Engine Considerations

[megahertz28]

Even though I am MCSE,MCSA,MCP,A+,NET+ certified I have no formal web design training. So I am relatively new to SEO (about 6 months of heavy reading & 1 month of HEAVY implimentation). I have been able to come up #1 for for 6 or 7 of my keyword phrases, just this morning! (springfield illinois jobs, springfield illinois personals, springfield newspapers, etc. - in Yahoo search, MSN, Inktomi, et c.) The question that I haven't seen posed is that concerning the age of the domain & frequency of site updates relating to engine engine placement. Does it matter to the search engines that my domain is 5 years old? Do they take into account that I have made updates to nearly every page in my site in the prior month? Also, another thing I'm pondering is that several of the pages that are ranked very highly don't contain meta tags! The engines that are supposed to use them even show me #1? The more I get into this the more I realize that it is a huge crap shoot & is so objective (& unproprietary) that it isn't funny...but it is kinda fun! (compared to corp. networking anyway)
If you want to check out my Springfield, Illinois site - http://topologies.net/[/b]
BTW thanks to the members of this forum! I have learned a great deal from all of your seasoned insights and a message to new members...DON'T GIVE UP!!! The positions you want are only a huge sacrifice of time away! :P (make sure its worth it, always be sure to optimize for profitability rather than page rank or position!)

[Maximilian]

First off, congratulations that your hard work is paying off in SEO.

I know you did not post requesting page critique. However, IMHO, I am curious as to why you have outgoing ad links on your doorway page. This is what I personally call a revolving door - I believe you should initially lead your visitors INTO the site, before giving them options to leave the site. Also, some SE prefer text links over picture linking, i.e. - your "enter here" is a graphic link.

On your complete redesign - if you did not change the folder or page names, you should be fine. However, if your restructure involves page name changes without proper redirects, the SEs will run into 404 type scenarios, which cannot be helpful.

The pages without meta tags that are ranking well probably have to do with strong < title > keywords matching up with keyword-rich text within the page. This is a good SEO strategy to continue throughout the site - remembering to keep your titles for each page somewhat unique.

Have you ever run your site through Alexa.com to give yourself site overview? May wish to give it a shot. Try this:

http://bhanvad.com/linkpopularity/index.php

[daemon61]

On your complete redesign - if you did not change the folder or page names, you should be fine. However, if your restructure involves page name changes without proper redirects, the SEs will run into 404 type scenarios, which cannot be helpful.

Just a question regarding 404 - does custom 404 page with copied sitemap have impact on spiders? I mean, do spiders ignore that page when it come up, or they spider it and follow links that are on custom 404?

[sfowler]

Good question. I have no clue. By the way, you need the full URL for a link on the 404. If you just have the relative links, they may not work. At least, that is what happened to me.

[Maximilian]

Well, I do not know about how spiders & bots deal with 404 errors that return regular html with internal site links.

However, I do have custom cgi-generated error pages that duplicate the index page of my website - links and all. When I looked at how many visitors I was saving coming from old SE & directory dead links, I was very surprised. I think in one month the program served over 3500 errors due to my own link rot. The program is very valuable. I recommend error programs like these for every website - the free ones are at:
http://www.hotscripts.com/