Sometimes a benefit of working for someone else is watching their mistakes, and learning not to make the same ones. After some deliberation, I've been taken off a project building a new site for one of their clients, to make these changes. I tried to explain how counterproductive this would be, but it's our plan, from the project manager turned SEO. They've asked met o be especially careful, because they already submitted to Google so we're working out of order.

I don't know where this document came from, but it's so wrong as to be funny. Hope you guys get a laugh, too.

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Things to know before submitting to Google
The same way you clean up your house before your guests arrive, the same way you should get your website ready for Google's crawler, as this is one of the most important guests you will ever have. According to that, here are 10 things you should double check before submitting your website to the index. If you want, you can view this article as the correction of the top 10 mistakes made by webmasters.

1. If you have a splash page on your website, make sure you have a text link that allows you to pass it.
I've seen many websites with a fancy flash introduction on the index and no other way to navigate around it. Well, Google can't read into your flash page, and therefore it cannot bypass it. All you have to do is put a text link to your website's second index, and the deed is done.

2. Make sure you have no broken links
I know this is kind of obvious, but you'll be surprised to find out how many errors is the Google crawler experiencing daily due broken links. Therefore, you'd better check and double check every internal link of your webpage before submission. Don't forget that your links are also your visitor's paths to your content. It's not all about Google, you know

3. Check the TITLE tags
Since you are able to search in title tags on Google and since the title tags is displayed in the top of your browser window, I'd say this is an important aspect you need to check. This doesn't mean you have to compile a >20 keywords list there. Instead, make it a readable sentence since it's viewable by both crawlers and surfers.

4. Check the META tags
Rumors about Google not caring about META tags are not 100% correct. Google relies on these tags to describe a site when there's a lot of navigation code that wouldn't make sense to a human searcher, so why not make sure you're all in order and set up some valid KEYWORDS and a valid DESCRIPTION. You never know.

5. Check your ALT tags
The ALT tags are probably the most neglected aspect of a website since no one bothers to put them in order. It's definitely a plus if you do, so Google spider can get a clue about all of your graphics. However, don't go extreme and start explaining in an ALT tag that a list bullet is a list bullet.

6. Check your frames
If you use frames on your website, you might not be indexed 100%. Google actually recommends that you read an article of Danny Sullivan on Search Engines and Frames. You have to make sure that either Google can read from your frames, either that it has an alternative, defined via the NOFRAMES tag.

7. Do you have dynamically generated pages?
I know the web evolved so much in the last period of time, and more and more websites based on dynamic scripting languages (PHP, ASP, etc) are coming out every second, but Google said they are limiting the amount of dynamic webpages they're indexing. It's not too late to consider a compromise and include some static content in your pages. It helps.

8. Update your content regularly
This is an important aspect that you should consider, since Google indexes more quickly pages that get updated on a regular basis. You will notice that the number of pages indexed by the search engine will increase day by day if you update, but will stagnate or decrease if you don't bring something new. I suggest setting up a META option in the header that will tell Google how frequently should it come back for a reindexing.

9. The robots.txt
This file is a powerful resource if used properly. You have the chance to filter out the bots that crawl your website, and you have the chance of restricting access to certain URL's that should not be indexed (login pages, admin backends, etc).

10. To cache or not to cache?
Google caches some webpages for quick access, but some webmasters do not like that. The procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is write a line of code between your HEAD tags.

META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE" - should be enough to stop all robots from caching and archiving the page where the code is embedded.

All these being said, you can now submit your website to Google's index.

Tell them it's alt attributes for a start

Trouble is, this sort of stuff is everywhere, every wannabe SEO repeats out this same old drivel parrot fashion, on their website, their blogs, forum posts etc in the vain hope that they will be seen as an "expert"

I love the dynamic pages part. With the number of URL rewriting techniques and other tricks available, it's impossible for a search engine or a user to tell whether or not every page online is dynamic or static.

Besides, static ASP pages are very possible, as they are in any other language.

You're right, John. That's brilliant. I'm off to go submit my website now! No, you guys, get out of here! WAIT YOUR TURN! GET IN LINE! I WAS HERE FIRST!

The "put some static content in your asp pages" part killed me. The alt attribute is great, too, that's one of the most common mistakes I see around here, but you would think a web design shop would know something is up when an article that's our new highest priority gets something like that wrong. Somehow my explanation of "Google doesn't use the keywords tag, and we can set up a site to actually test this" didn't stand up to "You never know" in a published article.

The best part is how this is doubly important because we already submitted to Google. Again, I tried to explain that the nature of the web is that it's a non-permenant medium, pages and sites change all the time, and this is expected. So being indexed and then making changes isn't the end of the world, in fact, they're used to dealing with that.

I think it's time for a certain Newbie to look for better work. If you're a newbie, the guy who wrote this article is illiterate.

On the other hand, maybe it's a good thing I never submitted my site to Google, as I don't have any keyword meta tags?

John please tell me this is an old document of some sort. You might as well tell us the name of the company site too since no one is ever going to find it by searching for it.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLF,GGLF:2006-19,GGLF:en&q=%22The+same+way+you+clean+up+your+hou se+before+your+guests+arrive%2c+the+same+way+you+s hould+get+your+website+ready+for+Google%27s+crawle r%2c%22

Looks like it's someone trying to get Dugg with blue box SEO.

That was funny John -- be sure and ask the new SEO if he's ever heard of <!DOCTYPE Declaraton> as I didn't see that on his list...

The sad thing Adam is when I just checked it has 971 diggs. I guess it's true that most diggers have no understanding of seo.

Which probably explains why it sounds like our friend's boss is changing his priorities around on him. I don't know much about how Digg works, but it sounds like this just popular enough to get forwarded to the wrong email.

Also shows something about linkbaiting, if "You never know." is a compelling argument to use meta keyword tags. "It helps." is even more convincing.

But then submitting to Google is really all you need to know; don't read beyond the title. It must be frustrating for Learning Newbie to have to work on something he knows better than.

I would like to add in optimizing your site you should also create your content using your targeted keywords.

Thanks for the info and the article is quite good.

obviously neither of you get it at all

did you bother reading this bit?

Originally Posted by LearningNewbie

in post # 1
I don't know where this document came from, but it's so wrong as to be funny. Hope you guys get a laugh, too.

The so called "article" is RUBBISH.
Full of half truths, supposition and mis-information.

<rant>
Your posts are the epitomy of what is wrong with the entire SEO world, You choose to ignore the useful information that many of us post and link to every day and instead read a completely BOGUS article that some self-styled clueless "expert" has probably copied from somewhere and pasted into a forum post in a bid to make his forum look more useful.
| do realise that there is a bunch (around 20 by my reckoning) of you here all promoting the same site(s) in your signatures (maybe it's a "pay per post" scheme that you all belong to). BUT at least try and look like you are learning something and stop posting the same old "Get more links", "thanks for the info", "I have a TV themed site for link exchange".
It is frustrating for the members here who do want to learn better ways to optimise their sites, and annoying for the members who promote the better ways to have threads filled up with one line posts of old and usually inaccurate answers.

</rant>
Thank you for your attention and we will now return our scheduled programs.

What he said.

Unfortunately Chris we both know neither of them will ever read what you wrote. Maybe it's time to start pruning the post count of some people.

Sorry for the late response - I've been at the hospital all day visiting a friend who was in a motorcycle wreck. He's doing pretty well, thank god, but needs company.

Anyway, I don't know where this ultimately came from, although it looks like Detective Adam found the bottom of it. We all know someone who forwards every thing they read into your email. I'm sure someone sent our PM/SEO this "article" and he's using his intimate knowledge to impress the company. All I do know is they take it seriously.

The thing doesn't even mention off-page optimization, and if I understand this game as well as I think, this is more important than on-page SEO. It's harder to do, and it at least implies some amount of worth even to be approved for a directory, or not have your link drop cut. I agree with the general idea that quality is good, but who doesn't? And a long list of specific things you'd better do is a lot more than a general idea.

Also, Chris, you aren't the only one to notice a bunch of "me too" replies that just don't make any sense at all. But I didn't notice about the sig links. Hmmm, maybe I should make my signature a link with the same anchor text, but pointing to Wikipedia. Make spam just a little bit more difficult. But I don't want to be disruptive, mostly I just wanted to note agreement.

Originally Posted by vangogh

The sad thing Adam is when I just checked it has 971 diggs. I guess it's true that most diggers have no understanding of seo.

Or the article creator has access to 971 proxy servers and a script that will cycle through all of them, "vote for the article" on Digg, and give the loser some artificial sense of popularity.

Oh, and John, I agree. I didn't read a word you just said because I wouldn't be spamming if I did. But I agree.

i only got time to do from 1 to 4. the rest is optional to me

okay ...

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

Oh, and John, I agree. I didn't read a word you just said because I wouldn't be spamming if I did. But I agree.

Nice. Sadly true. And damned ironic. I learned where the phrase "carte blanche" comes from; in France, the head of a surrendering army was forced to sign a blank page, and the winner would draw up the terms of surrender later. It used to be a bad thing to agree with something if you have no idea what that something is.