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Important Presale Questions Part 2

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Important Presale Questions Part 2
Hi again:

In addition to my previous post I have some more questions.

1. Search Engine Optimized: As we all know a web site relies on visitors and an important part of getting visitors is search engine placement with sites such as Google, etc. I have read many posts concerning this and I have come away somewhat confused.


· Are Links SQL web sites search engine friendly? Please explain?


· My Links SQL site must be able to get spidered and crawled by the leading engines. This is very important and a very critical sales point to my clients considering buying link space and detail (mini web pages) with me.


· Are the dynamic pages search engine friendly?


· Will I have the ability to use Meta tags with dynamic and static pages I.E. keywords, descriptions?
  • What are the reader's views on this subject? I s this a problem?


2. Miscellaneous: I am wanting to write articles, reviews, provide different insights concerning the industry my site will be focusing on. I want these to be included on the pages but separate somehow form the links and sponsor links. I would also like these to context sensitive to the categories? Is this possible and what are your suggestions for such a thing.?


This is a continuation of my first post http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...i?post=261412#261412
Thank you very much.

Last edited by:

rlesley: Feb 12, 2004, 5:17 PM
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Re: [rlesley] Important Presale Questions Part 2 In reply to
You can make your links site search engine friendly, and even more so with rewrite rules to imitate static pages.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=259762

Being search engine friendly is a real misnomer now. Because of all the fraud, and cheats, the search engines change their algorithms regularly. The key algorithm seems to be based on activity rather than looks. If your page is more active, more visited, more jumped-to, it seems to rank higher than others. "content" is a problem also. I'm sure the search engines have "white lists" of domains that they index, and black-lists of domains that do not. For instance, I'm sure the webbots *try* to crawl through sites that are known information sources, like WebMD, or a such, but avoid rapidly changing sites like newspaper sites (except archives that might be on-line), or sites that change from when the index was crawled, to when a user would jump to it (daily news, for example).

The point I'm making is that "search engine friendly" vs "unfriendly" is crap shoot.

Use a robots.txt file. All legit crawlers use them, and they can provide good instructions.

Do *NOT* use "jump.cgi" or "ID" in your url strings. "jump.cgi" is viewed as an off-site jump. Rename the program to "content.cgi" or something else. "ID" has been suggested to imply a session string, so some engines will ignore the url that contains it.

I have been told that using detail_page.cgi INCREASES search engine placement, and I *think* it's for the above reason. "detail" is a *good* keyword, an engine will be interested in that. If when it crawls the page, it finds *CONTENT* not a "jump" elsewhere, it will become more and more happy with such jumps, and start to look for that string. (remember, the search engines use modified AI algorithms to follow links, and decide what's good).

Most engines ignore meta tags, etc now. The only "valid" tags are for browsers that use them for providing advanced content features, or individual scripts that might use the meta values for displaying your page -- but it was one of the first things the engines started ignoring. If the meta tags don't match the content on the page, the engines may ignore your WHOLE page. If the meta tags match the content some engines *might* use the meta tag, assuming it's a more valid description than the first few words on the page.

Google uses an algorithm that *blows* the other engines off the map. By actually spidering and caching pages, it has less need for meta tags, and seeks out content blocks -- things in <H> tags, for example (read the posts I found about slash-dot's conversion
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...orum.cgi?post=259677
it has some other ideas on what makes a "valuable" page. *GOOD* html is the most important thing :)

You can include other content, and add pages, link to pages, and do anything that is available in HTML. Just understand, that if the data is not in the database as a "link" or such, then links can't index it, or search for it, but it can display it using page.cgi or Yogi's pagebuilder plugin.


PUGDOG� Enterprises, Inc.

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Please leave a PM here.
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Re: [rlesley] Important Presale Questions Part 2 In reply to
Hi,

Quote:
Are Links SQL web sites search engine friendly? Please explain?

Yes, by default Links SQL creates static html pages in a nice search engine friendly format (where the category name is part of the URL):

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/...L/Globals/index.html

Quote:
Are the dynamic pages search engine friendly?

By default no, but if you are using Apache, it is trivial to make a dynamic page search engine friendly with static URL's. All you do is make an empty directory, and in that directory place an .htaccess file with:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule (.*) /cgi-bin/links/page.cgi?g=$1 [L]

and that's it. Now when you go to that directory, your URL will look like http://example.com/directory/cat1/cat2/, but in reality, that will be running http://example.com/cgi-bin/links/page.cgi?g=cat1/cat2. The search engines or your visitors never see the second URL though.

Quote:
Will I have the ability to use Meta tags with dynamic and static pages I.E. keywords, descriptions?

Yes, that's not a problem.

Quote:
I am wanting to write articles, reviews, provide different insights concerning the industry my site will be focusing on. I want these to be included on the pages but separate somehow form the links and sponsor links. I would also like these to context sensitive to the categories? Is this possible and what are your suggestions for such a thing.?

Links SQL has built in support for reviews that will be displayed separately. It's also possible to add new content on separate pages. I can send you a URL to a site as an example if you are interested.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: [Alex] Important Presale Questions Part 2 In reply to
Thanks for your response in both of my Pre-Sale posts. Yes, please send me the URL. As much info as possible would be very welcome as I plan on making a decision within the next two weeks.