URL keywords and Latest Google dance

I have some questions and am quite new here

[Pakman]

Greetings all

This is my first post here since I am not able to find the answer to my questions anywhere else.

I have been mandated to make our corporate site get at the top of Google (at least in the 10 firsts) for a specific combination of keywords.

What I have done up to now is to try to integrate as much as possible the Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone" [webmasterworld.com]

My questions:

1) I have URLs composed like this: (I think it is not appreciated here to link to real sites so this is how it looks like):

http://www.site-in-question.com/index.jsp?id=01

And this is how it is built in the HTML

<A CLASS=highlight HREF="/index.jsp?id=68">

I guess that, code wise, it is valid. At least it is according to W3C and the searchengineworld.com Sim Spider.(Note that, even though w3c says it is correct, I am not sure about the CLASS value with no double quote)

The id field, I have found, might not be a good idea from what I have found on a posts here. So I intend to change it to subsection=01.

I have also read some times that key words directly in the URL was highly prized by Google, am I wrong?

So what I would like to do is change my page ID system to switch from a simple integer field to Texts and add keywords in it, while still supporting the old system so that all the older links already linked from other sites would still work. So I would migrate from something like that:

<A CLASS=highlight HREF="/index.jsp?id=68">

to something like this:

<A CLASS=highlight HREF="/index.jsp?subsection=key_word_to_id">

key_word_to_id would be the keyword I need to have on the specific page, like, for example:

<A CLASS=highlight HREF="/index.jsp?subsection=super_technology">

Would this help me?

2) I noticed, from a google dance tool site, that the Google dance has started last Monday. My site seems to have not been deep crawled since then and my code is almost completely valid according to W3C save for a Flash tag declaration and leftmargin, topmargin, marginwidth, and marginheight tags.

Since the previous Google dance I have corrected all the URLs that were malformed, HREF tag without double quotes. And I have added a / before my index.jsp file declaration in HREF tags. (Without the / the sim spider at searchengineworld.com was not able to deep crawl my site)

Any Ideas as to what could cause Google not to deep crawl my site?

Note : I have no robot.txt file on my site and no META ROBOT tag in my header.

I am not posting my site URL, as stated in the rules of my subscription agreement, but if any of you need the address in order to help me, please ask me and I will post it.

I hope that I have detailed my problems exhaustively for you to be able to answer my questions

Thanks.
Pakman / Dominique Paquin

[zorron7]

Do not post. Wrong thread.

[dougmcc1]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Pakman.

I have also read some times that key words directly in the URL was highly prized by Google

Not so much anymore.

The id field, I have found, might not be a good idea from what I have found on a posts here. So I intend to change it to subsection=01.

Good choice.

key_word_to_id

First let me just say that an underscore is treated differently than a hyphen. key_word_to_id is treated as one word while key-word-to-id is treated as 4 words. And let me say again, it isn't as helpful anymore to have your keyword in the URL. Maybe a little, but not as much. Some of my clients use keyword1_keyword2.htm and some use keyword1-keyword2.htm. Both seem to do pretty well.

<A CLASS=highlight HREF="/index.jsp?id=68">

I don't see any need for putting the CLASS attribute in a link. If you have a bunch of links in a row, such as in your navigation, then you can do this:

<SPAN CLASS="highlight">
<A HREF="http://www.site.com/page.htm">anchor text</A>
<A HREF="http://www.site.com/page2.htm">anchor text</A>
<A HREF="http://www.site.com/page3.htm">anchor text</A>
</SPAN>

Otherwise if you're using those links in a specific part of the page you can put the CLASS="highlight" in the <TD> tag which the link is in, the <P> tag of the paragraph it's in, or if you want to apply that class to all links on your page then don't put it in a class at all. The only time I could see a need for CLASS="highlight" in a single link is if that one is different than all the others, and I don't see why it would be.

I noticed, from a google dance tool site, that the Google dance has started last Monday

According to the reading I've done on here lately, there is no Google dance anymore.

[benc007]

There is no Google Dance anymore .. just rolling updates.

You should separate your keywords using - instead of _ if you want them to be treated as separate keywords. This may help a little in your SERPS.

[DerekH]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Pakman

>I have been mandated to make our corporate site get at the top of Google (at least in the 10 firsts) for a specific combination of keywords.<

Realistically, that just may not be possible in the short term. Rankings depend on about 100 factors, of which link popularity - the "PageRank" or endorsement by other sites - is pretty much impossible to obtain in a matter of days.

A high ranking site may not even need all the tricks of SEO if it is particularly lucky in _some_. But high ranking needs to include content (first and foremost), good title and good <h1>, good links to your site, good html, good css (if used), and efficient navigation for human and spider.

Far better than accepting a target of "the first 10" is to accept a target of "noticeably improved'

Because, to be honest, if there are more than 10 people above you in the SERPS who *don't* need to ask this list questions, I really don't think that any answers we can give you will help you get in amongst them.

In the short term, aim for continuous demonstrable improvement in your placings, but never accept such a black and white, and probably impossible, target from a client who wants to believe in fairies.

You may well get there by your own talent, but it's not a goal that your client can know is realistic when he sets it.
DerekH

[jdMorgan]

Pakman,

If it was me, I'd forget about keyword-in-URL and work on keyword-in-backlink-text. Get other sites to link to you using link text that describes what you DO or what you sell, not just the name of the company. Same thing that makes a good title makes a good incoming link.

The issue of eliminating query strings in URLs has to do with site spiderability, and it's still a good idea to convert to static-looking URLs.

Jim

[crxchaos]

dougmcc1,

If the class attribute of the link modifies the display to 'block' then the span tag will not work.

For example, a menu/list constructed of 'block' links with a specified width for conformity...

[Pakman]

Thanks all for the great answers, it highly appreciated.

I see that the corporate site where I work might only miss some H1 tags according to all I have seen and maybe remove the class declarations in the HREF tags.

For the back link, I guess that it IS a corporate site and it might not get as much back link as, say sourceforge or slashdot, but I will try to find a couple of places to get liks to us.

I also read elsewhere that, after reading a lot here, the google dance is really a thing of the past.

Now I noticed, from a site that I did in the past and that contains less than 800 pages, that google is listing 7500 links to that site! Google seems to be acting strangely and I feel that it is doubling it's database on a regular basis, very strange!

The reason why I say this is that I strongly feel that google cannot be counted uppon now to test all the good ideas I find in these forums, am I wrong? Should I test with other searc engines (like the new yahoo or Ask?)

Thanks again.

[dougmcc1]

If the class attribute of the link modifies the display to 'block' then the span tag will not work.

Thanks for following up on my sticky. I found it depends on how you do your classes. Using your example,

This works:

<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
.menu-link a {display: block; text-decoration: none; color: #0000a9; border: 1px solid #ffffef; width: 100px;}
.menu-link a:hover {display: block; text-decoration: none; background: #efefef; border: 1px solid #0000a9; width: 100px;}
</style> 
</head>
<body> 
<span class="menu-link">
<a href="test1.html">Test 1</a>
<a href="test2.html">Test 2</a>
<a href="test3.html">Test 3</a>
</span>
</body>
</html>

This doesn't:

<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
a.menu-link:link { text-decoration: none; color: #0000a9; border: 1px solid #ffffef; display: block; width: 100px; }
a.menu-link:hover { text-decoration: none; background: #efefef; border: 1px solid #0000a9; display: block; width: 100px; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<span class="menu-link">
<a href="test1.html">Test 1</a>
<a href="test2.html">Test 2</a>
<a href="test3.html">Test 3</a>
</span>
</body>
</html>