Les Jones

E-commerce > "Google Hell"

Slashdot thread on companies that are purged from Google's list of visited sites. In the instance cited the company lost their Google listing because search engine optimization (SEO) consultant tried some tricks that Google deemed not kosher.

That's one reason to be wary of SEOs. The other reason to be wary of those guys is that many of them are fly-by-night ripoff artists. Sure, the have three references, because they got lucky a couple of times. Sure, they have a guarantee in writing, but the guarantee is null and void once they go out of business. Been there, done that. Got the "this number is no longer in service" message when I tried to call them.

If you want to pay someone, pay Google and Yahoo for sponsored links. It's easier, it's much quicker and easier and it's often cheaper and honester, to coin a word. If you're reselling products and have good prices pay price comparison services like Nextag, et al to include you in their price comparison databases.

Other than that, learn to avoid obvious mistakes and follow some basic tips:

• Put important keywords in the title, headings, and links. In meta tags, too, if you want, but that's way less important.*
• Avoid frames. Avoid JavaScript for critical content and for links. Avoid Flash for critical content. Good ol' HTML is your buddy.
• Don't use form elements (like buttons) for critical content and links.
• Put important content at the top of the source code. CSS can be your buddy here.
• Put new information on the front page and/or on a discreet news page.
• Add an RSS feed for news. Google loves RSS feeds and visits them frequently.
• Link back to yourself with keywords.

* Some folks are still pushing meta tags. Meta tags are automatically suspect. If some dude runs around in a t-shirt that says "World's Greatest Lover" do you you really think that proves he's the world's greatest lover? Of course not. You can't trust what people say about themselves on t-shirts. Likewise, search engines can't trust what Web sites say about themselves in meta tags, especially if the content of the meta tags doesn't match up with the content of the Web page.

If the meta tags agree with the content, then it can't hurt, but in 2007 meta tags won't get you to the top of Google. To overcome the tendency of sites to lie about exaggerate their content, Google came up with PageRank. PageRank looks at off-site factors. If other sites with "world's greatest lover" in their text link to you, then that indicates there's some relationship between your site and the phrase "world's greatest lover." You might be the world's greatest lover, or you might have information about same, but Google knows there'a relationship based on the link structure on the Internet.