Tips from Chicago Search Engine Strategies

The first meeting I went to for the day was Organic Listing Forum at Search Engine Strategies. Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay, LLC and Mike Grehan, CEO of Smart Interactive (and Author of Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide) were the speakers. Detlev Johnson, President of Technology, SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, moderated the Forum.

Each speaker gave a presentation for a few minutes and then they went to questions. Here are some of the questions and answers that were given (they are not word for word).

Question: Is it okay to use cloaking technology?
Answer: Yes as long as it is using the same information from your website. But don’t use it to spam keywords.

Question: Which is better to use when naming files or folders, hyphen or underscore?
Answer: All panel members recommended using hyphens not underscores. They said search engines have confirmed that they recognize hyphens as spaces. Underscores are not seen as spaces, the words will be joined to form one word.

Question: How many hyphens are to many hyphens?
Answer: You shouldn’t use more than 2-3. Preferable you shouldn’t use more than 2. Bruce Clay mentioned that he rarely uses them except for words that need to be separated, his example was mensexchange, which he used a hyphen like this mens-exchange. (so nobody would see it as men sex change).

Question: What type of redirect should I use?
Answer: 301 is the only good redirect.

Question: Can older domains be in the sandbox? (Sandbox: newer sites may face the sandbox, which means they are delayed on showing up in the search engine results).
Answer: Domains well-established or older domains do not usually have sandbox.
Tanya’s Tips:
1.For those who have many older domains that you started, but never finished, these would be good domains to use now. If you had some content and it was indexed, it is better than buying a new domain.
2.Preplan your sites. Put as much basic information on a new domain as soon as you can. Let it get indexed, build a few links and then move on to something else. Go back to it in 3-6 months and finish it off and link build some more.

Question: What is the longest filename you should use?
Answer: 12 characters for filenames.

Question: Should I use keyword Meta tags?
Answer: Yahoo still uses keyword Meta tags.

Notes: The following sites were mentioned during this session:

1.IP-Delivery.com, which was mentioned during discussions about domain hijackings.
2.cmsmatrix.com, which was mentioned during discussions on CMS systems, were able to be spidered. This site will let you know if your CMS can be spidered.