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    • New note by bobjonkman 8 June 2023
      Several other authors of software that accesses the Twitter API have come to that conclusion as well. When #Twidere, my phone app to access Twitter stopped accessing Twitter back in January I pretty much abandoned Twitter. I still check Twitter with its WebUI, less than once a week, but I no longer post or engage […]
    • Favorite 8 June 2023
      bobjonkman favorited something by steve: I finally had a chance to figure out why my social bridging software was no longer able to talk to Twitter. Indeed, it's because under Twitter's new leadership, python-twitter has been deemed as violating something in their terms of service. It says I can submit a ticket, but they make […]
    • bobjonkman repeated a notice by steve 8 June 2023
      RT @steve I finally had a chance to figure out why my social bridging software was no longer able to talk to Twitter. Indeed, it's because under Twitter's new leadership, python-twitter has been deemed as violating something in their terms of service. It says I can submit a ticket, but they make it impossible to […]
    • Favorite 8 June 2023
      bobjonkman favorited something by steve: Got weirdly hung up on a simple problem involving the Poisson equation, and still have not resolved it. Who knew an isotropic collisionless gas in a spherically symmetric gravitational potential would be so IRRITATING? https://chirp.cooleysekula.net/attachment/7fcc02ad3df2ed9843b945250eef98bff9f7892a5da3711780562d1c81133b64/view
    • bobjonkman repeated a notice by steve 8 June 2023
      RT @steve Got weirdly hung up on a simple problem involving the Poisson equation, and still have not resolved it. Who knew an isotropic collisionless gas in a spherically symmetric gravitational potential would be so IRRITATING? https://chirp.cooleysekula.net/attachment/7fcc02ad3df2ed9843b945250eef98bff9f7892a5da3711780562d1c81133b64/view
    • New note by bobjonkman 30 May 2023
      I'd be more inclined to say "people voting the way the polls said they should..."
    • bobjonkman repeated a notice by hubert 30 May 2023
      RT @hubert I have to laugh and shake my head at Smith calling it a "Miracle on the Praries". No, you were leading in the polls pretty much the whole time. You're in a strongly conservative province. I mean, if you're saying that it's a miracle that the majority of Albertans chose to ignore your […]
    • bobjonkman repeated a notice by blacksam 28 May 2023
      RT @blacksam I’ve been getting more into the game Gaslands with my son and also with adult friends. It’s a Mad Max-esque tabletop game where you’re expected to create your own game pieces by kitbashing with toy cars. I already have all the crafting, painting and 3d printing supplies I need from my other wargaming […]
    • Favorite 28 May 2023
      bobjonkman favorited something by blacksam: I’ve been getting more into the game Gaslands with my son and also with adult friends. It’s a Mad Max-esque tabletop game where you’re expected to create your own game pieces by kitbashing with toy cars. I already have all the crafting, painting and 3d printing supplies I need from […]
    • Favorite 28 May 2023
      bobjonkman favorited something by blacksam: Here are a couple more cars I've made for #gaslands

Archive for the 'Accessibility' Category

Four things to improve your search result rankings

Posted by Bob Jonkman on 26th December 2010

A bottle of juice with a Google label

Google Juice by Johannes P. Osterhoff

Now there’s a spammy title for you!

 

There are many people who specialize in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They claim to be able to improve your rank on search engines, but here are some common-sense tips you can apply yourself.

1

The best thing to maintain good page rank with ANY search engine is to have good content. This isn’t something an SEO company can do for you — you have to provide that content yourself. Repeating someone else’s content may bring you a few hits, but the search engines will quickly determine that the original site has hosted that content longer, and rank them higher.

Google is additionally funny in that they will count the number of sites that link to you, assuming that if you warrant many links, you must have something the Google customers want. If you switch Hosting Providers or change to a different domain name then anyone linking to the old domain name may have (temporarily) dead links. That will drain your Googlejuice right quick. If you have multiple domain names with the same content then the Google page rank is diluted. Better to have one domain with 1000 links than two domains with 500 each. You should ask your Hosting Provider to set up “301 redirected permanently” for any non-primary domains. Google is smart enough to figure out that http://www.example.com is the same as http://example.com, but I prefer no www. Why? See http://no-www.org/.

2

The second best thing you can do is to have valid HTML for all your Web pages. Sadly, many sites fail badly on that account (including this one). Have a look at the W3C HTML validator for this home page. As I write this, this blog’s home page has 29 errors. That will drain my Googlejuice right quick. If a search engine can’t parse HTML it won’t index content, or rank the page up high. That counts for all search engines, not just Google. I’ve written about this in Invalid HTML Considered Harmful. There are consultants that can help you correct invalid HTML; you may know one or two already 🙂

3

The third-best thing is to make sure your pages are accessible. If your site works well on alternative browers (PDAs, game consoles, cell phones) and assistive devices (braille readers, text-to-speech readers) and plain text browsers like Lynx then it’s a pretty sure thing that search engines can index the content too. Avoid Javascript, but if you use Javascript make sure that content delivery isn’t Javascript dependent — make plenty of use of the <noscript> tag. Don’t use non-indexable technologies like Flash, PDFs, Silverlight, or ActiveX. Google is getting pretty good at indexing PDFs and even Flash, but you’ll get better results with plain HTML. I’ve never seen a PDF that wouldn’t work as well-designed HTML. Non-indexable technologies won’t drain your Googlejuice, but they do nothing to boost it either.

4

The fourth best thing you can do is not play jiggery-pokery with hidden text, irrelevant keywords, cloaking, “sneaky” redirects, comment spam on other sites, or fake affiliate sites. If you try to outsmart search engines’ ranking algorithms to artificially boost your ranking, you may succeed for a few days or weeks before you’re banned altogether. That will drain your Googlejuice right quick. Besides, jiggery-pokery is a lot of hard work, better spent creating good content.

Update 1 March 2011: Told you so!

–Bob.

Google Juice by Johannes P. Osterhoff is used under a Creative Commons by-nc-nd license.

Posted in Accessibility, blogging, Internet, Javascript, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, valid html | 5 Comments »

 
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