Is SEO really "black " and "white"

[imkaydee]

I majored in marketing well before "google it" became a call to action.. But when it comes to SEO I am self-taught.

We have maintained #1 positions in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc... for competitive and niche keywords/phrases.

Recently, I tried a very different technique, well... totally opposite from my usual SEO practices.
See it here:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q...ting&FORM=QBRE

Can anyone advise me on positives or negatives of using this technique or rate it black or white? I'm not sure if there are drawbacks or repercussions that I did not previously consider.

I'd really appreciate some feedback on this.
Thanks!

[frogmanandy]

I'm not sure, exactly what are you are refering to?

[imkaydee]

Did you follow the link? I'm referring to the Title (style) on the MSN search page for Dan Fulwiler Painting and Decorating.

[frogmanandy]

Sorry, wasn't even looking at that, I went and looked at your source (which you might want to clean up).

Hmmm ... I don't think it hurts ... I sorta like it.

I'm curious to see what others think.

[imkaydee]

Other than that specific change, I haven't been working on that site. As I said, it was my first, I've been working on some others non-stop. I agree, must clean up that site soon. Thanks for the input :)

[freehits]

So are all those adsense junk pages below it yours too? that whole sers is scrape and dump pages.

All in all seems like the page could use a bit of body text.

More important for my personal taste would be to remove the javascript and use css for the mouseover images.

You could make the same appearance with[*] tags and then you could drop all the JS code and put the links right at the top of the code as[*]'s.

Here is a tutorial on making mouseover image lists that do not flicker with CSS.

From the very cool Stu Nichols, who is pretty much the coolest CSS wiz I have seen to date. Sorry Faglork silver medal for you buddy.

http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/flickerfree_mk3.html

I mean a css calender that validates - that is cool

[imkaydee]

No, most are not... other than the worldwide murals documentation blog "project" but thanks for asking :)

Yes, the page could use more body text, but the artist/owner of this site disagrees.

As a web designer and SEO we can strongly suggest or offer alternatives and options for content, code, etc., but the owner always seems to have final say.
Can you imagine?

[freehits]

solution is to implement the css version of your mouseovers and have text that appears only on the mouseover like a plain text tool tips.

A good white hat example of test that isnt seen.
Thus you get text at thetop of your code and the page stays the same in apparence.

just an idea.

[imkaydee]

Thanks for the feedback. I like your mouseover idea, freehits.

Regarding:

"that whole sers is scrape and dump pages."

I agree. 3 months ago that same sers was all relevant with varied content: articles, PR, featured artist on other quality art sites, blogs, etc. Now, there are many with copied content, some from years ago. Is there any way to prevent others from doing this?

I was using the sers page to show an example of a technique I recently tried. It's found in the listing's Title. Here's a different one:
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q...NH&srch_type=0

[frogmanandy]

I still wish someone would comment on the hand thing though