I want to give a prize today to one of the most ugly yet useful sites I’ve seen for a while.
I hope I don’t cause any offense by saying that – but the prize goes to Google Ranking Factors.
Don’t let the ugliness factor put you off because if you scratch a little under it’s spewy color scheme and boxy look you’ll find some very useful information on factors to keep in mind as you think about optimizing your blog for Google.
The factors are divided into four sections.
1. Positive On Page SEO Factors – things that you should consider including on your blog/web page
2. Negative On Page SEO Factors – things you should avoid including on your blog/web page
3. Positive Off Page SEO Factors – factors that you should seek from other web pages that point to your blog
4. Negative Off Page SEO Factors – factors you should try to avoid in those that link to you
Keep in mind that SEO advice is often speculation and that one can become obsessed by it. Rather than treating this as absolute truth you might want to try to keep some of these factors in the back of your mind as you blog.
ew my eyes are hurting! but that is a really good read, loads of stuff I would have never considered
interesting, I’m going to take some of it on board and see what I can do with it. Can’t see the site design winning any awards though. blimey.
Yikes, I went to disable their stylesheet, and nothing changed – it’s all font tags and tables! I’ll try to read it anyway.
The first several things seemed like things I’d heard before and then as I got to “NAVIGATION – INTERNAL LINKS” I was struck once again by the fact that what’s best for search engine ranking is also what’s best for your human readers. The tips there are all things that improve accessibility or make navigation easier, especially “Two clicks to any page – no page deeper than 4 clicks”. And I love the site design, it’s just perfect!
Wow, it’s like the 1990s with Netscape all over again! Nostalgia man!
It’s ugly but it gets our attention. I stayed there for a while reading all the stuff (and not understand most of it because I don’t understand Google at all).
It could be even uglier. I have seen blogs with stars and little bears that are just horrible.
I don’t think the owner will be offended. I would love if someone go to my blog and say it is horrible. The traffic would made me feel better :D
As for the content it is really useful. I have to pay more attention to some things the site says, like keywords.
I was pagerank 4 last week and now I am 3. I think that I understand why my site went down that way.
Thanks for the info.
Claudia