Thanks! Would we be losing any value by discarding a URL that has been live for multiple years? I've heard that the age of a URL (not a domain) can help a page rank, but I'm not sure I believe that.

Our site has a number of, shall we say, unoptimized URLs. I would like to change the URLs to be more relevant; if a page is about red widgets, the URL should be www.domain.com/red-widgets.html, right? I'm getting resistance on this, however, based on the belief that you lose something significant when you 301 an old URL to a new one.

Now, I know that if you have a long chain of redirects, the spiders will stop following at some point, and that is a huge problem. That wouldn't apply if there's only one step in the chain, however. I've also heard that you lose some link juice in a 301, but I'm unsure how serious that problem actually is. Is it small enough that we'd win out in the long run with better-optimized URLs?

Every website created after, I dunno, let's say 2000 uses divs. View source on any page on the internet and ctrl+f for it. Divs are how you separate blocks of content so they can be arranged and styled. The spiders would be pretty bored if they skipped over all the pages with divs.

The main concern is whether or not the spider can read the HTML. If something's broken, the spider may get confused. It's a good idea to check the site's W3C compliance and correct what you can, but I'm certain the search engines don't ding you if you're not perfectly compliant.

The real problems with bad HTML are load times and cross-browser compatibility. (Although, frankly, great HTML can have cross-browser compatibility issues, since IE still refuses to get with the program.) Make sure the site looks good in all major browsers.

If they have videos, they could add transcripts in a collapsible div. That also address accessibility and general user experience. After all, if someone is sneaking a peek at the site at work, they probably don't want to have the sound on for videos.

Set realistic expectations for your client. It's fine if that's how they want the site to work, but explain to them that search engines primarily read text; without much text, the search engines will have a harder time figuring out what the page is about. Also explain their options: They can have more text on each page without compromising the design, by using tabs, collapsible divs, etc. Figure out whether or not visitors want more text on each page. If you can make that case, they might be persuaded.

Meanwhile, focus on the things you can control, like title tags and img alts. Then focus on linkbuilding. That should be relatively easy -- fashion is popular and has great potential for compelling content. At least you're not working for a plunger manufacturer.

Do you mean they have a flash website because they think it's prettier?

I can't see why they wouldn't.

They should count for Analytics purposes because obviously that person was looking for the company in question, even if they couldn't spell or hit an incorrect key on the keyboard.

Also, Google is returning 7-result pages for queries like "ammazon," "jc peeny," etc. so obviously it knows what the misspellings mean.