confused about SE + SEO.

[autocrat]

OK, I'm new here, and to the whole web site stuff..... and more than a little confused about the placing on search engines, how to get listed, the time it takes, robots.txt, and how to be ranked higher etc.

:?:

I have text on my site, I have meta tags - kw, Des and title, I have figured away of having coresponding text so that it rates higher due to content.... yet I have a javascript menu system... so no txt links as navagation, nor do I link outside of my site, nor want to!

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?

Further, what is the robots.txt, and how can I get it to stop listing parts of my site, (such as a forum?).

Any info would be appreciated!

:?:

[seobook]

>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.

[autocrat]

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!

[Scribbller]

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.

[autocrat]

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!

[Dani]

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

[2ndPlatform]

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.

[autocrat]

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!

[Dani]

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.

[2ndPlatform]

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...

[autocrat]

Sorry if it appears I get irrate easily.... I just have a certain mindset nd strong morales and ethics... and get more than a little peeved when people/companies/bodies/organisations/institutes... seem to hold a large amount of influence and perform in unusal or unsatisfactory ways...... it seems more and more that the internet is a money maker rather than an information base... even search engines are intent on making most of us pay, and it annoys me somewhat!

Yet, thank you both for the comments and advice, it really is appreciated!
So I will keep looking, then try to figure the best approach, (ahem, that is, after I go remove the hidden! LOL).

[Stockmysite]

I agree it can be frustrating, there are alot of submission sites to choose from and can be time consuming, but remember we get out of it what we put into it. I would be happy to submit your site for you to over 140 search engines with my IBP & Arelis Business edition, you can look it up, it is not a spammer or one of those FFA submitters, but a professional submitter to places like google.france ,yahoo.italy and so on. You can check out the program by doing a google search. I can also run a report for you showing optimization,,,giving you the best plan on meta tags,keywords and so on. If your interested i will do this free of charge, i am willing to give to members what i can.
This helped us alot, we went from over 6 million on alexa.com to in the 700K in just 3 months. Good luck!!
D

[Candy_ME]

A file written and stored in the root directory of a website that restricts the Search Engine spiders from indexing certain pages of the website. This file is used to disallow certain spiders from seeing files that you not want them to see. You can also prevent a certain spider to look at any of the web pages through this file.
If an indexing robot knows about a document, it may decide to parse it, and insert it into its database. How this is done depends on the robot: Some robots index the HTML Titles, or the first few paragraphs, or parse the entire HTML and index all words, with weightings depending on HTML constructs, etc. Some parse the META tag, or other special hidden tags.
We hope that as the Web evolves more facilities becomes available to efficiently associate meta data such as indexing information with a document. This is being worked on...

[autocrat]

Cannot believe this is still going... after 2 Years :)

Okay - lets think...

Now using a CMS system called Xaraya.
I have modified it quite a bit so as to increase SEO...

the code has the following...

Components
... these are the various bits of information that are used ...

Site Name (company / club / site title)
Page Name (the name / title for that page)
Site KeyWords (Those KW's that appear through-out the site)
Site Description (The Dscrptn that appears through-out the site)
Page KeyWords (Those KW's that appear for that page)
Page Description (The Dscrptn that appear for that page)

Placement
... these are the various placements of the information ...

HEADER
<title> = Site Name + Page Name
<kw> = Site Name + Page Name + Site KeyWords + Page Keywords
<dscrptn> = Site Name + Page Name + Site Description + Page Description

BODY
<h1> = Site Name
<h2> = Page Name
Content = Hopefull a fair density of the KW & Dscrptn :)

[selfhelpebooks]

Focus on content and links!

[seoprofessional]

It seems to me that you are using a Hit or Miss type of SEO. You should first read up on SEO-before implementing any changes on your site. The "Hidden Text" is a strict No-No with the 3 major SE's-Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

If you need guidance on what these 3 SE's consider a good site -good enough to be indexed and ranked-then you must read the guidelines.

You can find the link to the Guidelines and more on the resources page of my site:
http://seo-sem-professionals.com/seo-sem-resources.aspx

Read and understand.

Regards
Sunil Punjabi
http://www.seo-sem-professionals.com/