Need help from HTML / SEO knowledgable peeps

[daniedb]

I am developing a new site (have optimized my current one, so I know the basics of SEO). I'm doing a lot of images on my new one, and need to know if engines read the ALT text. I'm sick of everyone's machines not having the same fonts on them, and want my fonts to be consistent, but don't want to use Arial or Verdana, LOL. So, if I do a .bmp for my text, and include ALT text, will the crawlers read that, or should I just hoist the white flag and surrender to Arial?

This is my homepage for the new site:

www.carolinecandleco.com - no links yet, but almost all text images will be linked.

[prairieannie]

The crawlers will read ALT text! That's how it knows what images are SEO doesn't mean loading up on meta tags either..just so you know. Most crawlers ignore everything after the first few!

So Knock 'em dead girlfriend!! HTH

Edited to add...you might want to use .gif instead of .bmp..they are way smaller. You don't want to load up your pages with giant images!

[daniedb]

Excellent idea! I did notice that my .bmps were HUGE! I just have a problem getting gifs to be legible enough - if I get them small enough that the font doesn't take over Manhattan, I've got blurry city!

I actually found an awesome article, http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0704news.htm

Talks about common fonts - I was able to find a font I am thrilled with that's common to almost all machines! It also talks about how to specifiy alternative text selections in case your chosen font isn't installed on that user's machine, very helpful! So, I guess it's a moo point...HEE! (hope you watch Friends, or you'll think I'm an idiot)

Oh, and I did know that about meta tags - they're pretty much passe by now, right? It's been a challenge trying to work the phrase "soy candles" or "natural cleaning products" into every other sentence without sounding like an idiot. I'm still learning the tricks of the trade, but so far, the pages I've optimized are doing well in MSN and Google searches.

[RobinInOR]

Yup, they read alt. But as you probably know it's your copy that's going to have the biggest affect.

Alt text is good anyway, if you want to design to ADA standards (American Disabilities Act). Everyone should be using alt text on their images. In your case, it would be the same as the text in the pic.

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

First and formost save the normal images as gif files and save the high quality larger ones as jpg files. bmp files take alot longet to load and are kinda old technology.Search engines do read your alt tags but keep a few things in mind windows users also view alt tags. If you put your mouse over the image the alt tag shows. try to use some of your keywords in the alt tags themselves but not just keywords that dont make sense, meaninful descriptions or short sentences. Using to many keywords not only wont get read on some search engines it will get you dropped. Also do not make your page all images or 1 large image. You can also get very creative with css. not sure how familar you are with it but you can do alot of seo with css tags.

[MommaD]

None of what any of you said makes a bit of sense to me. ROFLMAO ROFL ROFL .. Sorry, butting out now.

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

Sometimes I have that effect on people.

[MommaD]

Sometimes I have that effect on people.

I didn't mean to be insulting, I was just joking around about my lack of computer knowledge.

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

I wasnt insulted I was serious. Sometimes it is very hard to try and put some of the technology in normal terms.

[PrairieDweller]

Not all SE's read alt tags. Some (I believe Google is one) require the image be an actual link in order to pay attention to the alt.

[daniedb]

Stacy's DH - I know that bmps are way old school, but with the graphics programs I have, I'm not able to figure out how to make 8-10 point type to look unfuzzy when I publish it. The rez gets so small that it looks like crapola.

I worked it out to where I found a universal font that's on all macs and pcs from the factory, so I think I'm good there.

And about the css - I've just not conquered that area of programming quite yet. I'm terrible at it so far. I know that all I'd need to do is spend some time plugging away and experimenting, but I just don't have the time. So, I'll have to set aside some time for that. Thanks for the info.

First and formost save the normal images as gif files and save the high quality larger ones as jpg files. bmp files take alot longet to load and are kinda old technology.Search engines do read your alt tags but keep a few things in mind windows users also view alt tags. If you put your mouse over the image the alt tag shows. try to use some of your keywords in the alt tags themselves but not just keywords that dont make sense, meaninful descriptions or short sentences. Using to many keywords not only wont get read on some search engines it will get you dropped. Also do not make your page all images or 1 large image. You can also get very creative with css. not sure how familar you are with it but you can do alot of seo with css tags.

[deputy6512]

I'm so computer stupid...this thread has me going . I so badly want to make myself a simple website, but could never figure it out on my own. So, kudos to those of you who have clue!

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

Hey dont fret camper...when you get some time let me know and I will walk you through it. It is very useful and the possiblilties are endless for now. You can also get wysiwyg programs to help you along the way. I can look for a simple one when you have time and explain it to you. Baisially instead of having to know the hex codes for colors you can just click them and it will show you what things will look like. As far as search engine and keywords heres the skinny... there are four, maybe five now search engines that feed all other search engines on the web. Some more then others, for example up until the begining of the year aol and msn used google only if they didnt have anything at all or enough of a selection for what you were looking for. Google itself started out using dmoz. As far as how the main one works thats a different topic but I assure you it is interesting. For the most part a search engine indexes the first 255 words (5 characters = a word) of the first page of your site. After that it crawls (quick scans) the rest of the entire site. The more words you have throughout your site that match those fors 255 words the better you are for a nitch market. ANother big thing is backlinks who links to you and more importantly who you link to. But enough boring seo talk. contact me when you have time and I will explain how to make different search engines see different things then what your visitors see.

I should write a newsletter.

Doug

Stacy's DH - I know that bmps are way old school, but with the graphics programs I have, I'm not able to figure out how to make 8-10 point type to look unfuzzy when I publish it. The rez gets so small that it looks like crapola.

I worked it out to where I found a universal font that's on all macs and pcs from the factory, so I think I'm good there.

And about the css - I've just not conquered that area of programming quite yet. I'm terrible at it so far. I know that all I'd need to do is spend some time plugging away and experimenting, but I just don't have the time. So, I'll have to set aside some time for that. Thanks for the info.

[RobinInOR]

DH wrote a faq

http://watersgulchdigital.com/tips/search_engines.html

He hasn't updated it in a few months, so it might not have some of the newer specifics, and it's kind of techy, but there are a few good tips in there in English

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

Thats kinda informative but I little outdated like you said. But still clear and in plain english. Although some things have changed since its writing the overall "concept" os still the same. And it would definatly help a newbe at least get listed even if not to the top of the ranks

Doug

[PrairieDweller]

Hi Doug.. I was wondering with all you know about SEO, why you chose a dynamic site for StacysScentsations? As you can't really optimize those types of sites, you rarely see them rank even half decently. Do you pay for advertising on Google or Overture?

Hope you are not offended by my question, it truly is not meant to be offensive. I am just curious. You seem so knowledgable and yet are going against the laws of SEO with your own site LOL

edited to add: I have optimized dynamic sites but they must be anchored with plenty of static pages.. so yes, it can be done! I love this area of "design" and love discussing it with others who do as well. If you're interested in talking further, pm me

[RobinInOR]

We've found that dynamic sites rank OK - the search engines are getting better and better. Some still don't like to see the same page name over and over, with just the parameters pulling up the dynamic information.

You're right, though, it does help to have some static pages around. Front page for sure - don't have your index page dive right into a dynamic catalog. But you can have links on your index page go to specific dynamic pages and those get crawled.

The title of the page helps too - even on dynamic pages, if you change the title that shows up, that will help make the page unique for the engines. Had to add a custom to osCommerce to do that. Oh, and don't put your company name first in the title, put the important stuff first.

[itsallgood20]

Danielle, I'm so digging your candle website. Did a beautiful job. Everything is clean, upscale, classy. Beautiful!:highfive:

[daniedb]

Thanks, Cynthia! I'm trying to make sure it fits with the parent co, but has its own distinct look, too. I'm kind of thinking it's a little bleh, but I think all I need to be happy is to add the final, good pictures and that will satisfy me. Thank you so much for the compliment! I needed it this morning.

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

PrairieDweller,

I do not take offense that is a valid question. It is fine to have a dynamic website and rank just fine on google. Stacys Site has been up for about a month or 2 and and is already doing ok on the search engines. I have really targeted any search engines as she doesnt have that much yet. The old "Dynamic Sites" wont rank well is old school. look at every single pr10 on the web it is a dynamic site. Look at all the "Big Boys" every one is static. The fact is a couple of reasons,

1.Stacysscentsations automatically publishes a static site and updates everyday to match the dynamic site for those search engine that dont list dynamic yet.

2. To do a static site would be way to time consuming to add edit or update products. This can be done on a dynamic website in minutes and with the click of a button can be implemented site wide.

3. You cannot get anywhere near the features with a static site that you can get with a dynamic. Ex. I know who goes on the website what they look at how many times they look at it how long they stay on a page where they come from etc. - If you go look at a tart warmer 10 times but never buy it but then you buy a tart. I am immediatly notified and i know you looked at that tart warmer 10 times. I bet tommorrow when I send you an email saying that tart wamer is on sale for one day only you come buy it.

4. Our pc rings when we get site visitors ansd logs everything this is grat to let you know what products are popular which arent which ones may be priced a little high etc.

5. Our products are directly connecting to our shipping partners - ex. If i say I have 1000 votives instock and you buy 10 our storefront knows what each tart weighs that they are in stock and that your credit card went through. Once this happens the website itself notifies ups that we have a dellivery and to where, contacts the website back with a tracking number, contacts the customer with their order confirmation and tracking number, emails my wife and lets her know she has an order, she logs in and your invoice and labels are already generated waiting to print. I am currently taking this one step further by implementing email to fax then instread of emailing her it will automatically fax her the details. she will pick the order slap the labels on the boxes and wait for the ups man tommorrow as he know he has a pickup.

This is all done why she is making soap and candles. Grant it that may seem a little overboard but I dont usually do small site I do corporate sites (hense her site design) It is both good and bad. Alot of people like a corporate look however alot of candlemakers like the homespun look (im sure their customers do too) so it depends on the market. A large company wants a professional, efficient website that does everything except bake cakes. LOL they need features like inventory tracking, qhanitiy discounts and advanced shipping features. it enable tem to keep costs way down.

6. As far as the dynamic content there is also an html catalog like I said. So my wife has absolutly NO knowledge of web or graphic design - search engines etc. And hos no inclination to learn any of it. So she does not want to add meta inffo etc. If she adds a product and wants to add keywords specific for it there is a spot for her to type a few. If not the website reads her description generates its own keywords and creates the page title and realted products based on the specific product. Once she adds the product name that is the page title etc.

I hope this helps and didnt confuse the heck out of you. But search engines are now gearing to dynamic content more and more every day. they have to because of this:

On a not adjusted basis, the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2005 totaled $19.8 billion, an increase of 3.5 percent (±0.8%) from the first quarter of 2005.

from the census website.

At 100 billion in sales a year from the US only and growing ... html is gonna have to move over for a more efficient and streamlined technology. Think about sites that sell thousands of products. By the time you updated them they would be out and new products would be in.

Hi Doug.. I was wondering with all you know about SEO, why you chose a dynamic site for StacysScentsations? As you can't really optimize those types of sites, you rarely see them rank even half decently. Do you pay for advertising on Google or Overture?

Hope you are not offended by my question, it truly is not meant to be offensive. I am just curious. You seem so knowledgable and yet are going against the laws of SEO with your own site LOL

edited to add: I have optimized dynamic sites but they must be anchored with plenty of static pages.. so yes, it can be done! I love this area of "design" and love discussing it with others who do as well. If you're interested in talking further, pm me

[PrairieDweller]

Thanks Doug for your informative reply, I appreciate it.

You state...

The old "Dynamic Sites" wont rank well is old school. look at every single pr10 on the web it is a dynamic site

You can gain PR by a large, relevant link campaign (on an html page) but it won't get you ranked well. My site is a PR 4...yet am ranked #1-3 on my most sought after keywords/terms on the major engines. PR is just a value number for relevancy on your inbound links. From what I can tell of the past year, it is of little value anymore. I used to be afraid to exchange links with sites that had a lower PR than myself but will do so with a site having a PR 0 if it's got potential for ranking well (loaded with good content and optimized well)

Google says the following about indexing dynamic pages:

We're able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler could overwhelm and crash sites that serve dynamic content, we limit the number of dynamic pages we index. In addition, our crawlers may suspect that a URL with many dynamic parameters might be the same page as another URL with different parameters

Yahoo says...

Yahoo! does index dynamic pages, but for page discovery, our crawler mostly follows static links. We recommend you avoid using dynamically generated links except in directories that are not intended to be crawled/indexed (e.g., those should have a /robots.txt exclusion

Most say though they "will" crawl the dynamic content... they are cautious, very slow at doing so and only index a few. They all recommend backing them up with html pages, which if I am understanding you correctly, you have done.

I personally don't see many dynamic sites rank well. I see them paying for ads on overture and google though.

I see all the benefits of dynamic sites but for an ecommerce site with no html backup pages, it appears to be suicide unless you've got a particularly large ad budget or someone who knew some black hat seo (until they're caught). If I designed sites for a living I'd probably be on the dynamic wagon too, but being on the other end of it, I'll stick with static until spiders are more friendly towards them.

Thanks again, Doug and to whomever started this thread, I apologize for thread jacking lol There ought to be a forum for SEO doncha think?

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

I never knew so many people would be into the seo thing on a scandle site. Anyway PR is really only utilized by google for the most part. But as we all know google is the one you have to concern yourself with if you want to be found. http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html is an interesting read about pagerank. If you have a pr10 and link to a pr1 you will bring the 1 up. If you link to 10 pr1 sites that arent directly related to your site you will drop. As I said and you pointed out stacys site is dynamic but does a html version everyday and changes anything that changed. It is a tough call weather to use a dynamic site if you are small. First off is it cost effective, second off if you want that homemade look to your website that is harder with php and stuff as usually that stuff is more corporate looking (or maybe the developers are more intuned with the corporate look) I like php always have and always will untill something better comes along. But for now good old fashioned html is still here for a while. I imagine it will phase out eventually as high speed becomes more available to the masses.

[daniedb]

StacysH (what is your name, BTW? so we can call you by your name, and not just your wife's!)-

that was a great link! Thanks for all the info, dudes. This has been very informative for me, I really appreciate all your opinions and insight and the knowledge you've shared!

[StacysScentsations(DH)]

My name is Doug and you are very welcome for the info. It is nice to see people actually care about such things. Even though it is a part of any business that wants to be online some people tend to overlook it. The whole "Build it and they will come" Days are long long gone. If I knew 10 years ago what I know now chances are I wouldnt be here typing this. Yahoo stock went public for a quarter a share. Go Figure.

Edited to add: If you read the article on google and understand the part about them reading font tags etc. Keep in mind with css you can make a <H1> tag be any size you want. I think there was more about that in Robins hubby tutorial (which is also a good read)