No Question is Stupid

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Hi All - this means YOU

I see all you lurkers on this thread - its nearly 1am where I'm at right now and there are 2 dozen of you lurking.

This is a very unique forum.

We help people. And we do it for free. At least that's why I am here anyhow.

Quit reading and start asking. There is no such thing as a stupid question. I promise I'll answer your question in laymans terms and rip anyone apart that tries to demean you in any way.

This forum is here for novices, because the ppl that aren't have learned what they know right here.

I'd like someone to step up and ask their top 5 SEO related questions.

You'll be surprised how many thanks you get!!!

Its just driving me crazy seeing all you lurkers that are apprehensive about asking a question - ASK IT!!!!!! Pleeeeeeeease!

All these shadows are scaring me

'I hear dead people'

[WinYourWayKyle]

Hi Gary,
I was one of those lurkers at 1AM last night.... haha
I was reading some of your other posts last night, and I really enjoyed your Top 12 SEO tools for 2010.
The new re-design of my website is almost complete now, and I hope to bring have it full functional by the end of this week. I have a SEO person doing the optimization of my website, but I am in the process of learning more as well.

I will have some questions to post for you soon.

Cheers

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Hi WinYourWayKyle,

Happy New Year and thanks for the email.

I've been through a few of your posts as well. Feel free to ask away. If you have someone optimising your site you should search for my "Top Tips for 2008". There are some good initial tips he should put into place. To be fair, I would send all of them his way (Top Tips for 2009 & 2010 - 2009 has a 1.2 version as well)

I look forward to speaking with you.

Gary

[WinYourWayKyle]

Hi Gary,
Thank you for responding.
Can you please send me a PM with the links to these articles.
I would like to send these over to my contact so she can have a look.
We are about a week out before we start optimizing the site, so this would be a good time to pass on that info.

May I ask your opinion of the new site thus far?

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Its everywhere - in 4 languages, in pdf, word, etc. Search it

Sne dme the URL and I'll have my team give you a free one-off (I charge 4k for these) - but I'm not going to do your homework for you - I just don't have the time and I am on a new laptop (my MacBok Pro with solid state processor - $4k shared my coffee with me the other day) and I am in Florida awaiting my visa and to add insult to injury my staff has been off practically the entire month between holidays and blizzards (England) so they are not easily found on my end dude - but they are everywhere - its been scraped several thousand times.

Send me you URL.

GaryTheScubaGuy

[WinYourWayKyle]

Hi Gary,
Thanks, I will go and find it right now.
The url of the new site is www.winyourway.ca/NewWebsite/

It will be moved to the primary domain most likely at the end of this week.
There is still some bugs in the site being worked on currently and not quite all the content is online yet, but I think it looks good, and would enjoy to hear your opinion.

Thanks,

Kyle

[ck8795]

I know you didnt ask me but that folder should be blocked via robots.txt and noindex nofollow

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...=&oq=&gs_rfai=

You've got a mess there

[WinYourWayKyle]

Hi Kaus,
Thank you for pointing this out to me.
I had a robots.txt file set up when I first built that folder for the new site.
I just checked now and it seemed to have been deleted somehow.
I have installed a new robots.txt file with it blocking that folder now so hopefully Google with update itself in good time.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

kaus is the man!!!!

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Google with update itself in good time.

Manually submit it through WMC

[WinYourWayKyle]

Excuse my ignorance.... But what is WMC?

Manually submit it through WMC

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Good lord dude-I see your going to be a full time job - buts thats okay If no one else has the guts too ask newbie questions the gutless newbie lurkers wouldn't learn a thing.

Kudos to you!

WMC is Google Webmaster Central

[WinYourWayKyle]

Ok, I got it...
So Google Webmaster Tools....I have an account all set-up there...and know what all that is about....
I just had never heard the acronym "WMC" for that.....But dulely noted for future reference!
We're good now!

[TheCanadianGambler]

I have a newbie question about title and alt tags on links and images.

When you add a title to a link, does it count as a keyword for your page, or does all the benefit go to that link (even if it's "nofollow"ed)? Also, the same question could be asked about the actual text used for the link.

Do search engines pay much attention to alt and title tags on images?

I also would very much appreciate your opinion of my site. I'm doing all the work myself and have been trying to utilize everything I've read (including many of your posts/articles) but I'm still a newbie that could probably do better. Link is in my sig.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Hi TheCanadianGambler,

Thanks for the query.

I apologise but I'm not clear on your question. You asked;

When you add a title to a link, does it count as a keyword for your page, or does all the benefit go to that link

You are confusing me ny asking about 'adding a title to a link'.

If this answer isn't right or rather, what you are looking for let me know.

A link is a link regardless of the actual text you use in the link - which we refer to as 'anchor text'. Using keywords in links is a definitie benefit because the search engines look at anchor text to determine what your site or the linked page is about.

The keys these days the key to link building (which is one of the top 10 factors the search engines look at when determining your ranking) is to use LSi or latent semantic indexing methodology. Latent semantics in laymans terms means associated or relative terms.

I use this example to explain LSI because I am from the states but live in England and the terminology is so adverse its a perfect fit;

In the US we call a woven knit top a sweater. In England its a jumper.

Another good example is that in the US we call a semi truck a truck. In England they call them a Lorie. In Australia its a ute. (of course in the US a Lory is a bird - see what I mean? Now create an automated index tool that is supposed too be able to figure this out - not possible - this is where SEO becomes an engineerable possibility.

If I have a site that I promote globally for car parts I would integrate all of the above into one article (actually I would create individual pages, subdomains, redirects and geo-targeting) - but for the purposes of the point I am trying to make we'll stick with just this - its important to use relative terms in both your content and the links that point back to your site.

Whenever you are trying to 'engineer' back links its important to look at it in the same way you would think the SE's would, Most links don't even have relative anchor text. Think about the links you have placed in the past. Most are 'here'. 'click here' or erroneous terms that don't even relate to the linked page.

This is a natural footprint and has gained more influence in google's algorithm recently. I could go on and on telling you why, like the fact Google bought Applied Semantics in 2003 or that they have their own semantics patent but I'll just stick to basics.

Anchor text does and doesn't make a difference.

You can engineer and get great results by building links according to this methodology if done right.

Regarding your second question about img alt tags and titles - yes they do matter. But once again use the same method (LSI) when naming your images and assigning titles to them.

In the big scheme of things EVERYTHING matters. I use htaccess, wordpress URL rewrites and many other techniques when I optimise a site - but always with LSI in mind.

I hope this helps - but if I talked to technical or didnt answer your question please ask again.

Good luck!

GaryTheScubaGuy

[TheGooner]

I apologise but I'm not clear on your question. You asked;

You are confusing me by asking about 'adding a title to a link'.

If this answer isn't right or rather, what you are looking for let me know.

A link is a link regardless of the actual text you use in the link - which we refer to as 'anchor text'. Using keywords in links is a definitie benefit because the search engines look at anchor text to determine what your site or the linked page is about.

I hope this helps - but if I talked to technical or didnt answer your question please ask again.

Gary, I'm guessing you are a SEO man - rather than a day to day HTML coder?

I beleive that this question is regarding the TITLE attribute that can be added to an HTML HREF command to more fully describe the link. Internet Explorer will usually display this TITLE as a little box of text if you mouseover the link.

eg href="someplace.htm" title="Free casino chips"

So it is NOT the anchor text - but an associated parameter.

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Hi Gooner! Been reading your posts for awhile You a great member [ one of ur best as far as I'm concerned!

Yes you are correct - I thought I included that in what I wrote but I'm back in the states for the first time in awhile and watching football (not friggen soccer) and must have missed that - but I don't I did.

Did I bury it in the over-explanation?

I swear I answered it at the end in point 2?

Good to hear from you though - I'd like to meet you sometime if possible.

GaryTheScubaGuy

[ck8795]

Regarding your second question about img alt tags and titles - yes they do matter. But once again use the same method (LSI) when naming your images and assigning titles to them.

But they don't matter for ranking - from a user standpoint you can use some good CTA's to help get people to click, but the title attribute itself doesn't do a darn thing in regards to rankings of the page linked to or the page linked from...(not as far as I know or seen).


btw Gary - glad to see you starting up some conversations around here

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

But they don't matter for ranking - from a user standpoint you can use some good CTA's to help get people to click, but the title attribute itself doesn't do a darn thing in regards to rankings of the page linked to or the page linked from...(not as far as I know or seen).


btw Gary - glad to see you starting up some conversations around here

Google takes everything into account kaus - any they aren't doing it manually. The image alt tag and title a re definitely used in their algo. I could go into telling you all about beta testing and some stupid game they tested that I went through with them a few years ago but its late and I'm tired - let's just leave it at this - how does google identify the images they serve in their organic result as well as their image results.

Do an image search and look at the titles of the top 100 results. Then take the top 10 and look at their source code.

Its good to see you are here to question these things.

Thanks for the response and Happy New Year Mate!

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

But they don't matter for ranking - from a user standpoint you can use some good CTA's to help get people to click,

CTA's don't matter if they can't find you in the serps

Nite!