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The Good and the Bad of SEO - From Googles Mouth!
By Rob Sullivan (c) 2005

I recently had the opportunity to ask questions of some Google
staffers. There were some questions I felt I needed to get
verification on, so when I had the opportunity via a conference
call I took it.

In this article I highlight some of the points made during the
call so you know what Google thinks.

You know it's bad when you take time from your holidays to come
into work to attend a conference call. But that's what I did a
few weeks ago. You see I had to because I was going to have the
opportunity to ask some Google employees specific questions on
things that I'd been pretty sure about, but wanted to hear it
right from the horse's mouth.

The call lasted less than an hour, but in that time I found that
there were many things I believed that were indeed true. So let's
start with the most obvious:

Is Pagerank Still Important?

The short answer is yes - PageRank has always been important to
Google. Naturally they couldn't go into detail, but it is as I
suspected. Google still uses the algorithm to help determine
rankings. Where it falls in the algo mix, though, is up for
speculation. My feeling however is that they've simply moved
where the PageRank value is applied in the grand scheme of
things. If you want to know what I think, be sure to read this
article (http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/blogs/comments/166_0_1_0_C/).

Are Dynamic Urls Bad?

Google says that a dynamic URL with 2 parameters "should" get
indexed. When we pressed a bit on the issue we also found that
URLs themselves don't contribute too much to the overall ranking
algorithms. In other words, a page named Page1.asp will likely
perform as well as Keyword.asp.

The whole variable thing shouldn't come as a surprise. It is
true that Google will indeed index dynamic URLs and I've seen
sites with as many as 4 variables get indexed. The difference
however is that in almost all cases I've seen the static URLs
outrank the dynamic URLs especially in highly competitive or
even moderately competitive keyword spaces.

Is URL Rewriting OK in Google's Eyes?

Again, the answer is yes, provided the URLs aren't too long.
While the length of the URL isn't necessarily an issue, if they
get extremely long they can cause problems.

In my experience, long rewritten URLs perform just fine. The
important thing is the content on the page.

That was a common theme throughout the call - content is king.
Sure optimized meta tags, effective interlinking and
externalizing JavaScript all help, but in the end if the content
isn't there, the site won't do well.

Do You Need to Use the Google Sitemap Tool?

If your site is already getting crawled effectively by Google,
you do not need to use the Google sitemap submission tool.

The sitemap submission tool was created by Google to provide a
way for sites which normally do not get crawled effectively to
now become indexed by Google.

My feeling here is that if you MUST use the Google sitemap to
get your site indexed, then you have some serious architectural
issues to solve.

In other words, just because your pages get indexed via the
sitemap doesn't mean they will rank. In fact, I'd bet you that
they won't rank because of those technical issues I mentioned
above.

Here I'd recommend getting a free tool like Xenu and spider your
site yourself. If Xenu has problems, then you can almost be
assured of Googlebot crawling problems. The nice thing with Xenu
is that it can help you find those problems, such as broken
links, so that you can fix them.

Once your site becomes fully crawlable by Xenu I can almost
guarantee you that it will be crawlable and indexable by the
major search engine spiders.

Does Clean Code Make That Much of a Difference?

Again, the answer is yes. By externalizing any code you can and
cleaning up things like tables, you can greatly improve your
site.

First, externalizing JavaScript and CSS helps reduce code bloat
which makes the visible text more important. Your keyword
density goes up which makes the page more authoritative.

Similarly, minimizing the use of tables also helps reduce the
HTML to text ratio, making the text that much more important.

Also, as a tip, your visible text should appear as close to the
top of your HTML code as possible. Sometimes this is difficult,
however, as elements like top and left navigation appear first
in the HTML. If this is the case, consider using CSS to
reposition the text and those elements appropriately.

Do Keywords in the Domain Name Harm or Help You?

The short answer is neither. However, too many keywords in a
domain can set off flags for review. In other words
blue-widgets.com won't hurt you but
discount-and-cheap-blue-and-red-widgets.com will likely raise
flags and trigger a review.

Page naming follows similar rules - while you can use keywords
as page names, it doesn't necessarily help (as I mentioned
above). Further, long names can cause reviews which will delay
indexing.

How Many Links Should You Have on Your Sitemap?

Google recommends 100 links per page.

While I've seen pages with more links get indexed, it appears
that it takes much longer. In other words, the first 100 links
will get indexed right away, however, it can take a few more
months for Google to identify and follow any links greater than
100.

If your site is larger than 100 pages (as many are today),
consider splitting up your sitemap into multiple pages which
interlink with each other, or create a directory structure
within your sitemap. This way you can have multiple sitemaps
that are logically organized and will allow for complete
indexing of your site.

Can Googlebot Follow Links in Flash or JavaScript?

While Googlebot can identify links in JavaScript, it cannot
follow those links. Nor can it follow links in Flash.

Therefore, I recommend having your links elsewhere on the page.
It is OK to have links in flash or JavaScript, but you need to
account for the crawlers not finding them. Therefore, the use of
a sitemap can help get those links found and crawled.

As alternatives, I know there are menus which use JavaScript and
CSS to output a very similar looking navigation system to what
you commonly see with JavaScript navigation yet use static
hyperlinks which crawlers can follow. Therefore, do a little
research and you should be able to find a spiderable alternative
to whatever type of navigation your site currently has.

Overall, while I didn't learn anything earth shattering, it was
good to get validation "from the horse's mouth" so to speak.

I guess it just goes to show that there is enough information
out there on the forums and blogs. The problem is determining
which of that information is valid and which isn't. But that,
I'm afraid, usually comes with time and experience.

================================================================
Rob Sullivan - SEO Specialist and Internet Marketing Consultant.
Any reproduction of this article needs to have an html link
pointing to http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
================================================================

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