search engine optimised pages

[potto]

Hi
Can anyone tell me which pages the search engine spiders recognise within Actinic so i can optimise them?, also is it essential to fill in the meta tags and description for each section created? some people say yes, some no?

From experience i find the section header descriptions are found by the search engine but someone out they may tell me different.

Thanks

Paul

[Mike Hughes]

All the pages actinic creates are recognised by the search engines but the CGI generated ones (search, etc) won't do well. Go and ahead and optimise what you want, just be carefull not to overdo it.

The keyword tag is pretty much universally ignored these days so I'd still use them but don't spend too much time on it. The same with the description tag, Google, yahoo and alltheweb don't use it anymore but Ask Jeeves still shows it in the search results.

Mike

[thomas]

Keyword tag

I have to say I don't agree with Mike allthough there is a trend towards stopping the meta keywords yahoo for one still uses them, I figure that it can't harm to use them but as Mike says dont go overboard ie "Actinic, actininc uk, uk actinic, actinic software" etc becuase they now will Penalize for repeating the same word.

[Darren B]

while were on this subject, and i know there have been lots of other threads, what is the general consensous on using , to seperate keywords should you use it or not? Some people say you do not need it anymore

Cheers
Darren

[ljl]

So what are the areas you guys would change? Some said these:

1) HTML header (h1, h2..etc)

2) HTML title

3) metatag

4) Keywords

5) more Contents (google)

thats what i know. change everything oso no harm wor..

[thomas]

keywords

I have spent the last two months plus looking into SEO and the general rule is no difference.

[thomas]

so what areas to change

ljl

I would work on them all but for me the html title is the most important.

[thomas]

My site

My site is changing in the course of the next two days the home page so don't use this as an example.

[James Gladwin]

Also, as well as the above, the general dynamic of all the se algorithms is content, content, content.

Also, links make a difference as well.

Best - James

[thomas]

links

Your better of with a small amount a quality links to your site than a lot of unrelated links. Google is getting wise that people have hundred of unrelated links and are intened to penalize link farms etc, having said that one of the terms I am trying to get good postion on the guy who is near the top has loads of unrelated links. But it depends if you doing it for results now or long term gain.

[george]

A question that seems to be creeping in is the use of under-scores by Actinic in page addresses as opposed to hyphens.

eg.

my_page.html or
my-page.html

How significant is the difference?

[James Gladwin]

I believe it is to do with the syntax that your host server supports - Unix etc?? (Step forward an expert.....)

So, for example, on some servers, if you try to upload my-site.htm it won't allow it, or will automatically parse and change it to my_site.htm

Best - James

[thomas]

No question

For me page_stuff.html better but keep it short so two _ at most
ie /page_stuff_info.html

[Paragon]

Use of under_score is also useful for some search engines because they ignore it and treat it as a space. So ...page_stuff.html would be seen as 'page stuff' and can help with rankings if your keyword/s was 'page stuff'

[swee]

But i have problems with the "catalogue" page which is the crucial page on the site. Try this! Before you click the "catalogue (named as "online Store" in my site), move your mouse over the "catalogue(online store)" link- Dont Click 1st..pause! and you would be able to see the word "cgi-bin pl0000" stuff like that at the status bar.. it has been bothering me for quite sometime..However, some of the seniors here told me that, it can't be changed. Again, i'm here to ask if anyone has problem like that and would know how to solve this?