[thelist] opinions please: links & are they a good thing?
Rob Whitener
rwhitener at DesignOptions.com
Thu Jan 16 09:20:17 CST 2003
Thanks to you and Olly. I was mainly asking for info about client-side
scripts, but the extra info (using slashes instead of ?) will prove
invaluable since I am in the process of rebuilding my companies website, and
one of the main goals is to try and generate hits from searchs.
Thanks again.
Rob
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Henick [mailto:persist1 at io.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 9:42 AM
To: 'thelist at lists.evolt.org'
Subject: RE: [thelist] opinions please: links & are they a good thing?
On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Rob Whitener wrote:
> I have a question, in the searchengineworld article
> (http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/guide.htm), they say scripting
> languages hurt search engine performance. Fair enough, but can this be
> avoided by housing script in a separate file?
In a word, yes. (See [2] below.)
However, your question implies that the statement made in the cited
article was ambiguous.
I can think of several circumstances where the application of scripting
can mess with one's likelihood of being listed, much less ranking well.
1. Search engines tend to be shy about listing pages that are obviously
scripting-driven. There are lots of work-arounds for this - Apache's
mod_rewrite exists for just this circumstance; PHP allows a forward
slash to be used in lieu of a question mark as a GET query marker
(beyond which point the script can explode() the resulting string in
order to retrieve content for serving); all sorts of magic can be done
with ErrorDocs, as is the case with www.evolt.org...
2. Verbose inline JavaScript will push content further down the page, in
some cases harmng the measured relevance of the page's actual content.
3. Poorly-designed JavaScript can obscure or make inaccessible site
content.
Meanwhile... I have long since come to the conclusion that what helps
search engine rankings (at least on Google) above and beyond all other
techniques is thoughtful TITLE authoring.
--
Ben Henick "In the long run, men hit only what they aim
Web Author At-Large at. Therefore, though they should fail
http://www.io.com/persist1/ immediately, they had better aim high."
persist1 at io.com -- Henry David Thoreau
--
* * Please support the community that supports you. * *
http://evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
For unsubscribe and other options, including the Tip Harvester
and archives of thelist go to: http://lists.evolt.org
Workers of the Web, evolt !
More information about the thelist
mailing list