MODERATED: This is continued from this thread by CB

To some extent this is correct.

However somewhat missleading.

I have my website, that i built myslef, and it is found in Google.

Yes I have to work on it to keep it high up in Google.

These are the results for Google.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=british+television+services+spain&meta;=

Results from Yahoo same search terms

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=british+television+services+spain&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8&meta=vc=

It is not that difficult to do.

Therefore you don’t need a top of the range, and I would guess costs more money design company to do it for you.

Good to see that someone stands up and puts the case for good compliant design. The problem is that business needs educating and this attitude of ignorance will always be a problem as long as any charlatan with a copy of Front Page thinks he can be a web designer.

If you want to pay for Web Design that’s fine - there are some great web designers with excellent SEO knowledge.  But not everyone can afford to pay for web design and SEO advice.

Here are some free links to help you make an SEO friendly website:

Google Analytics - Register and analyse Your website with Google: Google Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster guidelines: Google Webmaster Guidelines

Find Good Keywords for your pages: Good Keywords

Keyword Analysis Tool: Keyword Analysis Tool

Search Who: See your page as a search engine spider may see it: Search Who

Yahoo Quality Guidelines: Yahoo Quality Guidelines

Meta Tags (debatable if still useful, but I find them invaluable):

Metty - Free Meta Tag Maker: Here

and Here: Here

How to use meta tags: Clickfire

And of course don’t forget to:

Add Your URL to Google and Yahoo ... etc…

Hi, i did find your article very interesting, however if you are going to set yourself up as an authority on SEO and criticise other companies and individuals for their standard, knowledge and level of web design then you need to give a holistic and accurate article.
I run a computing company in the UK and have moved to spain.  To say or even imply that you can be top of google by complying to W3C standards is ridiculous to say the least.
If you take a website into the following categories:

1.Coding and metatags
2.On Page Content
3.Link Popularity and quality.

What I will say is that each search engine has a different algorithm and no one in the world can guarantee to make you top of google, no matter how much money you pay them.  It is a mixture of art and science and skilled SEO(search engine optimisation) professionals are making educated assessments and guessing as to how to make yours and their website come higher in the search engines.  That does not mean they will not make you top of google, but just that they cannot guarantee it.
That said, my personal educated guess is that the three areas of importance that I have mentioned are in the following percentage ratio of importance.

1. Coding and metatags (which is essential for W3C validation) 10%
2. On Page Content (What you write on your website) 30%
3. Link Popularity and quality (How many links are coming in to your website, and the quality of those links) 60%

The article by CB Web Solutions, implied that by having a very well coded website, which would validate on the W3C website would lead to a website which would rank well in search engines. 
This is simply false and I can prove it:
Go to http://validator.w3.org/ and type in any big site you can think of:
Try http://www.google.com (Possible the most popular website on the internet)
Try http://www.ebay.co.uk (A hugely popular website)
Try http://www.youtube.com (One of the biggest and most popular websites in the world)
Try http://www.yahoo.com, www.microsoft.com,www.facebook.com, http://www.bebo.com, www.apple.com
None of the above validate and in fact the only website I could find that did validate was http://www.sony.com

Try the same to validate websites CSS at
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
And you will find similar results.
As for accessibility, this is where I do agree with CB as I think it is important to respect your customers and their needs, and not everyone has 20/20 vision and great hearing etc.  So anything you can do to make your site more accessible to people, whatever that means, be it coding, styling, structure, navigation or help files then you should do it.  Whether the absence of it will affect your search engine results is another thing entirely.
Another thing to bear in mind is even on page content is not that important, when the film IROBOT came out its website shot to the top of google, and if you looked at the website in text mode, the website was completely empty.  It contained not one single word, it was simply a large image.
What shot it to the top of google, and other search engines, was that it comes linked to a massive film studios website.
If you think of inbound links as a vote from another website to say your website is interesting, valid, useful popular etc then you would think the more the better. Well this is not necessarily the case.  I will take google as the example here as to be honest, they have over 70% market share and if your not high in google, you dont exist.
Google ranks a website out of 10 for importance, and a higher number means more importance.  It is exponential so to get from a 0 to a 1 you can expect to need (and this is a very rough estimate just for illustrative purposes) 1 - 50 links.  To get from a 1 to a 2 you would need more like 100 - 1000 links.  As i say these numbers are not whats important, its the factor of 10 increase which you should note. So it would be better to have 1 inbound link from a page rank 7 website, than say 100 or even 1000 page rank 0 or 1.
What I am trying to get across in this reply is, yes standards are useful to comply to, but if you don’t comply and even if your website has little or no content it could still get top of google.
The problem you will find is if your business rivals have used good SEO, got their code clean, and validated.  Created useful, informative content, and are creating fresh content and adding to the site regularly and have employed a method of getting people to link to the site, be that manually or employing someone to do it for you.
It is in this scenario when your business will suffer as your rivals are informed and taking steps to be Search engine friendly, and also building inbound links.  Both of which are likely to lead to a website which is found highly in google etc for desired keywords.
Any website can get high in google for their own web site address as who is going to be competing for people searching for someone elses business name?  What you need to be competing for are things which are not only searched for by your potential customers but that will convert to sales.
Anyway, I just felt the articles were flawed and innaccurate.  I am by no means an SEO guru, but have done courses in SEO and think the information I have given to be a more holistic view of SEO. 
Kevsta seemed to be of my way of thinking, I probably just have more spare time on my hands to give a fuller reply lol.
Anyway happy SEO’ing.

Excellent points llcooljsl1983 and well worth reading!

I have quite a few adult sites, (Obviously I can’t link to them from here 😊 ), and although the type of customers I wish to get to my sites are not the usual sort (or perhaps they are ...?), I do find all that you have mentioned extremely useful to anyone wanting to promote their website.

Of course, the keywords I use are rather different than the average, but not necessarily ‘adult’.
I have a couple of sites on the first page of Google (and several on the second and third pages for their particular topic) based on keywords which offer something sightly different than the usual ‘adult’ keywords, but which research has shown me will get lots of hits (and no, they are not obscene at all).

In my industry, it is very, very difficult to get to the front pages, we have so many rivals!  So SEO is vital to us and that includes getting good inbound links.
Writing in to forums on the subject/item you are selling is a good way of getting search engine interest in your site as well as incoming links.  Search engine spiders love forums - so many words to crawl. And if you show enthusiasm about the products you are selling so much the better - it shows you care and have knowledge about your products.

This is the only forum I go to where I do not put some of my sites in my signature, as I usually reply to adult webmaster forums and I have found that a well-considered reply is worth a lot in terms of SEO (but don’t be someone who just posts to display their signature - that will make you enemies fast!).

Anyway, that’s my further two cents.

Good reply llcooljsl1983.  I hope people will read it before they pay out money without checking whether they could really do all these things themselves.

Hi zania, thanks for your comments.  Search engine optimisation is unfortunately often an afterthought and massively underestimated.  If you want to be top of google, and your market is competitive then expect to spend 6-18 months promoting your site, and constantly updating, improving and contacting other website owners to link to your site. 
Seo is a full time job for any company wanting to make serious income from their website.  If your website is merely informational it is probably not cost effective to spend a lot of money on SEO.
If you invest in a company to do it for you expect to pay ?3000 - ?6000 per year from a UK company, depending on your market, keywords and your competitors.
I personally would read around the subject as much as possible, do your own market research and keyword research.  Make sure your website is in great shape, both in terms of coding and appearance and then I would weigh up whether my time or my money was worth more to me.
If you view it as a full time job, then suddenly ?3000 - ?6000 a year does not seem that expensive, most people would not work full time for a year in a technical role for that money, so I would use a professional.  It is piece of mind and will free your time up to focus on other areas of your business.
If anyone has a website and have read my comments and feel they could benefit from either a site makeover and/or search engine optimisation service or advice then pm me.
Thanks

llcooljsl1983 - 28 February 2008 09:50 PM

I personally would read around the subject as much as possible, do your own market research and keyword research.  Make sure your website is in great shape, both in terms of coding and appearance and then I would weigh up whether my time or my money was worth more to me.

Exactly what I did and, at the beginning, time was all I had - no money!

llcooljsl1983 - 28 February 2008 09:50 PM

If you view it as a full time job, then suddenly ?3000 - ?6000 a year does not seem that expensive, most people would not work full time for a year in a technical role for that money, so I would use a professional.  It is piece of mind and will free your time up to focus on other areas of your business.
If anyone has a website and have read my comments and feel they could benefit from either a site makeover and/or search engine optimisation service or advice then pm me.
Thanks

I agree on this point.  If you do have the spare cash then use a professional after you have done as much as you can yourself.
Running a website (about 100 websites [including blogs] in my case!) takes time and a great deal of effort.  Promoting your products/services/whatever…. takes up all your time.  It’s a 24/7 operation and then some!

Have you advertised on your own thread? (I can’t see the forum while I am posting this, so I have no idea).

kevsta - 28 February 2008 10:16 PM

as long as you can edit HTML on your site and upload via FTP anyone can in theory do their own SEO.

the real key though is to have been doing it long enough to know what works, and what doesnt because most forums are unfortunately full of know-alls who really dont know very much when it comes down to it, just posting the same old stuff to get more signature links.

Very true, especially in my ‘industry’!

kevsta - 28 February 2008 10:16 PM

when I think back to when I first started doing this I probably did more harm than good to the sites to be honest, but as they were mine I learnt as I went along and it didnt matter much. If this is a business site, you need it working now, because you may have gone bust if you have to try to learn SEO before you can make a living.  so if youre not absolutely confident what youre doing its probably best to seek advice.

True.  My first sites were rubbish!  Strangely enough though, because they were ‘wordy’ .... and had loads of incoming links (from directories), two of them got google page rank 4! To this day, though, I have yet to sell a thing from either of them!  BUT what they do do is link to all my other sites which do sell, so there’s always a bonus if you look for it!

And that’s another thing - page rank is good if you can get high page rank sites to link to you and it is good if you have a high-ish page rank because you can then trade links with high ranked sites who request certain levels of page rank first.  BUT, at the end of the day it won’t (by default) get you thousands of clicks on your site and it won’t get you sales (or sign ups in my case).  Sometimes it comes down to the idiosyncracies of the surfing public, or sheer luck!

kevsta - 28 February 2008 10:16 PM

in THIS THREAD introducing ourselves we actually offered free SEO advice to anyone who is interested via the forum, and who is capable enough with web technology that we dont have to teach that too, because its definitely a pre-requisite otherwise you could really mess things up bad.

Good thread - I’ve just had a look.  Thanks for pointing it out.

kevsta - 28 February 2008 10:16 PM

however for adult sites you are really up against the big boys & their black hats crew so a few (strictly white hat) tips on here isnt going to help much i’m afraid 😉

Yep, I’m up against the big boys alright!  Doing okay though!  (with lots and lots of effort!)

kevsta - 29 February 2008 02:31 PM

hi Zania 😊

happy to have a quick look over the sites if you like, and see if theres anything I may be able to suggest you hadnt thought about etc?  ..although if youre doing ok in that industry you probably dont need too much help, but sometimes a fresh pair of eyes and different ideas can help.  pm me the addresses if you’d like to me to have a quick look

kev

You have mail 😊

I didn’t what to quote llcooljsl1983 as his article was too long but I felt the need to respond and atleast in part defend the article because llcooljsl1983 was clealry missing the point and on occasions was talking about things that were either false, showed lack of knowledge and clealry little idea about what having a commercial website is about,especially if your business depends on it.

As someone who has been designing for years in the UK and in Spain, I agree with the general premise that the CB web Solutions member is making in that decent quality design standards do help sites most in ranking albeit the evidence can sometimes be anecdotal. I have personal experience that would more than back that up as my company has redesigned many a site merely put together but a web designer without any thought to much other than asthetics.

For me, I think you have missed the point of the original article which was to introduce Web Standards and not to discuss in depth (which would not be possible on this forum) the dark science that is SEO.  To that end, I think that content not unreasonably was set aside although judging by the broad premise of the article I would imagine that CB Web Solutions probably does recognise the importance of content but as I said you can only put so much into the article. Furthermore, with decent design in the first place it is open to debate whether it would exist at all atleast to the extent it does - Why did you ignore this as it is a statement of the obvious and goes to the heart of what your reply was apparently heading for.

You had me laughing with your ‘proof’ as I have heard this before from an associate of mine as he used this examples to ‘prove’ the lack of worth of Web Standards in Ranking. So let me ask you the question in an attempt to perhaps move you towards the real issue in hand, that is, do you understand the difference between a multi-billion dollar organisation with a massive marketing budget and a small organisation relying (often too much I might add) on the internet for trade? If so, why use examples such as ebay and Youtube as references especially given there history and ownership. Here atleast inward links most notably with Youtube do of course have an affect. However, most things I have been reading for sometime show that links are of reduced importance due to abuse of the system so check of the blogs etc and then I suspect you’ll agree (but 70% - do me a favour!). If you don’t understand it I suggest you read up as I think it would change your opinion - I did.

Your references are exceptions rather than the rule as you probably well know. And Google? Well don’t you think that they would retain a top page ranking using their own system? I thought that was one of the strangest things you posted.

I liked the percentage breakdown regards ranking which you then kind of forgot as you mentioned the algorythm of Google! If there was ever an over-simplistic answer to something that really does misled, I am sorry but I think you have to take the prize. An extremely limited number of people know the algorythm of Google and it certainly doesn’t breakdown into a nice neat percentage as you state. Indeed, it also changes thereby altering ranking of sites from time to time. I believe you should have spent time on this but you ignored it.

Having read the article I would say that it tries to do two things 1. Self-market and let’s face it why not it is free after all!
2. It introduces the concept of decent design from the outset and NOT SEO which is overwhelmingly repair work which probably should be expanded upon with other articles if the author is reading this - mr CB web solutions!!

You in your reply miss this by discussing SEO when actually it is about decent design in the first place and as I understand it you have some experience of web design you like me will know that in reality the overwhelming conversations on this topic are with clients who already have a site and therefore it is a post-design issue. I believe the intent of the post was to introduce decent design standards in the first place which is commendable don’t you think?

So inconclusion I would say that it was a post regarding marketing of their company and to introduce the idea of better design standards rather than SEO itself.  So I’m with Harley Andy on this one and recommend you do also as Web Standards aren’t just for fun they will continue to have an effect on what is or isn’t decent design. 

Poor response llcooljsl1983 but CB Web did say there were three types of web designers or something didn’t he?

Hi, I appreciate your reply but would like
to clarify a few things about your post.
Firstly and I quote myself, ‘That said,
my personal educated guess is that the
three areas of importance that I have
mentioned are in the following percentage
ratio of importance.
I have emboldened and underlined the important part
of this quote as I clearly am not stating that I know the
exact percentage ratio or specific details of google’s
algorithm.
To qualify my comments further I have completed several
courses in SEO, web design, computer hardware,
operating systems, I have A+, Network +, Security +, MCP
MCSA and MCSE qualifications along with a BSc
degree in computing
and have run a computing and web design company for
years. Before that I worked in many major corporations
in various roles from desktop, server support to
both company
intranet and internet web site management.
You are arguing a point that I clearly did not make, I did
not say that I think standards are to be ignored or are
not important.I was disagreeing with some of the ridiculous
claims and insults made in CB’s articles.
Comments such as ‘Most of our competitors fall into the first
two categories and so your site will not be up to the standard
you might think it is.  In other words it will be all appearance
and no quality. This is one of the main reasons why your site
doesn?t get visitors like you hoped.’

CB quoted company’s like AOL, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo so
it is actually quite relevant that I used their websites to demonstrate
that web standards play an insignificant part in your search engine
placement.

I would not have even replied with the post, had CB not placed
itself as an authority and belittled and abused company’s who did
not agree with them or subscribe to their opinions on web design
and SEO.  I picked apart the arguments that CB made and showed
that if the worlds biggest company’s are not adhering to web
standards and still performing well in the search engine then
it is a fair comment to say web standard compliance is optional
at best.  After all they have the bugdets, the technical expertise
and the motivation to use every legitimate advantage they can
get over their competitors. 
Of course I could see the post was a blatant plug, but where it went wrong
for me was not the false or inadequate information but the insulting of other
companies. 
I did respond to the post as if it were about SEO because CB discussed web standards
compliance in relation to being found in search engines, this is not a design issue then, it is
SEO.

I do agree with you on the ever changing nature of SEO, and no one can guarantee results in SEO unless they are in posession of current algorithms from each search engine.  Even then the search engines are updated regularly on how they search and index websites.

The cynic in me couldn’t help but read your reply and suspect that as you have registered today, and made one post and are agreeing with someone who almost everyone else including me has shown to be making false claims regarding SEO or at best incomplete information that you either are CB web solutions or affiliated with them.  People join this forum and make posts about moving to spain, they say hello and discuss their issues with moving.  Who joins and goes straight to a post about web standards compliance?
If you are CB you are very sad, if you are not then you are very ill informed.  Either way I think people reading this will see the difference between a well reasoned comment demonstrating knowledge and experience and a self plug which takes the politicians approach of focusing on abusing other people rather than developing a quality approach of their own.

Well first and foremost llcooljsl1983, I have no connection with CB Web Solutions nor am I likely too as I have been successfully running my own venture without them or ever hearing of them. So, I will accept your petulant abuse as a mere lapse and so will accept your apology in advance. Also, for the record I was actually on the site for the first time looking for something entirely different when I came across the thread as you’ve guested it I am in the Web Design business in Spain and saw the thread.  However, unless you are the KGB or similar I thought it was a forum for expats to access for information and debate although no doubt you’d dispute that as well.

Far from being impressed by the qualifications you claim ( I am someone who actually can better that little lot as just occasionally my Dad is actually bigger than yours) I find it hard to understand why you failed either to read and understand the original post and then mine. Instead, you ranted on about SEO when once again as Kevsta points out, all things being equal (the very point of CB Web Solutions) a web standards site will probably outrank a poorly built site (i.e. of lower Quality) but you are clearly unable to understand it. It appears that you are in the minority of one against a group all of whom appear to be or are designers.  You also sound remarkably like a flat earther.

Web Standards is about Quality of site build, it is an unquestionable fact. Your message is ‘it doesn’t matter’ even when the Names in electronic Communications are speading millions on just these standards. I couldn’t care who CB Web Solutions are or you for that matter but I do care about improving 1. The quality of the internet. 2. The image of the Web Design Industry. You appear not to be so keen. That disappointments me as you hold yourself out to be a web designer but don’t share these values given the posts you have made.

Having read your post and of course laughed at the last line about letting the people decide. Yep Viva la democrac?a - just as long as they agree with you eh? Incidently I read the posts again of CB Web Solutions and the first was to introduce something which is not widely known and the second was about defending themselves from the TV bloke who was clearly having a thinly veiled attack. Personally, I would have been offended by it too as the bloke was not even involved in the industry and was more than calling into question CB Webs knowledge which was uncalled for. I will try to explain it to you one more time - for the last time - in simple words….. it was about design quality from the outset and NOT SEO. It was also about marketing their company and again I say I have no problem with people doing that and neither should you on a site such as this. If you really had an idea about Business, you recognise the value of free marketing.

The so called abuse of designers should have been written better (as clearly some egos are bruised so easily) but largely in my experience it is generally true their are three types of web designers when W3C is concerned. I understand what CB Web Solutions was saying (albeit fairly bluntly - but I didn’t know that these posts should be shakespearian literature) so I am surprised that you being an expert ‘and all’ have such a hang up about it. I like most people (in this business) would have thought that you would have been pro-improved design standards as it separated the DIY designers from the shall we say ‘more professional’ ones. I reckon Mr (or Mrs) CB touched a nerve there!

Your posts have been long, tedious, they miss the point and smack of insecurity. So go and read up as I assure you if you don’t one day this topic may very well bite you if you are in the business. It will not go away because the big boys see cost savings so don’t be a dinosaur.

Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods