Hi there, This is my first post. I have been using VSD for about 18 months. I am not a web designer but an irrigation consultant. Nevertheless I have tried to put together a web site at www.peakmonitoring.com.au.

I have been wondering why I never get rated in Google searches and so recently started down the long path to investigate SEO. A suggestion was made that my html code is very untidy. I have probably used too many tables and images. ( and also lacking in meta tag descriptions and keyword information )

I have decided to look at CC HTML editor which I have had for quite a while. It seems that this may generate more neater html code. I fear leaning html coding so have been wondering if I can use the table functions and paste text into the tables.

Does anyone know if this would upset the search engines. Can the search engines index text located inside tables. It seems that using tables would be a neat way to layout my pages.

Question 2. I have Open Office and it looks like I can copy text from this format into the HTML tables. I can also save the OO files as html and paste this into the body text of the html code.

Could someone comment on what would be the best approach for neatest code in terms of search engine optimization.

Question 3 - sorry about this but one other question if this is OK. I tried creating a CSS type menu using the DHTML tool but this ended in tears. I think others have run into problems. I don't think I can use CC Menu Builder in html editor so perhaps I may have to purchase a third party CSS menu package. Your suggestions would be most welcome.

Regards

Col

Hi,

The code that CCHTML Editor creates is neat and clean.

It is full possible to use a table for the layout of your site, and the search engines are able to access text inside tables. As far as I know, if you use nested tables (tables inside tables inside tables...), the search engines are not particularly fond of that.

I don't know what kind of code Open Office makes, so someone else will have to answer that question.

Using HTML in combination with CSS is a very good idea. That will keep the html code clean of some tags that are now regarded as outdated.

The CCMenu builder can be used in the HTML Editor, but since it is flash based, I would advise you to have some text links to the various pages as well, since the Search engines don't read flash contents.

I will alert someone who is an expert on SEO to your question, he can probably give you better advice than I can.

Search engines have no problem indexing pages with tables, however, it is a good idea as Inger suggests not to go down the road of using nested tables, this does produce unescessary coding.

An easy way to see if all your pages have been indexed is to type site: inot the search box followed by www.yoursite.com - you will then see the indexed list of pages.

I have found one big mistake you have made, that is by having spaces in some of your image, pdf and html file names, this can cause problems, the best way to do it is to use the hyphon (minus sign) between words, it will help with SE results.

Using the H1 - H2 - H3 tags will help, use them as section headings, search engines will use them as keywords.

Try to get good quality incoming links to your site.
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Here is a bit of quick help:-

The title of your main page is Peak Environmental Monitoring

Search engines will use those words as keywords for that page, now read all the text on the page and count how many times you have used those words, you have not used them enough, the same goes for words you have used in your meta content tag.

Don't use keyword phrases in the keyword tag, use single words separated by a comma.
Never use keywords in the meta tag that do not appear on the page, this is word spamming.
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There is so much you can do but it can't be done on here, spend a little time with the hints above and see what happens, it takes time.

Create a sitemap and link to it from your front page, this makes it easier for SE's to index your site.

I use the HTML Editor and I have DHTML menus on my pages. As Inger suggested, I have links on my pages just in case someone has javascript disabled.

This article from Google might be relevant:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … exing.html

Hi everyone

Your response has been great, so thank you very much.

Inger and Jim thanks for your comments on text in tables. I think I can use CC HTML editor with a bit more confidence now and will look at the structure of the file naming. I'll avoid nested tables and study up on the H1 concepts.

I'd prefer to get stuck into this straight away but have to go out for field work. I'll work on a completely new site starting from scratch. This will take a few weeks but I will report back. May have a few new questions along the way.

Thanks again

Col

There are free online CSS menu generators you can do a search for. I know of one piece of software that almost creates accessible and SEO friendly CSS menus, but not quite, so I just can't recommend it.

At the higher end, www.projectseven.com produces excellent menu software, but I'm not sure if any of it works independently of Dreamweaver.