News Item: : Website Housekeeping
(Category: Misc)
Posted by Str82u
Wednesday 06 January 2010 - 12:13:21
Cleaning code is good SEO. Can it be bad? After doing terrible things to good domains just to see how it happens, I'm sure there's an "SEO Dossier" with "reseller rights" that describes this in technical detail. For now all we're working with is experience and the money saved. There's a key word method we'll share toward the end that compliments any housekeeping.
When trying to improve your page rank and placement, you would expect the only adverse effects of cleaning code might be the newness of the page on the server. That's a basic philosophy for our aged html. There aren't going to be specific references on this page, if you work with source and haven't experienced something like this, think about it. Humanizing searchbots while you're reading this might lend perspective to our conclusions which influences our intuitive design over basic programming priciples.
Reformatting and cleaning html from a 111kb file dropped it to 12kb. (short blip, read at the bottom) It was the first time to get a Google top ten homepage on purpose. What are you going to do now? Start cleaning up source on ALL your sites so you can go to Disney! But WAIT! There's more. Same site and an enormous in-page JavaScript for making banners slide down a page. Making money on this until an email from AdSense made us rethink/recode and that made another improvement. Speed, right? (CTR oddly improved too).
NOW we really had a plan. Remove the slider code from another popular site, reformat the html and make money. LOL, really loud! Sadly, this time the result so negative it was HEART CRUSHING, disappearing from hundreds of Google SERPs within the month. DEAD! Yahoo resurrected it later where it's successful today, but how can removing a large portion of JAVASCRIPT of all things cause that?
THERE'S THE POINT: The AdSense code was originally in a div at the bottom of the source where it was the last thing the spider saw. When the ad script was written to an adjoining cell of the "main attraction", the content had changed. Not visibly, but to the search engine's ability to assume what people see. Not going to try an make a theory out of this, we did this. Do what ever it takes to get the visible content as close to the head as possible. If you have an expanding menu, WE BELIEVE it's interpreted as being a solid object your users have to scroll through to get to what they came for. If you have in-line styles, nested anything or out of place scripts directly after your bodytag, get rid of it or reposition it with CSS. In regards to nested tables, too many sites were done with in this fashion when padding is all that's neccessary.
Summery: Make sure search engines get meat and potatoes first when they hit your plate, serve the sweet stuff once they fill up. Want an example. countyjailinmatesearch.net. Most any page, search bar and top float from the bottom. View source and you'll see content right away.
Here's that tip for writing the hyperlink. If it's a good phrase, hit the return/enter key to begin the text against the left margin. Doesn't work when we coded any page like that exclusively. It's not human/software interaction natural. Other times we'll break the text of a link to place the keyPARTS on the margin.
Keep it Str8!
PS From the top: Str82u.net was originally on a big messy php CMS but looked good to me and at the time, it jaust HAD to go back to .html format. "View Source", it became a really huge file. Eventually it came down to taking out all the redundant references to the database, css and all. The total added by automation was about 100kb and averaged around 50kb for most pages. Days after, one phrase went from page 10 to 4 and another appeared from nowhere at #4 and believe it or not, another site followed the same term when it got reformatted. This made more money than my three sons working in a lumber yard. Thanks for sticking with me down here.
This news item is from SEO At Work
( http://ihaveyounow.com/news.php?extend.42 )
(Category: Misc)
Posted by Str82u
Wednesday 06 January 2010 - 12:13:21
Cleaning code is good SEO. Can it be bad? After doing terrible things to good domains just to see how it happens, I'm sure there's an "SEO Dossier" with "reseller rights" that describes this in technical detail. For now all we're working with is experience and the money saved. There's a key word method we'll share toward the end that compliments any housekeeping.
When trying to improve your page rank and placement, you would expect the only adverse effects of cleaning code might be the newness of the page on the server. That's a basic philosophy for our aged html. There aren't going to be specific references on this page, if you work with source and haven't experienced something like this, think about it. Humanizing searchbots while you're reading this might lend perspective to our conclusions which influences our intuitive design over basic programming priciples.
Reformatting and cleaning html from a 111kb file dropped it to 12kb. (short blip, read at the bottom) It was the first time to get a Google top ten homepage on purpose. What are you going to do now? Start cleaning up source on ALL your sites so you can go to Disney! But WAIT! There's more. Same site and an enormous in-page JavaScript for making banners slide down a page. Making money on this until an email from AdSense made us rethink/recode and that made another improvement. Speed, right? (CTR oddly improved too).
NOW we really had a plan. Remove the slider code from another popular site, reformat the html and make money. LOL, really loud! Sadly, this time the result so negative it was HEART CRUSHING, disappearing from hundreds of Google SERPs within the month. DEAD! Yahoo resurrected it later where it's successful today, but how can removing a large portion of JAVASCRIPT of all things cause that?
THERE'S THE POINT: The AdSense code was originally in a div at the bottom of the source where it was the last thing the spider saw. When the ad script was written to an adjoining cell of the "main attraction", the content had changed. Not visibly, but to the search engine's ability to assume what people see. Not going to try an make a theory out of this, we did this. Do what ever it takes to get the visible content as close to the head as possible. If you have an expanding menu, WE BELIEVE it's interpreted as being a solid object your users have to scroll through to get to what they came for. If you have in-line styles, nested anything or out of place scripts directly after your bodytag, get rid of it or reposition it with CSS. In regards to nested tables, too many sites were done with in this fashion when padding is all that's neccessary.
Summery: Make sure search engines get meat and potatoes first when they hit your plate, serve the sweet stuff once they fill up. Want an example. countyjailinmatesearch.net. Most any page, search bar and top float from the bottom. View source and you'll see content right away.
Here's that tip for writing the hyperlink. If it's a good phrase, hit the return/enter key to begin the text against the left margin. Doesn't work when we coded any page like that exclusively. It's not human/software interaction natural. Other times we'll break the text of a link to place the keyPARTS on the margin.
Keep it Str8!
PS From the top: Str82u.net was originally on a big messy php CMS but looked good to me and at the time, it jaust HAD to go back to .html format. "View Source", it became a really huge file. Eventually it came down to taking out all the redundant references to the database, css and all. The total added by automation was about 100kb and averaged around 50kb for most pages. Days after, one phrase went from page 10 to 4 and another appeared from nowhere at #4 and believe it or not, another site followed the same term when it got reformatted. This made more money than my three sons working in a lumber yard. Thanks for sticking with me down here.
This news item is from SEO At Work
( http://ihaveyounow.com/news.php?extend.42 )