Source Code Formatting Causes Strange Spider Test Results

[fatoftheland]

OK...

Recently been trying a few spider tests on some SEO sites and have found that the tests are not giving full results.. I've looked at the meta tags and racked my brain trying to work out why this is.

The strange thing is that using FF and IE7 is giving me different results.

I've now noticed that the way Actinic is formatting my source code when it is being uploaded seems to be causing the problem...

If I download an Actinic generate dpage and then apply source formatting in DW and re-upload it fixes the problem. (The problem being that the spider test is not able to differentiate between the end of a meta tag and the start of say the css link because the source code is one line string of code)

Looking at other people's actinic sites show their source code formatted more conventionally, whereas our sites always seems to appear as one long line of code. This is the case even after pasting reformatted code from DW into Actinic and reuploading.

Anyone know why this might be? Or if these spider tests may give an idea of how well the google spider is seeing the pages? Would reformatting the source code make it easier for a spider like googlebot to read? Or does this make no difference at all?

[RuralWeb]

Sounds like you are using the "compact code" setting. What spider checker are you using as many of them are useless!

[fatoftheland]

Been using the following tests:

http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test/

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/spi...tool/index.php

http://www.spidertest.com/


Compact code setting?

[RuralWeb]

Compact code setting

Design Options | Generation | Compact HTML

[RuralWeb]

Recently been trying a few spider tests on some SEO sites and have found that the tests are not giving full results

Ran the tests on my website - www.ruralwebdesign.co.uk and they tell me that my site is crap - best I go and learn about SEO!

I know I will contact the guy who is N01 on Google for Actinic SEO - bummer its me.

[RuralWeb]

Been using the following tests:

http://tools.seobook.com/general/spider-test/

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/spi...tool/index.php

http://www.spidertest.com/

If you look at the sites they are all selling SEO services of some sort so they want your site to look bad - that way you will panic and think I NEED HELP. Most of these free SEO testers are snake oil designed for you to take the bait and cough some cash.

Forget the spider testers its what google thinks of your site that counts and the good news is that Actinic is good out the box as long as you dont mess about with it too much

[fatoftheland]

Thanks for the advice Malcolm. I see what you mean about them all offering SEO services. Just throught it was strange that they work fine when the source code is formatted the way you see it in DW!?

Lots of our results have gone supplemental since we redesigned our site, this happened before after our first redesign, thankfully we are very happy with our Actinic site now so no more redesigns required! I hope!

I noticed you mentioned on another post about page titles being too similar causing google to think that the content is all too similar and so not worth indexing...

How do you go about changing the page names/page titles to be different but still relevant?

SEO seems to be a constant struggle and trying to keep up with our competitors who have years on us can sometimes be a nightmare! Just wish we could get more sales from organic listings which atm is only about 20 percent.

[RuralWeb]

How do you go about changing the page names/page titles to be different but still relevant?

Actinic as standard does a good job generating page titles BUT as you say its never ending and google changes like the wind. There is a tip in the new AUG that jo came up with to change the order of the Actinic title tag - you can try this but the only sure way is to write each title tag by hand and check that it does not conflict with any others. You then need to monitor its indexing.

SEO seems to be a constant struggle and trying to keep up with our competitors who have years on us can sometimes be a nightmare! Just wish we could get more sales from organic listings which atm is only about 20 percent.

SEO is a constant struggle because:

1. Google and the others change their algorithums all the time and this will have a direct effect on your rankings.

2. Your competitors want to be N01 as well and any changes they make will affect your rankings - this is the one most people forget about/dont know.

3. Age plays a big part and generally older site perform better for obvious reasons - this is why there is a big trade in old domain names.

People tend to think SEO is like designing a website - you do the work and forget it WRONG designing and building the website is the easy and cheap bit. Marketing your site is the problem and its getting harder every day as more and more people realise that having a website is easy (thanks Actinic!) so your competitors are always increasing. Most markets are flooded and getting organic rankings is very hard with the likes of ebay etc dominating the rankings in many areas.

There are no easy answers sorry - if there were I would be a millionare.

[fatoftheland]

Thanks for the response malcolm. I guess I may have to go through the page titles and see if that effects any of supplemental results. I must say many of our pages went supplemental with the last redesign and then after a few months changed back again to normal results.

The world of SEO is all fun and games, and certainly a never ending battle. Thanks for you thoughts!

I think only time will help google to value our site more as compared to some of our competitors the age of our site plays a big part. Seo wise I really am struggling to find a difference between our pages, and honestly think our site is more text heavy than our main competitors and has more unique content. Just gonna have to keep expanding the seo work and hope for the best!

[RuralWeb]

time will help google to value our site more

Links from other sites is the key here - harvest your competitors links. S

our site is more text heavy

Its not the ammount of text that is important its the keyword density and formating that counts.