Q: Can you explain again where the snippet of information listed below a link in a Google search result page comes from? I believe you said some search engines use the meta description, but where else in the code should this information be placed?
A: Google pulls content for the snippet mainly from the body copy, but also from the image alt tags, the meta description, and even select lists in fill-in forms. Google assembles the snippet dynamically, based on the search query that the user searched for. Text in close proximity to the user’s search terms are much more likely to get incorporated into the snippet, particularly if that text is higher up in the page. Typically the company logo is the first image on a web page. Given that fact, consider having a keyword-rich alt tag for that image, complete with a compelling call-to-action. You may very well find that bit of text appearing in your snippet
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Q: What books would you suggest I begin reading to get a better idea of optimizing a site?
A: I wouldn’t pick up a book for SEO. At least I haven’t yet found an SEO book that stands the test of time. Print is too remote a medium from the Internet - ideas expressed in the book could be outdated before the book is published. Plus, it’s a single view, isolated from the rest of the community of experts.
Instead, I’d suggest getting up to speed by immersing yourself in a few online communities, such as: Webmasterworld.com, Searchengineforums.com, and HighRankings.com/forum. But be careful, because there’s a lot of wrong advice as well as good advice.
I can also suggest some a few articles on SEO by Brian and myself:
The Ruby Slippers of Search
(http://catalogagemag.com/ar/marketing_ruby_slippers_search/)
The Invisible Edge
(http://searchenginesinfo.com/ar/marketing_invisible_edge/)
The Search Is On…
(http://catalogagemag.com/ar/marketing_search/)
There actually is one e-book I would recommend: Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide by Mike Grehan, available online at http://www.search-engine-book.co.uk.
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Q: How do you set up custom error pages?
A: It depends on the web server software. On Apache, you add a line to your configuration file like so:
ErrorDocument 404 /error.html
On Microsoft IIS, first you’d go to “Properties” under your website, then select “Custom Errors”, then error code 404, and then “Properties” and finally you’d specify which file is your custom error page.
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Q: Does it matter whether the JavaScript code is in the section or the , as far as affecting Google spiders?
A: Either place will work, but JavaScript code that’s high up in the page pushes your keyword-rich body copy lower down the page, which in turns lowers the keyword prominence of the keywords in that copy. So ideally, don’t include the JavaScript functions “inline” but instead place them in a separate .js file and simply reference that .js file in the of your page. Or, placing JavaScript code low in the towards the end of the page can work as well.
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Q. : If you want to use the Google Directory to find out your PageRank score, how do you know what category Google has put you in to start this process?
A: Simply start at the Google Directory home page at http://directory.google.com and conduct a search for your company name or brand name. If you are listed in the Directory, you’ll see the Category you’re listed in as part of your search listing. Click on that category name to go directly to that category page of the Directory.
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Q: Can we better understand the measurements of success (how to know # pages indexed, etc.)?
A: Have a read of my article titled “Casing the Competition,” published earlier this year in Catalog Age magazine, available online at http://catalogagemag.com/ar/marketing_casing_competition/. It describes various SEO success metrics and how to measure them, including number of pages indexed (http://www.netconcepts.com/urlcheck), number of links (http://www.netconcepts.com/linkcheck), and number of product pages indexed (http://www.netconcepts.com/productcheck).
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A: If I have 3 versions of the middle of the homepage that is set to come up randomly every time the page is refreshed. Is that hurting my Google rankings?
A: It depends on what that rotated text says. If it’s not reinforcing the keyword theme that you are going after and it’s a big percentage of the text of your home page, then yes, it is hurting your rankings. I say this because it would be moving your page’s keyword focus away from the keyword you are targeting to something not as desirable.
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Q: You mentioned that having multiple duplicate pages could be bad. How does that relate to custom error pages??
A: It doesn’t normally. However, on occasion a web server is misconfigured so that the custom error page is not served up as ‘file not found’ respnose code of 404, but instead as a normal web page with the ‘everything’s okay’ response code of 200. That will mean that these error pages will end up getting saved into the search engine’s index - multiple times with the same content. This of course is not desirable from the search engine’s point of view, from the user’s, or from yours. You can check to see if this is the case by using the Server Header Checker tool at http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi and then specifying a URL with of your site followed by a nonsense filename (e.g. http://www.toyota.com/asdfasdf if your site is Toyota.com).
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Q: What about JavaScript drop-down menus? Are they still not good to use for very deep sites?
A: No they are not good to use on any site as the only way to get to a page, because Googlebot doesn’t execute the Javascript/Java/etc. programming code in your page that is required to operate the drop down menus. If you must use JavaScript drop-downs, then also have straight text links elsewhere, like in the footer of the page, as an alternate means for search engines to find the page.
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Q: Is URL encoding search engine unfriendly?
A: No. URL encoding - where a special character like a space character in a URL is converted to %20 and a colon to %3A - isn’t a signifier to the search engines that the page is dynamic and thus is a potential “spider trap.”
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