SEO Tycoon

**Learning Newbie** · 02-23-2007, 05:23 PM

I think it does, especially now, when a lot of tricks webmasters have relied on for years are being devalued. Most web people would tell you the three most important rules are "backlinks, backlinks, backlinks," just like realtors say about location. And that's still true, except that it only applies to quality backlinks. Those are much harder to get - you can influence that, but not control it. Link farms, directories, splogs, link exchange and buying, spamming comments, forums, Wikipedia, Craigslist, and any other site that lets you create your own backlinks just doesn't work anymore. That puts more emphasis on attracting quality links ( which is something many webmasters won't do ) and on-the-page factors.

We already know heading tags ( h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 ) make a very big difference, that the only tag more important than these is title. Why? Certainly it's not that this text shows up bigger, or in the top of the window. It's because we're structuring our documents in such a way that machines can better understand the document. Google has a better idea what your page is about, or at least a section of it, and that means Google has more confidence in recommending a page for a search.

But does that extend past the title and headings? As far as the bots are concerned, is there a difference between using p tags, and just throwing a couple of line breaks at the end of a clump? Blockquote versus margin-left? I've seen table designs where td elements replaced both of the above, including ones that rank very well for competitive terms. But might they do better by laying out their pages in a more descriptive way?

I have a gut feeling that it makes a small difference, but that it makes one. But I really can't say why, though. What do the gurus have to say?

**chrishirst** · 02-23-2007, 06:47 PM

In the most part I agree with the poiints , BUT it's not a given that using <hn> elements make a big difference, Yes they can make a difference in a properly structured document, as can the <b>,<em> markup tags when used correctly.
None of these are going to be a make/break deal when used independantly. However when used in the overall view, each minor point probably adds up to a reasonable weighting in the on-page stakes.

On the other code points;
The use of structural paragraphs <p> vs dividing elements <div> make make differences in other things.

The primary concern in using "semantic markup" should not be SEO though and any benefit gained in that respect is a bonus.
Users, Usability & Accessibility should be your concern there.

Tek-Tips discussion on a similar topic.

**ADAM Web Design** · 02-23-2007, 08:55 PM

Hey hey HEY Hirst! Watch the "primary concern" racket.

Seriously, there are direct and indirect SEO implications. I'm going to interchange semantic markup (which I find to be a CSS trendwhorish, misunderstood, overused term) with quality code (which I find describes things more accurately).

Indirect SEO implications

1) Some webmasters, when considering an inbound link, consider the quality of code. Quality code keeps those people happy. I've even seen directories (I forget which ones) that make quality code a prerequisite for inclusion.

2) Quality code provides faster load times and therefore an enhanced user experience. This, in turn, leads to more of the organic backlinks that we all covet.

The beauty of these links goes far beyond SEO in that these links quite often send something that is apparently a foreign concept these days: direct user traffic.

3) Quality code enhances the user experience and keeps the user around longer. This isn't a known factor...yet. But with every major SE having a toolbar, it would be relatively easy to track user experience by the time spent on a site, pages visited, etc. and incorporate it as a ranking factor (and then have to deal with the manipulation afterward, which is always 10 times harder). I'm a believer that this will be a factor sooner rather than later, if it's not already.

Direct SEO implications

1) Quality code is easier to read and interpret and therefore reduces the risk that a spider will misinterpret something.

2) http://labs.google.com/accessible (Google's Accessible Search) is something that's been very quietly in "Beta" mode for at least 6-8 months that I've known of (probably longer...I've never bothered to look).

Do a search on a term using google.com and then do a search for the same term using the accessible search. The quantity of results is significantly less (usually 90% less is what I've found), but the quality is generally much higher with very little spam. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (I've seen a few sites with some accessibility issues make it in there, although nothing really egregious), but I've gotten to the point where I use it for regular searches because the results are that clean.

Why is this significant? It gives webmasters who do things properly the opportunity to reach a large market (the disabled market) with relative ease since the competition here is next to nil.

I'm also of the belief that big G will make this a factor at some point because spammers generally are crappy coders, so there would be a certain serendipity at foot there. That's strictly speculative on my part, though.

3) Sites that are built well will find that they pick up a lot of longtail and niche phrases with a lot less difficulty than poorly-coded sites. If a webmaster is really lucky, (s)he will find him/herself with a high-volume 2-3 word phrase that no one else is targeting and that (s)he never would have thought of.

I've got an SEO term with the SEFL site (not gonna reveal it here just because spammers are idiots and I'm not opening up a door for them) that's a classic example. I never even CONSIDERED it at any point as a keyphrase, but I rank #1 across all three engines for it and it sends traffic. (Accidents ROCK, and they make you look and sound so much smarter!)

vangogh, if you're around, I think you know the one I'm talking about. Everyone else, if I trust you I'll PM you the phrase. If I don't...well...you ain't seein' it.

**ForrestCroce** · 02-23-2007, 11:49 PM

I think the seo effect is probably small, but that it's one reason out of many that good markup is a good idea. I do think b/strong and i/em tags, if you don't use very many of them, give the engines more info about your page, and that by now they probably have the technology to make some sense of it.

Semantic markup is a great idea, but we haven't made the computers smart enough to take advantage of it, and xhtml/css isn't really there yet. For 'bots to be able to read a document and really make more sense of it than engines do today, we'd all have to put a lot of metadata somewhere. Is this phrase red because it's important and really bad, or is it red because that goes well with the other colors on the page?

I'm going to have to agree with Chris and Adam in that the reasons to code well, and probably to prefer divs and classes to tables is that the code can be smaller, it's usually easier (for us humans) to read and maintain ... and one day we probably will have software that comes out of a movie and reads your pages in an intelligent way, maybe even looks to Google or Wikipedia for background on your main terms. CSS seems to be an evolution from tables, and building your site that way from the start probably means less work in the future when we're building web sites to impress The Jetsons.

That's an interesting thought on good markup as a spam filter. A lot of us think technology is cool, and learned to build our own site instead of using a template because we're perfectionists. Which is a pretty stark contradiction from the spammer mindset. Trying to make as much money as possible with as little effort, which frees up more time for more schemes. Good, clean markup just doesn't fit into that picture, it's a waste of productivity.

**ADAM Web Design** · 02-24-2007, 12:23 AM

Quote:

That's an interesting thought on good markup as a spam filter. A lot of us think technology is cool, and learned to build our own site instead of using a template because we're perfectionists. Which is a pretty stark contradiction from the spammer mindset. Trying to make as much money as possible with as little effort, which frees up more time for more schemes. Good, clean markup just doesn't fit into that picture, it's a waste of productivity.

Dat's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Now if we could just convince the SEs of this.