| LED Digest 2372: HTML Standards and Search Rankings |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 21, 2007 Issue no. 2372 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== 3rd Party Reciprocal Links ==-- ~ Sandi Dettman "Would it be a good reciprocal or could it hurt us?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== When Clients Don't Pay ==-- ~ Tracy Coyle "A subject near and dear to our heart..." ~ Reg Charie "Ahhh. You have touched on a sore point." ~ Phil Chave "On big jobs...get paid in increments of more than 50:50." --== HTML Standards and Search Rankings ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "W3C validation has absolutely no effect on search engine rankings..." ~ Lee Roberts "Google does know that the use of heading tags in this manner is not proper." ==== BULLETIN BOARD ============= --== Looking for Moonlight Reps ==-- ~ Adam Boettiger ========== NEW =================================== From: Sandi Dettman Subject: 3rd Party Link Exchanges Hi Adam et all, One of our sites has been increasing in popularity and ranks very high for some of our niche products. Lately we have been getting quite a few requests for reciprocal links which is great because I don't have to do all the leg work! My question is, we received one the other day and the link back was not on the client's site but on http://www.freepagerank.org/. Does anyone have any input on this type of backlink or the website which seems to be in existence for the sole purpose of link exchanges? Would it be a good reciprocal or could it hurt us? Thanks for any input! Sandi Dettman www.artistgifts.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Tracy Coyle Subject: Bamboozled (clients who don't pay) > This company has received the promised deliveries from > [their designer] and he's getting stonewalled. No answers > to voicemails or emails. Nothing. He hasn't been paid. > Has this ever happened to you? - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2371 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1773/55/ A subject near and dear to our heart. My partner is an attorney. First rule (apparently): if a client loses their case, it is the attorney's fault; Second rule: if a client wins their case, they didn't need the attorney; Third rule: win or lose, the attorney cost too much. Recently, we had a case where the client was arrested. We took the case and got the charges dismissed. It took us 5.5 months, we were hired 2 months after the arrest. He has refused to pay us the balance due on his fee and complained to attorney regulation that he has a record (arrests, and convictions, and dismissals are all part of the public record and available online). His complaint is that he was arrested (obviously we had nothing to do with that) and that it took to long to get it dismissed (no impact on the online notice). The amount is too small to sue for (court costs would exceed the balance due). In most cases, clients must pay us our fee up front. Despite a segment of the field that accepts payments, we usually stick by our rule because of situations like the above. We write off between 1k and 5k a year in unpaid fees. Not a lot in the big scheme of things, but the result is that good, honest people, with minimal funds don't get service from us because of the cheats that make us extra cautious. First time clients do not get discounts: first time clients do not get work done without payment up front. Work doesn't start till we are paid. Deposits are non-refundable. Reputations do not get special treatment. We have been burned EVERY TIME we have violated our own rules. Final saying: no good deed goes unpunished. Tracy Coyle -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Reg Charie Subject: Bamboozled Ahhh. You have touched on a sore point. I took on a new client last year, and at first all was well. It was for a complete site rebuild, SEO, new products, articles, news releases, all the good stuff. It also included teaching them to use the content management system with an eye to their taking the job over "in house." The proposal was submitted, agreed upon, deposit received, and in the allotted time the contract was completed. Final payment was a little slow in coming but within my "forgivable" time frame. After the project was completed the site started to draw attention the client was very pleased, and more was asked of me. Since we had a working relationship it was to be billed at my standard rate, and I put in a fair bit of time, which was billed at the end of the month. The client was kept apprised of the amount of time going into the project. And a little more the next month. When I was working on the site, I was in daily communications through email and instant messenger. All of a sudden this stopped, and my messages went unanswered. Meanwhile the site started to rank better and better for a large range of keyword phrases, partially due to the extra (unpaid) content I had added. I got really worried when my emails to them were blocked. <grin> Long story short. I was told that they were not going to pay, and I was forced to send them a Digital Millennium copyright warning. This resulted in all the, (17 date stamped pages), unpaid work being removed. Since they are in the US and I am in Canada, litigation was not economically feasible. Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Phil Chave Subject: Bamboozled Hi Adam This happened to me not long ago and I've still not been able to resolve it. A small geological company asked me to build their website and the owners daughter came round with a bagful of photographs and printouts of other peoples websites that she'd like to copy. (So actually, in hindsight, I now blame myself, because that should have told me something right up front). Nobody there had any idea about website design, advertising, marketing, SEO, any of that sort of stuff, so it was obvious it was going to be a bit of a struggle. Getting across the idea of what was involved in page design, graphics work, heading and text keyword considerations, colour schemes, all that stuff, is impossible to someone who only looks at it from a surfers point of view and still has stereotypical ideas about the instant success and profits that can be had with a 10 page website. I sent in a quote and asked for half upfront, and half on completion, my usual terms. Plus, stating that additional and subsequent work to the quote was chargeable hourly. So, after numerous changes, because by now, just about everybody, including the janitor, had an idea of what the site should look like, it went online. The bill went in, plus 6 hrs billable (should have been nearer 12, but what the heck). The second half of the quote was paid but not the extras. In the meantime, one of the office staff had downloaded a pirate copy of dreamweaver from Ebay and was playing about with my work, which actually was fine, I wasn't worried about that. The trouble was all he changed was the odd line of text, then proudly went to the owners daughter, stating that this web stuff was a piece of cake and what was I charging all this money for, when he could do it. He promptly took over, completely missing the point that what he was working with had taken hours of work designing colour schemes, repairing scanned in photographs at pixel level, producing text, headings and coding that Google was going to chomp on and generally ensuring that the whole site ran smoothly. Anyway, despite numerous letters, I never did get paid the extra hours, but it does provide a valuable lesson. On big jobs, which this wasn't, get paid in increments of more than 50:50. Perhaps, go for 50:20:20:10. That way, you stand to lose a much lesser proportion than 50%. All the best, Phil Chave www.distanthealer.co.uk ============ Sponsor Message =========== Have you sat down and read your website lately? What your site says is crucial in converting surfers into customers and meeting search engine mandates for fresh, unique copy. Our all-pro writers have Fortune 500 experience. For top-quality, customized, cost-effective copy, visit http://GetWebContent.com/LED today. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Standards > One person who responded to my post... mentioned > to me, as to why my page might not be ranking, is that > I had used three h3 tags in the left-side navigation [links]. - Tom Anson, LED Digest 2371 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1773/55/ Under no circumstances have I ever found a site that wasn't ranking because of use of Hx tags in margin navigation. To a search engine, the Hx tags just say, "These words are being emphasized". It's equivalent to use a STRONG / BOLD or EM / ITALICS markup. W3C validation has absolutely no effect on search engine rankings either, although an alarming number of people have begun suggesting it does in various SEO discussion communities. The W3C "standard" is an advisory standard only and most people are not even aware of it, much less attempting to adhere to it. A search engine simply cannot afford to score relevance on the basis of HTML markup compliance with arbitrary standards. Your web site ranks well for "aromatic essentials", but is not well optimized for anything like "young living essential oils" (let alone "essential oils"). These keywords appear to be hyperoptimized, in that many sites seem to be relying upon link anchor text to help boost their rankings. Your own internal link navigation doesn't do anything to help you there. Also, the majority of your pages are in Google's Supplemental Results index, and on Google at least that pretty much means they won't do well unless non-Supplemental pages are linking to them. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Lee Roberts Subject: Standards > I've checked the W3C site, but can't find > anything about this, one way or the other. - Tom Anson (x)HTML standards are a wonderful place to start to learn to practice the art of Web design. Unfortunately, like with the law the practice of the art is often left to interpretation by others. Consider for a moment the right to free speech. Prior to the Bill of Rights, people were cast into the stocks, pillars, jail, and even prison for speaking against the government. Our founding fathers wanted the unjust punishment of forward thinking individuals to be ceased. Nowhere did the Bill of Rights say that a person could do such as was ruled in favor of Larry Flint. However, the right to free speech has been interpreted to allow such behavior. Whether some of us like or dislike that type of material or language is irrelevant; the founding fathers goal was to keep the government from persecuting individuals for their views about government. It was only later interpreted to include such behavior. It may have seemed I was preaching or casting my personal views to a Right we think we have. Your views may be different. The point is the interpretation of this single Right falls into the same realm as the interpretation of (x)HTML standards. We do have the benefit of the founding fathers of HTML to whom we can pose questions. Or, we can simply review their histories in the industry or ALL information regarding the standards developed for creating Web pages and content. Web standards have been altered to meet the needs of the individuals at hand. Netscape added proprietary codes. Microsoft added proprietary codes. Adobe has added proprietary codes. Google has added proprietary codes. Who's to say who's right? Common sense says who's right, but that common sense is only available after understanding the initial purpose of the Web and how it applies to the question. Heading tags have always been an interesting topic to me. They are confusing to the novice; they are confusing to the "so-called" expert. The (x)HTML standards are confusing in themselves; this is probably why XHTML 2 has proposed the removal of the number for heading tags and allow people to use their own presentations through CSS. Now, let's look at the interesting history of heading tags. In the old days, pre-1989, we would publish complete research papers on the ARPAnet and MILnet to use by anyone that knew where to find the research paper. The complete 150-page report would be a single file because we didn't have the benefit of hyper-linking and breaking the document into smaller, more digestible segments. HTML was developed to allow this capability & it wasn't developed to create commerce as many of us might think. However, commerce has benefited from the development of HTML and other Web related protocols and languages. Let's look deeper into the 150-page report. The report would have a title and various headings and sub-headings. That's simple enough to understand, I think. With the smaller, more digestible segments, now called Web pages, each page has or should have a unique page title. From the 30,000-foot view, the page title identifies the topic of the individual Web pages. I think we all know how this piece works; but we might have questions as to what goes into the page titles and theories about that can be addressed at some time in the future. Heading tags, our primary subject for the day, start with the main concept. The main topic is identified by the H1 tag. All content following the H1 tag should support the concept identified by the H1 tag. There can be only one H1 tag per Web page. Some have suggested that the H1 should be used only on the home page. Some have said that the H1 tag can be used multiple times on a Web page. Here interpretation leads us down the wrong path. The (x)HTML standards state that when a heading tag is used the first heading tag must be an H1. This can be found in the following references. -------------------- "You always need the start and end tags. H1 elements are more important than H2 elements and so on, so that H6 elements define the least important level of headings." Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32#headings "The six heading elements, H1 through H6, denote section headings. Although the order and occurrence of headings is not constrained by the HTML DTD, documents should not skip levels (for example, from H1 to H3), as converting such documents to other representations is often problematic." Source: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_5.html#SEC5.4 -------------------- The following reference indicates that the W3 understands people often lack the full understanding of the standards. -------------------- "Some people consider skipping heading levels to be bad practice. They accept H1 H2 H1 while they do not accept H1 H3 H1 since the heading level H2 is skipped." Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5 -------------------- However, the idea that heading tags can be skipped or improperly used is corrected by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Web Content Accessibility Test for heading tags: http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/WCAG20/tests/test37.html As should be apparent from the above references, especially the Accessibility Guidelines, to understand the (x)HTML standards you should examine all information relating to the subject and not just the Document Type Definitions (DTDs). As for using heading tags with links, that is a technical error. The confusion about this evolved from people assuming that an NAMED ANCHOR within the same Web page is the same as a HYPERTEXT REFERENCE (A HREF tags) to another Web page. Headings have been used as NAMED ANCHORS within Web pages in examples found throughout the W3 Web site. Refer to http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html40-970917/struct/links.html The examples clearly show heading tags wrapping NAMED ANCHORS. Heading tags should not be used to wrap HYPERTEXT REFERENCES or ANCHOR TEXT to other Web pages. Heading tags are explicitly used to identify sections within a Web page just as they identify sections within a 150-page report. People scan headings within a Web page to find the information they want just as they do in 150-page reports. Even technical manuals are broken in to chapters that include headings, sub-headings and even more sub-headings. The nested heading structure helps readers find information quickly and easily. Some people are led to believe that wrapping HYPERTEXT REFERENCES with heading tags would lead to higher positions in the search results. Unfortunately, this is not true. The fact of the matter is using heading tags in conjunction with HYPERTEXT REFERENCES to other Web pages has no bearing on the importance of the linked Web page. This is a simple SEO myth like so many other SEO myths. Adam adds > Interesting question. I'm not sure why those h3 links would be > problematic, but I'd love to hear from someone with ideas on this. Heading tags are very important and probably one of the least talked about elements in HTML manuals. I haven't owned one in years. However, if my memory serves me correctly, the section on heading tags was less than a page in length. Clearly even the "experts" that write about heading tags don't know their proper use. There's no wonder why people are so confused by heading tags. As I pointed out earlier, you should have only one H1 tag per page because it identifies the primary topic of the Web page. You can have multiple H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 tags. However, you cannot have an H3 without a previous H2. Some have been confused by the concept of nesting because clear examples have not been provided. For example, I have seen people use 10 heading tags on a Web page with the last heading tag being an H10. I've no idea how they came up with that idea. Believe it or not, the first time I ran into this was from a "usability" and "accessibility" expert, or so he claimed to be. Are the H3 tags keeping Tom's Web page from moving from page 3 in Google for "Aromatherapy Oil Blends" to page one? That is a distinct possibility. Google does know that the use of heading tags in this manner is not proper. Regards, Lee Roberts Apple Pie Shopping Cart http://www.applepiecart.com Rated #1 by SEO Firms ==== BULLETIN BOARD =============================== From: Adam Boettiger Subject: Freelance Ad Sales Reps Looking for freelance ad sales reps - either independent contractors or full-time reps looking for some moonlight gigs. Pls contact me off-list. thx Adam Boettiger boettiger, pobox.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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