of your comments

thanks so very much for taking the time to do such a thorough analysis!

I am glad you enjoyed the content and I look forward to writing the next newsletter.