1. Title Tag
2. Description Meta Tag
3. Keywords Meta Tag
4. Alt Tags
5. Header Tags
6. Link Text (Anchor Text)
7. Site Map
8. Relevant Inbound Links
9. Your Content
10. Avoid Cheating

Add more if I left any important thing.

11. Domain selection
12. Content writing
13. Bold and italic text
14. Flash, images and javascript use
15. non-professional design

There are a lots like this but sorry that I am too lazy.

1. Nobody will disagree on this point.
2 NOPE!
3. even more definitely NOPE
4 No such thing READ This
5. there is no such thing as a header tag, Headers are HTTP responses sent by the server in response to a user agent HTTP request.
There are heading elements however.
6 anchor text is only SEO on your own site
7 Nope, Nothing at all to do with SEO
8 Not SEO at all, but advertising

post #2 11 to 15

Complete rubbish.

So for the pair of you, if you came here to impress us with your knowledge you pretty much failed and I suggest you do a LOT more learning.
Start Here -> HighRankings Tips for Newbies

Chrishirst, I may be new here and this is my first post. However, I work professionally for an online classifieds company in Australia and I've been studying SEO quite seriously. I've also watched a number of google presentations as well as viewing other lower-ranking search engines content.

During this time I have found infact, Terminator054 and Scriptay are quite valid in their points.

Allow me to explain, please note I'll base all my responses on google data;
(Keywords => Words that pertain to your pages content)

1. Google does infact parse page Title for keywords, and any keywords that appear in the title have higher importance than any other words in the entire page.
2. Description Tag - This is actually the tag that appears in the google search results for any specific page, providing it is set.
3. The keywords tag, while it does not actually count for much, search bots use it as validation for words that are already on the page.
4. Alt tags do exist, and they are used as 'ALTERNATE TEXT' for images. Please do not confuse these with the Title tags for images, these are two completely different attributes.
5. Header tags, yeah not so much, unless it's a ROBOTS tag
6. Link Text, this is what google calls a website temporarily until it gets the page title.
7. Sitemaps based on links provide lots of great viewing for robots. Don't even get into XML Sitemaps, you couldn't be further from the truith with 'Nope, Nothing at all to do with SEO'
8. Relevant inbound links are incredibly important as the more relevant the links in to your site, from higher ranked sites, will only attract more bots.

I'm going to stop right there as this is getting a bit ridiculous for me to be doing while at work.

Chrishirst - Do you actually know anything about SEO? Please be aware that just because a website with SEO in the title or URL says it's true, doesn't mean it is. There is a lot of ground in SEO territory that most people simply just don't know, and therefore guess.

I think it's highly unprofessional to shut people down and provide only a link, to another SEO website with probably more nonsense. Especially for a moderator.

4. Alt tags do exist, and they are used as 'ALTERNATE TEXT' for images. Please do not confuse these with the Title tags for images, these are two completely different attributes

Please don't come out with such UTTER TRASH Find me a reference to alt tags ANYWHERE in the W3C specs on any version of HTML.
The alt text is AN ATTRIBUTE of an image tag and had you taken the time to read the post I linked to you would have found that out!!

AND the title "tag" you refer to IS ALSO AN ATTRIBUTE and can be applied to ALL visual element of an HTML document.

6. Link Text, this is what google calls a website temporarily until it gets the page title.

What ???????

XML sitemaps are nothing to do with SEO! The only purpose of a XML sitemap is to assist with crawling for sites that present access problems to crawlers.

Please be aware that just because a website with SEO in the title or URL says it's true, doesn't mean it is. There is a lot of ground in SEO territory that most people simply just don't know, and therefore guess.

Yep tell me about it, as ably demonstrated by the OP in this thread.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

post #2 11 to 15

Complete rubbish.

So for the pair of you, if you came here to impress us with your knowledge you pretty much failed and I suggest you do a LOT more learning.
Start Here -> HighRankings Tips for Newbies

On the website you've linked to here, did you actually check out one of the first links from it?
http://www.highrankings.com/tentips

Have a good read.

PS I'd love to see what top ranking websites you run. I think signing up here was a mistake, I was looking for a discussion board, not an all-mighty-mods-know-best board.

There is a right way and a wrong way to get a point across or educate folks. Whether it be hairsplitting elitist fodder or not.

Decaf is a wonderful thing.

Nigel

Well, I was too lazy to post my points clearly but they do have a lots of effect in google. I don't know about other SE's and not looking right now to study about them but in case of Google, whatever I wrote are 100% truth. When I will have time I will describe them clearly. But every aspects of websites are clearly studied by Google.

and if you think I am wrong I would like to say that I work as SE (PM me for which one if you want to know) evaluator myself since 3+ months.

Originally Posted by terminator054

1. Title Tag
2. Description Meta Tag
3. Keywords Meta Tag
4. Alt Tags
5. Header Tags
6. Link Text (Anchor Text)
7. Site Map
8. Relevant Inbound Links
9. Your Content
10. Avoid Cheating

Add more if I left any important thing.

These are the only optimization aspect along with designing, development and promotion aspect also include in the SEO factors.

Originally Posted by Nigel Lew

There is a right way and a wrong way to get a point across or educate folks. Whether it be hairsplitting elitist fodder or not.

Decaf is a wonderful thing.

Nigel

Subtle doesn't work!

Most of these people have been in the business 5 minutes

and if you think I am wrong I would like to say that I work as SE (PM me for which one if you want to know) evaluator myself since 3+ months.

And firmly believe they know everything there is to know about SEO from the week of reading 1998 formulaic drivel from "experts".

About the only way to get their attention is to call them out, then maybe they might start reading something that wasn't written when AltaVista was the leading search engine.

lol bloody ell i think chris is going to blow a gasket, he is right though as usual, all of those things are stuff I belived when i first started, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty chris is right, and ever since I started listening to people like chris my sites have improved substantially, this is no such thing as an alt tag its called an attribute, and anyone who knows their stuff knows this, its annoying when people say alt tags so important, attrributes are not important in the slighest as people have been abusing them for years !

Woc

And firmly believe they know everything there is to know about SEO from the week of reading 1998 formulaic drivel from "experts".

About the only way to get their attention is to call them out, then maybe they might start reading something that wasn't written when AltaVista was the leading search engine.

I don't know how it used to be searched and how was altavista in those days. May be I didn't know even about internet at that time but I know how Google is searching these days and what should we do to make our website some competitive and get some good position. I won't say I am able to bring revolution in SEM but how much I know can give good competition to others and know how to target my audience who are looking for websites like mine.

just been posted here -> http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...ter-guide.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...ter-guide.html

And I just thought I'd entertain you with a couple of quotes;

Even though this guide's title contains the words "search engine", we'd like to say that you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site. They're the main consumers of your content and are using search engines to find your work. Focusing too hard on specific tweaks to gain ranking in the organic results of search engines may not deliver the desired results. Search engine optimization is about putting your site's best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines.

And how many times have you seen this said here by several members

Use heading tags appropriately
Heading tags (not to be confused with the <head> HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present
structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, the most
important, and ending with <h6>, the least important.

Note the bold bits (by me)

Images may seem like a straightforward component of your site, but you can optimize your use of them. All images can have a distinct filename and "alt" attribute, both of which you should take advantage of.
The "alt" attribute allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason.

must have missed the mention of alt "tags" in there.


but SERIOUSLY

To ALL of you who believe you are an "expert" after a few weeks. DOWNLOAD the PDF, READ it and more importantly UNDERSTAND IT!!!!

It is GOOD, SOLID, BASIC advice written by people who have a vested interest in pages and sites being TRULY optimised. NOT something written by "experts" who have a vested interest in keeping it deliberately vague so you have to buy their "services".

And before anyone chimes up with "Google hates SEO" you will be wrong before you put finger to keyboard.
Google hates the ones who are out to "game" their system. REAL SEOs who are looking to really optimise the pages for visitors, are actually helping Google maintain their standards of providing the best results to their users (searchers)

And BTW I plagiarised my own post here

Originally Posted by CustomBuilds

7. Sitemaps based on links provide lots of great viewing for robots. Don't even get into XML Sitemaps, you couldn't be further from the truith with 'Nope, Nothing at all to do with SEO'

Sitemaps have nothing to do with SEO because they do not optimize your website but help SEs find deeper pages that they can't find naturally. Once they find those pages, if they are optimized, then and only will it help your overall optimization.
That's why sitemap can't be consider alone as an SEO factor.

Originally Posted by CustomBuilds

Chrishirst - Do you actually know anything about SEO? Please be aware that just because a website with SEO in the title or URL says it's true, doesn't mean it is. There is a lot of ground in SEO territory that most people simply just don't know, and therefore guess.

I think it's highly unprofessional to shut people down and provide only a link, to another SEO website with probably more nonsense. Especially for a moderator.

Chris has its way of saying things. It doesn't always please people but 99.99% of the time, he is right. You may or may not like the way the message is delivered, but at least it makes people think/read/question themselves and the content is (almost) always valuable.

I am afraid that if you want to hang out here, you will have to deal with it because it's not gonna change anytime soon. Please keep in mind that there are other mods who are much more diplomatic (van gogh would be the perfect example). Don't judge the whole forum on how one person replies. Especially because if half of the readers of this forum would apply what he says, they would see a big difference in their rankings and stop wasting a lot of their time building "relevant" links.

Alt tags == pink elephants.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Alt tags == pink elephants.

Try not to think about them.

You can't avoid the weirdness of the alt tag lol.

Nigel

Well, I have already read the google SEO starter package. And I agree to your think that Google doesn't need any links to get you upgrade in SERP (just best content and clean coding) but I have seen many such examples out there where people haven't got their desired position also. Google starter package is enough to get good position and to get indexed nicely but it has not yet clearly defind the way of content writing and selecting. And I hope you also agreed that all my above written 11-15 were not wrong coz Google has also included it in their starter package although I haven't described them above.
But still I would like to say one thing that Google is too much confidential in their business. Do you think they have written everything we need for SEO. If so, what will be the big SEO companies will be doing now over? And why do they used to charge $10000+ for a website optimization. And even some companies take $5000+ to make website Google friendly and to gain higher positions. I don't think that starter package was full guide for SEO. And if Google sees only those components of the website then everyone can bring out such search engines easily.