SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

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lgromanowski
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SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

Post by lgromanowski »

jedd wrote:Thanks.
I haven't started styling the content itself yet. I'll try to do so tomorrow.

By the way whoever coded the theme for the blog (Raevol?) has never heard of SEO, web semantics or even accessibility. :(
Are you trying to say that we have bad SEO because of theme design for wordpress (accessibility could be a bit low, but at this moment I don't have time to verify this with WAI/WCAG validator)? Could you give any proof of this, please?
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jedd
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Re: Two suggestion for the forum before I can start using it

Post by jedd »

Code: Select all

<div class="title"> </div>
That ^ is the current code for the blog logo. In other words, it's an empty div with a background image. No search engine crawler can read the background image; hell, it's not even loaded. That should be a <h1> with the actual title inside. This is the way I implemented it on my test forum:

Code: Select all

<h1><a href="./index.php" title="Board index">Test Forum</a></h1>
However, you don't see the actual text because I'm using a CSS tweak (text-indent: -99999px) to displace it out of the screen. The logo is clickable however, and Google's crawler is happy because it knows more informations about the page and the semantic of the different elements. Oh and <h2> markups should be used for each post title. Right now, more meaningless <div>'s are used instead.

Another example, this time it's "semi-valid" HTML:

Code: Select all

<div id="nav">
  <a href="http://openmw.org/">News</a>
  <a href="http://openmw.org/media/">Media</a>
  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/openmw/downloads/list">Downloads</a>
  [etc...]
</div>
Putting <a> (which is an inline element) directly in a <div> is stupid. It needs to be in a <p> or a <ul>. Also, it's a good habit to always use the title property with links for better accessibility.

This last example is particularly funny, because it's just ridiculous: the various menus on the right of the blog are actually items (<li>) or a big list (<ul>). This makes no sense at all! All this did was make the coding task more difficult because then you need to remove the list's default style: the preceding symbol, the margins and paddings, etc.

I didn't look at the rest of the source because I was afraid to discover more horrors. :?
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lgromanowski
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Re: Two suggestion for the forum before I can start using it

Post by lgromanowski »

jedd wrote: Another example, this time it's "semi-valid" HTML:

Code: Select all

<div id="nav">
  <a href="http://openmw.org/">News</a>
  <a href="http://openmw.org/media/">Media</a>
  <a href="http://code.google.com/p/openmw/downloads/list">Downloads</a>
  [etc...]
</div>
Putting <a> (which is an inline element) directly in a <div> is stupid. It needs to be in a <p> or a <ul>. Also, it's a good habit to always use the title property with links for better accessibility.

This last example is particularly funny, because it's just ridiculous: the various menus on the right of the blog are actually items (<li>) or a big list (<ul>). This makes no sense at all! All this did was make the coding task more difficult because then you need to remove the list's default style: the preceding symbol, the margins and paddings, etc.

I didn't look at the rest of the source because I was afraid to discover more horrors. :?
Did you ever write any theme for wordpress? I'm just asking because that content is automatically generated by wordpress (many other CMS systems have similar behaviour) and if you wrote any theme for wordpress then you should know it.

I think talking like this is a bit useless. If you think you could make better wordpress theme, then please make it and users will choose.
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jedd
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Re: Two suggestion for the forum before I can start using it

Post by jedd »

I apologize if my last post didn't sound constructive to you. I was pretty drunk but I didn't mean to offend anyone.

I have worked with Wordpress in the past, just like I have worked with Drupal, Joomla, e107 and many more. All of these use a template system which you can edit.
If Wordpress was generating non-SEO content then it wouldn't be the leading blog platform and win a ton of awards, don't you think? ;)

Since I have suggested proper changes for the points above, I am not going to linger on these concerns anymore because it's an infernal spiral that never ends. (No website will ever have perfect SEO and accessibility.) As to whether I'm going to recode the blog design as well, we shall see after the forum is done but I really doubt so.
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jedd
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Re: SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

Post by jedd »

@Raevol: you're not taking much risk searching for the project's name ;) leo's examples are more realistic already. The best would be to see the website statistics (Google Analytics or Piwik, provided someone has set those up) to see the list of referers and the associated search terms. You might be surprised.

I have given solutions to the biggest problems I've seen so far on my detailed post above. Now I won't be part of this discussion since I have quit web development after 4 years of boredom and frustration. I am now into games and I'm never going back. There are tons of great resources about SEO, semantics and accessibility out there, starting with w3.org
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raevol
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Re: SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

Post by raevol »

Sorry, I've always though SEO was basically snake oil, and you're just confirming that for me. But more power to you if you can get us more traffic, especially contributing developer traffic.
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Greendogo
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Re: SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

Post by Greendogo »

Also try "Morrowind reimplementation" or "Morrowind engine reimplementation"
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Necrod
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Re: SEO is for the weak! So how do we fix it?

Post by Necrod »

Greendogo wrote:Also try "Morrowind reimplementation" or "Morrowind engine reimplementation"
https://www.google.hr/search?q=morrowin ... refox-beta
https://www.google.hr/search?q=morrowin ... refox-beta
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