mike Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 (edited) I have been reading up on SEO and search engine optimization. Hmmm. I'm am seeing articles that say "links" aren't so important anymore. Also that "Meta tags" aren't even looked at by search engines. I read that the "revisit" tag means nothing because it was originally designed for some site, I believe, in Vancouver? One person says that you should never set "Revisit after" to less than 31 days . Another says that spiders ignore the revisit tag. then I notice the top result on a certain search has "revisit after 7 days" and remains at the top. Do this. No don't do that. Do this. No, don't do that either. That's changed, don't do that now. It gets a bit tough to tell who to believe and you can't always tell how old the info is either. Edited January 9, 2006 by mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisety Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Incoming links are very important, especially with Google. One of the best places I've found to learn about SEO is highrankings.com/forum. They stay away from the hype there and trying to spam or trick the search engines, very white hat SEO. Another good source that I've found is The Unfair Advantage Book at searchenginenews.com. Good luck with it and if you still get stuck, feel free to PM me. Lise Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 I agree with Lise... only post a question so we can all benefit from the answer. As far as do/don'ts there are two things... changing rules and misinformed people believing hype. Incoming links are very important. Revisit after is a suggestion at best... certainly not worth much if anything. Meta tags probably won't change your placement in SERPS, but they sometimes provide the description for your site. This, of course, is very basic info and not well detailed, but it's a start. Hope you find it helpful. Any questions please feel free to ask. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike Posted January 10, 2006 Author Share Posted January 10, 2006 Thanks Lise and Jim. I guess my question was - who to believe? I have been looking through highrankings.com/forum and Lise confirmed it was a good site so I will continue studying there assuming that the big things so far are links and content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Read everything, believe no one. Really, from everything I have read and seen, content is most important and links come after that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Just send a link to your Mom, it will be every where in a day Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
surefire Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 To echo TCH-Rob, in highly compeitive categories of search, the sites that rise to the top have the most relevant content, the most content, and above all, good links pointing back to them. Anything that seems like a shortcut is probably black-hat SEO and could potentially get you in hot water... come back to bite you. There's no easy route to dominating the search engine results. Doing the right things right for an extended period of time is what works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zilla Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I found the search engine news site helpful, and I also stumbled upon some helpful articles posted here at TCH: http://www.totalchoicehosting.com/search-e...n-overview.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vintage Lover Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning The Search Engine Wars is EXPENSIVE!! $97.00 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 Not bashing the books in any way but most books on the subject may not be of much help if the search engine makes changes to its code to do things differently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Excellent point Rob! There are not many rules that have remained constant other than links and decent content for the visitor. Everything else changes on a monthly or few-monthly basis so any book will be at least somewhat out of date as soon as it's printed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike Posted January 16, 2006 Author Share Posted January 16, 2006 Links and decent content ARE the key. Even so, I have heard that the content needs to change for the spiders to re-index??? Is that correct, or , to what extent? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted January 16, 2006 Share Posted January 16, 2006 Although I suspect spiders may revisit more often if content changes frequently, it's not necessary to get them to come to your site to index it. Googlebot has hit me 78+ times so far this month on a site that's not changed in probably 2 years. The latest visit was 4:44 yesterday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted January 16, 2006 Share Posted January 16, 2006 Same as Jim, 123+ this month and most of my content is static. New content is good if you have it just to keep visitors coming back. Remember not to get too caught up in all this though, while it is important to SEO your site to get visitors, it means nothing if you do not have the content to keep them there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mission Posted January 18, 2006 Share Posted January 18, 2006 I heard that Flash splash pages aren't good... I didn't know META tags were no good anymore... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted January 18, 2006 Share Posted January 18, 2006 They are not totally useless as many search engines use them to help decide what the site's about and for the blurb they provide sometimes. They are not as important now when a search engine tries to determine your placement among other sites like yours. You should use them - who knows, maybe they will become important again or some smaller search engine will still use them and drive traffic to your site. Every little bit helps - just don't obsess over them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esoos Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 Hi, I'm Esoos Bobnar, one of the contributing authors to searchenginenews.com and the Unfair Advantage Book. Just wanted to say thanks to the folks that recommended our publication, and give my two cents. I'd very much agree with the advice that's been given in this forum. Create a quality site, and work to get links from other quality sites that are related in topic to your own. When it comes to links, quality is more important than quantity. As mentioned, the meta description tag can be important, as it often provides the description of your site that people see in the search engines. Most other meta tags are unimportant, with exception of the META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" type of meta tag. Best to avoid this one, because it can keep search engine spiders from indexing your web pages if you're not careful. I'd be happy to answer any other questions about SEO, but it looks like the mods here already have a pretty strong grasp of the topic. Also, as a side note, the Unfair Advantage Book is an ebook, and it gets updated every month to keep it current. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevevan Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 Welcome to the forums Esoos and thanks for your input! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 Welcome Esoos. Dont get me wrong, I am not knocking any particular format except print that one would buy in a regular bookstore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 Welcome to the forum, Esoos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Andy Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 Welcome to the forum, Esoos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted January 22, 2006 Share Posted January 22, 2006 Welcome to the forum, Esoos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deverill Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Welcome Esoos! Thanks for the comments - it's always good to have another input, especially one as qualified as yours. Most of us are just guessing, albeit educated guessing, at SEO and it's great that you took the time to post to let us know we are on the right track. Also, thanks for the note about the book - I hadn't read anything about it and didn't realize it's an ebook. I'll have to check that out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esoos Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Thanks for the welcome, everyone Happy to contribute, though, as I mentioned, you guys already seem to have it down pretty well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Welcome to the forum, Esoos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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