seo and it's importance

Hi!

As some one fairly new to web design I have come across many, many tips for seo, H1, H2 etc Tags, Keywords, robots file, sitemap etc, most of which are quite contradictory. These are my observations after 20 or so websites.

My first website was skech.co.uk and this had pretty much no seo and pretty much does not appear anywhere decent on search engines. The next one was warmcoat.co.uk and again not too much seo, no robots file, no sitemap, but the keywords are pretty spot on, and on google if you search 'roof renovation' it ranks 12th. I have just completed a new website simplydebtfree.co.uk and have gone all out, keywords, meta tags, alt text on images, anchors, sitemap, submission to google, yahoo, bing etc and I am using http://www.seoworkers.com/tools/analyzer.html to get the keywords, meta tags etc 'perfect'. This is going to be my test subject site.

I just want to see if as some seo specialists are right and that a sitemap, robots file and H1, H2 etc tags are all pretty much not needed at all, as long as the site is clear and can be crawled by the search engines. I would like to know what others using xara think about this and what their experience has been with SEO.

I'm no SEO expert, but I would list these points as important:

[•] Meaningful page titles
[•] Minimal keywords
[•] Relevant textual page content
[•] Alt text for Important images
[•] Relevant textual page content
[•] Regular updates
[•] Relevant textual page content
[•] No hidden text
[•] Relevant textual page content
[•] No links to sites with malware or malware links
[•] Relevant textual page content
[•] Backlinks (from other sites)

Sledger, I agree with you completely. i keep the keywords to 8, page titles are a bit harder because the clients always want 'Welcome to...'. Backlinks, which would you say is the best way to get backlinks, I am using stuff like facebook, business directories etc. I take it you agree that sitemaps, robots files, H1, H2 tags etc are not as relevant nowadays.

Regarding page titles, does grouping the title affect whether it is searchable? I ask because i understand grouping makes text into graphics.

from my understanding grouping any text with any other text or object makes it an object so it is not searchable

You cannot group a page title because it is not an object on the page. The 'title' we refer to here is entered into the Web Properties>>Page section

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sledger

You cannot group a page title because it is not an object on the page. The 'title' we refer to here is entered into the Web Properties>>Page section

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I see....thanks.

Ron