>robots.txt

its a text file that sits in the root of your site and tells robots not to index certain parts of your site. this would disallow cgi bin tmp and private

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /private/

more info at http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html

>So how do I alter things to improve my placement?
It seems a little unfair if you don't use txt links or link to other sites that you get penalised for this.... is there an alternative?

one way or another you need links.

so, even though I have a nice little JS menu, I still need to place txt based Ahfrefs on each page?

That sucks! Still, I suppose I could just cut and paste the code to the bottom of each page! Thats a saod though, as I have about 30+ pages!

Well alot of sites have JS menues, but what alot of them do is have text links at the bottom of the page on the footer which serve the purpose of having text links. Well there are two ways really you either want to cut and past the code or may build the whole site using php includes which only requires you to update one file.

I've trawled through my JS menu code and cut the deignations... all I have to do is turn them in to links... when I have the time!
I'm looking inot CSS and the coding rules for the web, conformities etc..... then I'll rebuild the site!

Sounds like a plan. Check out our HTML / CSS forum if you need help.

Hey Autocrat --

I posted a little snippit about rollover menus in a thread a while back:
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread16208.html

You'd probably be able to mod it a bit to use images as backgrounds for your menu items... but anyway... I use this method for my menus a lot of times so that I can still have text link items.

Just thought I'd throw it out there.

Let me know if you need help.

All of this is great... but still doesn't resolve the issue of SE ranking!

I've looked and looked, and I'll I find is contradiction.... some sites say A, others say B, then some say NOT A, but B, and on a few, I have seen A, B, NOT A and definitely NOT B!

So what should I be doing?

I have good Keywords, singluar and phrases, title, description etc. I have a WELCOME PAGE with no txt, so I have put in "hidden txt" (same Colour as the BG), I'm about to paste in standard TXT links at the bottom of the page etc.....
What is good, what isn't..... the club kind of needs the site working by summer, as thats when we usually get new members..... but I'm thinking it's pointless.... the SE penalise anyone with graphical or design flair, and I'd be better with a plain old B&W sodding TXT FILE up on the net.... man this sucks! It's pathetic!

I think it was mentioned before - if you have a javascript menu, be sure to add text links in the footer as well, so that search engines can spider all of the links. But you can do some amazing things with CSS nowadays - Definitely check out http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm for some ideas.

Aside from that, very bad technique to use so-called "hidden text" - search engines penalize you for text color the same color as the background because they consider it a sleezy technique.

First things first -- calm down.

There is a TON of good information on this board and others regarding GOOD SEO techniques. You'll find that there are variations in techniques too. You're probably not going to see overnight results, you have to be consistent and patient and you have to READ and LEARN a lot before you think about being frustrated.

Good luck...