I still advocate clean code - but that's not the same as valid code. Fill the page with lots of JS, tables, maps, styles, tables and associated baggage and all your're doing is making the robot work harder to extract the content. But if you have a nice clean page with all the JS and CSS tucked away in external files the spider will love you long time and forgive the odd missing tag. I agree, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. But what are you trying to achieve? Hopefully more conversions. Being at #1 will help but the aim should be to improve your SE visibility and generate more click throughs. So you tell your clients that you want to increase the number of visitors to the site which will improve the ROI, CTR and other TLA. This process will result in an improved ranking but remember the aim is to up the conversions not be #1. Focussing on being #1 means forgetting the aim of the site. Read Ammon Jones Quick Start guide or the SEOmoz guide and you will see what I mean.
I would say that SEO emphasis on edu and gov over ordinary links is a myth. Have read somewhere that Google dismissed that. Trying to search for that article.
I don't think js or css bad. After all you can put them in separate files and they are not picked up by the search engines.
I think title and description meta tags are important but not as important as they are preached in many places.
Clean code, HTML validated code and well structured SEO code design is best. Both the CSS and javaScript should always be in external files.
Nah, Google has admitted they were favoured before but they haven't been for about 3 years I think. Everyone started catching on and using them for blackhat.
Excessive use of java script, flash and css will create problem rest everything is ok if search engine can crawl the text easily.
This is helping verb. Optimization tips is great ideat te get #1 position and real result that you need. Seo has two part 1) On-Page and 2) Off-Page.
Most of the stuff posted everyday in the SEO forum on here could easily go into this list Some of my favourites are, Increaseing the number of pages on your site increases your PR Increasing the number of visitors to your site increases your PR Higher PR = Higher rankings Good content automatically equals rankings Any TLD extensions are better than others .gov,.edu etc Google can't crawl javascript There is a magic keyword % that you should have in your page text There's such a thing as getting links too fast There's any point in submitting to 1000 directories or 1000 article sites
Heres mine: Same IP range links hurt. Some I debate that are real: There's such a thing as getting links too fast - that one is true in my opinion. Too many links too fast can be disaster. Google can CRAWL javascript, but not understand it. In my opinion.
Too many poor quality links can be a disaster. Good quality links are great. A Digg story of mine picked up 18,000 links in 24 hours. Probably one of the more successful sites I've ever launched.