FAQ

How Important is Content?

Content is King. This has never been more true. Focus on solid content that is keyword rich and has a strong marketing messages for your site visitors. Make your site the source for information in your industry.

Who has a bigger Index, Yahoo or Google?
The truth is, it doesn’t really matter. It isn’t about size, it is about relevance. The engine that can deliver the most relevant results to a search query is truly the winning engine. So, it’s not the size of the index that matters, it is what they do with the information in the index and how it is delivered.

The real question behind this question is: “which engine should I use when I do my searches and which engine should I focus on in my marketing.”

The answer to those questions are; use the engine that you feel delivers the best results. Don’t buy into the hype stating which engine people think is best. Use many engines and then find the one you like the best. You never know, a new leader may emerge. The more people try engines and demand better results from them, the more the industry as a whole benefits.

As far as marketing goes, you can’t afford to focus on just one. Your goal is to get exposure and traffic. Why limit it? Focus on all of the top engines and achieve maximum exposure for your site.

Can Google Follow Links in Flash?

While Google can read and index Flash, it cannot follow links in Flash. Make sure all links are plain text.

Do You Need to Use the Google Sitemap Tool?
If your site is already getting crawled by Google and pages are being added to their index, you do not need to use the Google sitemap submission tool. The sitemap submission tool was created to provide a way for sites which normally do not get crawled to gain the attention of Google and be crawled and indexed.

Is it Really Important to Remove Javascript, Define CSS Off-page And Keep my Code Clean?

Yes. By placing your CSS and javascript in external files you remove excess code from the page, which makes it easier and faster for the spiders to find your wonderful keyword rich content.

Minimizing the use of tables also helps reduce the HTML to text ratio, making the text stand out to the engines.

Clean, error-free code is also essential. It ensures the engines won’t get stuck or lost – they can simply and easily spider through your site and eat up your content.

Your keyword rich text should appear as close to the top of your code as possible. Sometimes this is difficult, when top or side (left) navigation appear first in the code. You can always try a different page layout or even consider using CSS to reposition the text for the engines.

Do Too Many Keywords in the Domain Name Harm You?

Too many keywords in a domain, all separated by dashes is a red alert for the spiders.

How Many Links Should You Have on Your Sitemap?
Google recommends 100 links per page.

Are Dynamic URLs Bad?

Google says that a dynamic URL with 2 parameters “should” get indexed.

How long will it take to get on the search engines?

This varies depending upon the search engine. Each of the sites has different indexing periods, which means that there are different lengths of time for submissions to take effect. Here is some of the current waiting periods:

MSN – up to 2 months
Google – up to 4 months
AltaVista – up to 1 week
Excite -  up to 6 weeks

AOL -  up to 2 months

Remember, these are estimates of worst-case scenario situations in which you may have submitted right after the search engine indexed. If you pass the length of time listed above for a specific engine, you may want to check and make sure your submission was done properly.

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