What coding works for SEO and what coding doesn't?
-
Hi:
I recently learned about inline styles and that Google started penalizing sites for that in October. Then I was told that Wix and Flash don't work (or work well) either for SEO as the engines won't crawl them (I think). Does anyone know of a blog that goes over everything that doesn't work so that I could recognize it when I look at someone's code. Anyone know of such a resource?
Cheers,
Wes
-
Hi Mark:
Thanks very much for your note. I tried something similar the SEO Browser, and it shows you what the search engines see. Very useful.
Cheers, Wes.
-
The general rule of using HTML for everything is one that I would follow. If you're unsure if something is crawlable, try downloading the web developer plugin for chrome http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/. Then disable javascript and plugins and refresh the page. Any content that can't be seen then probably won't be seen by search engines either.
-
Hi Wesley,
I would recommend going over a couple of technical SEO audits you can find on the web. They give a clear insight in what SEOs are looking for when doing a technical audit for SEO. It mostly contains way more than only checking for Flash or Wix sites that hide or dont' display any content in their HTML.
-
Thanks very much, I'll definitely try the adwords and the cached versions.
Cheers,
wes
-
Basically a web page has to be crawlable. If an engine can't crawl it than you don't exist. SEO 101, use html for all text. Google has made strides to try to understand what sites are about but to keep it easy for crawlers use html.
As for a tool you can use googles adwords tool and add the url into "landing page" and see how some of the site gets crawled by a simple bot. You can also look at google cached versions of sites and look at the "text only" options, that should give you a good view of what the crawlers see.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Trailing Slashes and SEO
Hi, We're currently using a third party blog platform (Blog Engine) on our site and we have a trailing slash issue. I can add as many trailing slashes as I want to the blog's homepage URL, but they don't redirect and our dev guys say this cannot be done with Blog Engine. We're in the process of building our own blog but, in the meantime, I just wanted to know if this will cause an issue? Individual blog posts with trailing slashes are redirected, it's just the homepage where it can't be done. I haven't noticed any traffic going to a blog URL with trailing slashes, and I don't believe any URLs with trailing slashes are being indexed, so should this be OK? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Pro's & contra's: http vs https
Hi there, We are planning to take the step and go from http to https. The main reason to do this, is to mean trustfull to our clients. And of course the rumours that it would be better for ranking (in the future). We have a large e-commerce site. A part of this site ia already HTTPS. I've read a lot of info about pro's and contra's, also this MOZ article: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
Technical SEO | | Leonie-Kramer
But i want to know some experience from others who already done this. What did you encountered when changing to HTTPS, did you had ranking drops, or loss of links etc? I want to make a list form pro's and contra's and things we have to do in advance. Thanx, Leonie0 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. my domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0 -
Code for redirect
What is the code to redirect www.xyz.com/abc where abc is a folder to www.xyz.com/abc.html
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Robots.txt not working?
Hello This is my robots.txt file http://www.theprinterdepo.com/Robots.txt However I have 8000 warnings on my dashboard like this:4 What am I missing on the file¿ Crawl Diagnostics Report On-Page Properties <dl> <dt>Title</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Description</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Robots</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Refresh</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> </dl> URL: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/catalog/product_compare/add/product/100/uenc/aHR0cDovL3d3dy50aGVwcmludGVyZGVwby5jb20vaHAtbWFpbnRlbmFjZS1raXQtZm9yLTQtbGo0LWxqNS1mb3ItZXhjaGFuZ2UtcmVmdWJpc2hlZA,,/ 0 Errors No errors found! 1 Warning 302 (Temporary Redirect) Found about 5 hours ago <a class="more">Read More</a>
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Wordpress plugins for SEO
Hello I am new to wordpress I just have started using it. Can anyone suggest me some useful tools / plugins / setting for SEO? I am further intrested in sepeeding up Wp. Any good advive on wp an seo would be appriciated.
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
Do Link wheel works?
Hello, I am new to link wheel over web 2.0 sites and then linking your website or website article really helps in SEO and link building. Do you think its still works? Since i have also heard that many says that its too ok if we do spin content submitted to our web 2.0 properties small sites which are created for linking back to our main website. Will wait for reply...
Technical SEO | | anand20101 -
Should I have a 'more' button for links?
I have a website that has a page for each town. rather than listing all the towns with a link to each, I want to show only the most popular towns and have a 'more' button that shows all of them when you click it. I know that the search engine can always see the full list of links and even though the visitor can't this doesn't go against Google guidelines because there is no deception involved, the more button is quite clear. However, my colleague is concerned that this is 'making life hard' for the search engines and so the pages are less likely to be indexed. I disagree. Is he right to worry about this??
Technical SEO | | mascotmike0