Am I being penalised for using FrontPage

Mike Sands · #1 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 06:37 AM

In another post Keimos (I think) suggested using http://validator.w3.org - when I do with www.marketingmasters.co.uk it tells me it can't do it relaibaly 'cos 'No DOCTYPE Found! ' Surely if this header is essential FrontPage should be inserting it by default?
Thanks
Mike

cyanide · #2 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Sands

In another post Keimos (I think) suggested using http://validator.w3.org - when I do with www.marketingmasters.co.uk it tells me it can't do it relaibaly 'cos 'No DOCTYPE Found! ' Surely if this header is essential FrontPage should be inserting it by default?
Thanks
Mike

There's a lot of things FrontPage inserts, but I don't believe DOC type is one of them.
It's dirty code, but you shouldn't get penalized for it, well ... atleast not by the search engines

daemon61 · #3 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 07:56 AM

Microsoft should be penalised for Front Page:)

DriWashSolutions · #4 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 11:44 AM

No - Frontpage does not include the DOCTYPE. It'a a simple addition though, and W3C will give you the exact syntax. It needs to be the very first line in your code, even before the <html> tag.

google junky · #5 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 12:24 PM

Mike Sands,

You evidently have another problem other than the DOCTYPE question.

You have more than one site very similar to each other.
http://www.marketingmasters.co.uk is almost an exact copy of http://www.accountingmasters.co.uk
It has 587 words of matching text.
You can see it highlighted Here

Although the site http://www.procurementmasters.co.uk did not bring up a flag, it seemed very much the same as well.
If you are being penalised then this could very well be the reason.

bhartzer · #6 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 12:44 PM

Stop the rumors now. W3c validation and whether or not you specify a doctype on your web pages have absolutely nothing to do with search engine rankings.

MSN and some other search engines would like you to have a valid page because it helps their crawlers crawl your site. That's it.

Sure, it's good to have W3C validated pages. But if you want good search engine rankings then spend your time getting good on-topic links to your web pages--don't waste your time making sure they live up to the W3C standards. Sure, make sure that your web pages look good in all the different web browsers that are available and all, but to obsess over whether or not your page is valid is a waste of time.

**jawn_tech** · #7 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 12:47 PM

[edited: bhartzer is right. I've seen sites with validation issues that rank well in SE's]

There is one Frontpage coding flaw that can affect SERPs (search engine result pages), but it's not for a search term used often.

An issue came up one day that caused a little confusion before my morning coffee when I tried to Google the word "endspan", thinking I would find articles. Instead, I saw SERPs being skewed by listings of frontpage sites with titles not being displayed correctly.

When I brought it up to the forum on this <a href:"http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=161554&highlight=endspan#161554">t hread</a>, I originally thought it was a bug in Google. It was Frontpage. (Well, technically it was the user not catching it before publishing.)

It's not to say other authoring software don't have their flaws either. One just needs to make sure to use the source view as much as possible and not solely trust the code generated by the program.

Mike Sands · #8 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 12:57 PM

Google Junky .... Hmmm that's an interesting point about the similarity of several of our websites. They are for different products delivered to different audiences, but delivered in a similar way from the same organisation (us). So it seemed sensible to keep many of the pages common (eg who we are). Especially as it is then easier to keep all pages consistently updated.
But if you think Google believe this is spamming, I might need to take a different approach. Yahoo/Overture seem to deal with it OK though.
Thanks anyway for this possible insight
Mike

minstrel · #9 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyanide

It's dirty code, but you shouldn't get penalized for it

Nonsense. Any WYSIWYG editor tends to insert non-optimal code -- most of it isn't a significant detriment and in any case if you know a bit of html (which should be the case for anyone creazting anything except a Geocities family home page) it is easily corrected. FrontPage doesn't insert "dirty code" any more than others. This is a myth perpetuated primarily by people who have never even opened the box.

Quote:

Originally Posted by daemon61

Microsoft should be penalised for Front Page

Well, clearly they aren't, since much of the Microsoft website was built using FrontPage.

zoreli · #10 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 03:26 PM

minstrel, I have reason to beleive that daemon61 point was that Microsoft should be penalized because they create Front Page, not because they use it.

And I agree with that :-)

Regards, Zoreli

Mike Sands · #11 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 08:00 PM

Minstrel - there's a lot of truth in what you say. Our professional designers who use Dreamweaver etc, make the same kind of thoroughly disparaging comments about Frontpage and I believe they have never even looked at it. If the part of the business I run put all the website change requests through the Dreamweaver users, we'd get updates once a quarter. With me controlling about 10 sites via Frontpage many of them are updated daily.
Mike

minstrel · #12 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 10:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Sands

With me controlling about 10 sites via Frontpage many of them are updated daily.

And one of the reasons for that is that FrontPage isn't just a WYSIWYG editor... it's also a site manager, maintaining and updating internal links and sitemaps, etc., etc. It's actually a very powerful program, if you know what you're doing and how to use it to its potential.

tcampione · #13 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 10:52 PM

I'm not a professional web developer. I do my own development because I can't afford to pay someone to do it. I've used FrontPage from the time of its first release and have certainly gone through the growing pains with it. Today though, I find it to be an extremely powerful and stable development environment.

I spend most of my time in html view, and use almost no FP webbot functions.

One suggestion I do have for FP developers is to modify any internal links so that they are the full url to each page, rather than a variable path. (e.g., http://www.mysite.com/mypage.htm rather than /mypage.htm).

I can't be certain, but I think that Google tends to not include variable path links in the backlink count. One of my sites that has been around for years never showed any internal links at all when using the link command. It is a small site, and we know that we get to see only a small portion of the actual linked pages, so that could be the reason. But, soon after a site redesign in which I used the full url for internal links, those pages showed up in the backlink list.

It could be a coincidence, but I tend to think not. Maybe others have had similar experience. If true, it would not be a penalty, but could be a missed opportunity to score internal links.

minstrel · #14 (**permalink**) 11-18-2004, 11:42 PM

I've never had that problem with relative links, tcampione. Could it be that something else changed in your site redesign was responsible?

sfowler · #15 (**permalink**) 11-19-2004, 03:14 AM

No, I stick to the short form links as well, and they cause no problems at all. The only place you need the full path is on the custom 404 page. It took me some time to work that one out as well!

Mike Sands · #16 (**permalink**) 11-21-2004, 06:52 AM

I'm sure I saw yesterday in another thread, that using the full URL actually was bad news and that you SHOULD use the relational one. Can't remember whether Google frowned on it, or whether it simply worked better.
A while ago, I designed up some neat looking buttons and used FP's clever handling of navbars to replace the text nav in the footer of each page. Someone told me this was a big no-no so I put all the text links back
Mike

tcampione · #17 (**permalink**) 11-23-2004, 11:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by minstrel

Could it be that something else changed in your site redesign was responsible?

It is quite possible, but can't imagine what that could be. The links to internal pages were plain text, relative path. After a face lift, they remianed text links, but absolute path.

Perhaps it was simply a change in the sample of backlinks. That's about the only other factor I can come up with.

azizzii · #18 (**permalink**) 11-24-2004, 07:40 AM

Quote:

You have more than one site very similar to each other.
http://www.marketingmasters.co.uk is almost an exact copy of http://www.accountingmasters.co.uk
It has 587 words of matching text.
You can see it highlighted Here

Although the site http://www.procurementmasters.co.uk did not bring up a flag, it seemed very much the same as well.
If you are being penalised then this could very well be the reason.

if it is true, then what is the solution, either we can get back in listing or not!!!!!

Azizi

azizzii · #19 (**permalink**) 11-24-2004, 07:40 AM

Quote:

You have more than one site very similar to each other.
http://www.marketingmasters.co.uk is almost an exact copy of http://www.accountingmasters.co.uk
It has 587 words of matching text.
You can see it highlighted Here

Although the site http://www.procurementmasters.co.uk did not bring up a flag, it seemed very much the same as well.
If you are being penalised then this could very well be the reason.

if it is true, then what is the solution, either we can get back in listing or not!!!!!

Azizi

azizzii · #20 (**permalink**) 11-24-2004, 07:41 AM

Quote:

You have more than one site very similar to each other.
http://www.marketingmasters.co.uk is almost an exact copy of http://www.accountingmasters.co.uk
It has 587 words of matching text.
You can see it highlighted Here

Although the site http://www.procurementmasters.co.uk did not bring up a flag, it seemed very much the same as well.
If you are being penalised then this could very well be the reason.

if it is true, then what is the solution, either we can get back in listing or not!!!!!

Azizi

azizzii · #21 (**permalink**) 11-24-2004, 07:43 AM

Quote:

You have more than one site very similar to each other.
http://www.marketingmasters.co.uk is almost an exact copy of http://www.accountingmasters.co.uk
It has 587 words of matching text.
You can see it highlighted Here

Although the site http://www.procurementmasters.co.uk did not bring up a flag, it seemed very much the same as well.
If you are being penalised then this could very well be the reason.

if it is true, then what is the solution, either we can get back in listing or not!!!!!

Azizi

sfowler · #22 (**permalink**) 11-24-2004, 08:18 AM

You will have to change the text to make the pages unique. This is all you then really need to do.