Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Hello All,
Great thread. Ive just completed my own site at RED BARN Graphic Design Studio and I have a few SEO questions.
1. How do you insert an html sitemap into your page?
2. My site is very graphic, especially the portfolios Red Barn Portfolios, so I did something strange... I inserted and "invisible" layer of text just above the background layer. I coloured it the same as the background so now you cant see it. Question is.. I know search engines can penalize you for doing this, but does anyone think, looking at the code, that this will happen??
If not, its a great solution to balancing the amount of graphics to text for SEO purposes!!
Comments on my site will also be appreciated as this is my first XXpro Site..
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Hi LindyJo
Text that is hidden in some way, either by CSS trickery or by the method you have used, can sometimes trigger a penalty in the search engines.
Drwyd
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Lindy - that's an obvious abuse and one of the first rules in the Google webmaster guidelines of what not to do.
Related: Since popup layers are "hidden" until exposed by the user (and maybe this is the thing that saves them), do they count againt us? I don't know if the Google mechanisms can tell between intentionally hidden text for the purpose of tricking the search engine and text hidden for the purpose of design.
I like puting some stuff in popup layers - like a "more info" sort of thing rather than cluttering the page up with text detail that the user may not want to see, but if this will cause penalty, I will need to move to doing individual pages.
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
I dont mean to trick the search engines but because of the way Xara uses objects and images its difficult to get the balance between text and images right.
I would love to hear if anyone know if you can use popup layers to boost the text content.. I would prefer that, cause I feel guilty :(
I'll leave it till I find another solution... lets see what happens..
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Pop ups should be fine as they are triggered by a visible link. Stuff like white text on a white background, font size 0, moving text off the page (text-indent: -9999) or hiding text underneath images is a big no no.
If you have images on your site make sure you have added "alt text" to help the search engines work out what your pages are all about.
For XML site maps I recommend you have a look at this site. Once the map has been created it can be uploaded by FTP to your root directory. You can then point to it with Google Webmaster Tools.
Drwyd
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Question: When using the "Tracker code" box in website options. (WD6) can I put more than one tracker code in there ? I use Google Webmaster Tools and Anylitics but was also wanting to use Alexa. Has anyone else used Alexa ?
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Hey these tips are good and helpful for the newbie in seo...
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Well, there are lots of customers and advertisers who take Alexa ratings seriously. If you want to sell ad space of your website through services like Text-Link-Ads, you need a better Alexa Ranking and Google PR. There are many online shoppers who are still very skeptical of where they are going to shop on the internet. So they usually follow the others and use ratings like Alexa, Google pagerank or other traffic rankers to perceive the value of your site.
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
Re: Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) Tips for Xara Websites
John - Are you saying that new member Yanie merely copied his comments from the Google Success website? :rolleyes:
And do you think that a spam link is soon to come? :rolleyes: