Forum Moderators: open
DON'T: Sign guestbooks with your link.
www.pr10.com/
That would be Chris_R, our local handy dandy PR affectionado.
DO: Give directory and file names meaninful names. Sorry, "Stuff" just won't hack it.
DON'T: Keyword stuff the meta keywords tag. It appears to still work with Alta Vista to a degree, but doesn't impress Google; and in case of actual human beings looking, we don't want to look naughty.
DO export presentation to external CSS files - G likes smaller file sizes and so do users.
DON'T panic if your site is listed with PR0 in it's first index. It often takes 2 Updates for PR and backlinks to be fully credited.
Nick
ukgimp I will start with the top ten things not to do courtesy of a member here, cant remeber who right now though:
www.pr10.com/
those are a good 10 things NOT to do, it's a shame people will stumble across that who are justing starting out in seo and follow it!
DONT use hidden keywords
PR10.com is great, Id put it on a par with Bretts 12 months in google :)
DO - be constructive in asking questions, rather than insisting that your latest spam methodology did not achieve the results that you required.
DO - build a themed site. With a linking structure that builds upon the theme's.
DON'T - Worry if your site is not listed for the top 2-3 keyword combo's, these are usually not the ROI traffic.
DONT pay so much attention to PR - its a gimmick for pete's sake!
DONT copy my site - you won't like me when im angry! ;)
Scott
Do all seo in moderation. No one factor works alone or will work tomorrow.
DON'T: listen to your girlfriend late at night when she sends you to bed and points you to the clock ;-)
DON'T: try to explain her what's PageRank and the Google dance is about...
DO: take another beer and write some more pages...
DO: put a pillow on your keyboard just in case you'll fall asleep during late night work on your site improvement
DON'T: take everything too serious and enjoy the game and this forum
DO: Think in terms of phrases instead of word combinations.
DON'T: Neglect keyword research. Always use the language of the potential visitors.
Don't be too chicken when come to Google Rules as long as what you do are for your the good of your visitors.
* Now I'm waiting for the next Google dance :(
But dont forget the logical URL's for pages on the site like:
cleverbrandname.com/brand/name/product.html.
Don't: Overcomplicate the issue, it ain't rocket science...A quality site, clean code, no attempts to trick the SE's,thats all its about, the rest is what goes hand in hand.
Do: Expect the unexpected
Don't: Put all your eggs in the Google basket.
Do you have a business card? What impression will you make? Do you avoid situations like these? Like leaving money on the table my friend.
DON'T: Cling to the past as a predictor of the future. The web is what, 10 years old. Stop and look at all the changes during that time and think: My word, everything could change again and would my business survive such an upheaval? What if Google went under tomorrow? Would your business too? How does that make you feel?
And IMHO. Google are one of the best organizations I've ever dealt with either personally or by email. Above is not meant as anything less than a call for good business practices and making things less *reliant* on Google.
I disagree, unless marketing is such that a brand name would be better. The obvious case of this would be someone who sold a diverse range of products. For example, blue-widgets.com is going to be a poor choice if you also sell doohickeys and thingamajigs. While I do think Google gives additional weight to keyword in domain name, I see no easy way to prove it. The biggest problem is that of you are cleverbrandname.com, then the tendency of webmasters will link to you with the anchor text of "Cleverbrandname". Not good if you want to come up high for "Blue Widgets".
Easily brandable. You want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains are out - branding and name recognition are in - big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to se's. Learn the lesson of "goto.com" becomes "Overture.com" and why they did it. It's one of the most powerful gut check calls I've ever seen on the internet. That took serious resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (that is a whole 'nother article, but learn the lesson as it applies to all of us).
Craig
DON'T: Use short term gain bad practices.
Which I tend to disagree with. Search this forum and you'll find lots of threads where webmasters were posting that they were tending to see SERPs dominated by keyword stuffed domains. For whatever reason, this seems to be working to do well in the SERPs.
One other observation I'll make about Brett choosing to use goto.com changing to overture.com. Is it just me, or are other webmasters seeing a negigible number of hits from overture.com? I just checked my main site logs this month. A whopping 2 hits from overture.com. Tying Wisenut. For the same period 1812 hits from Google. And, I just checked and my Overture SERPs are quite good. I'm #1 on Overture for my highest traffic keyword, better than my #4 position on Google. Perhaps there is something peculiar about my site demographics and where they search. However, I'm seeing no evidence at all changing to overture.com has been successful.
[edited by: rfgdxm1 at 3:50 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2003]
I'm still not through with www.brandname.com or www.mainkeywordorphrase.com ...
Found recently some posts here emphasizing benefits from incoming links with your mainkeyword in link text - and this works well if the domain is a keyword domain. Sounds good to me.
So what's to do? Brand or keyword domain?
It may well be that keyword in domain name gives no boost, and it is all due to the anchor text. However, unless a webmaster can control all inbound links such that the anchor text is never "Cleverbrandname" but is instead the keywords they want, then the keyword domain name will do better.
DON'T: do anything Google says not to do.
