I remember reading a SEO book that recommended adding links at the top of each page to provide a directory structure.

eg. Home - first page - sub page (but using page titles)

Is this actually worth doing? Does it add anything to SEO, I have a sitemap (but it is a VSD website so hiearchy is not how I would have liked it)

thanks

Mark did you have a look at this, its not technical, but works for me

http://www.coffeecup.com/forums/designe … e-ranking/

Mark,

Breadcrumbs are not necessary but they do help people get around instead of using the back button. They also provide more internal links to pages, but to many internal links can be a bad thing.

But I would suggest you make sure your document outline is laid out correctly, which is something that is very important. Because it shows Google and other search engines that you are organized and well put together.

Here is Coffee Cups Outline for their homepage.

<h1> CoffeeCup Software
----<h2>What our customers are saying about us…
--------<h3>Web Design Since 1996
--------<h3>We Love Our Users
--------<h3>Award-Winning Support
--------<h3>The short story
------------<h4>[Missing Heading]
----------------<h5>Let’s Be Friends
--------<h3>Important stuff
--------<h3>The freshest brew
--------<h3>Our Windows Apps
--------<h3>Our OS X Apps

So as in VSD you can't using H1 tags.... do the breadcrumbs improve my accessibility rating? Are they worth the effort on a small site with under 30 pages.

We are all going to give you a different answer because as amateurs we all have different opinions.

There is NO MAGIC trick, and google wont give away their secret

best to try the suck it and see approach good descriptions and keywords that match your page content first.

then trust google to make use of your sitemap .

Personally i dont worry about hi h2 etc VSD does it its own way and it tends to work.

I'm going to agree with Viv. Don't worry about it for now. Make good content and Google will lick it up.

To answer your question Mark, yes. Breadcrumbs do help with your accessibility because they are at the top of the page, and someone that uses a screen reader will find them first. Instead of having to tab through 30 links before they get to the correct one.

As for SEO. You should not be worried about it, but you should get started with it early on. If you do not, you will be making a lot of changes down the road. I do not know how VSD handles it, because I am a coder. But never just forget about it.

But the main thing is content, the better your content, and the more you update your content the better off you are.

So I am told, the single most important SEO element available for your manipulation after Google's Panda and Penguin rounds is to pick your_site_domain_name = the_most_appropriate_keyword_in_your_niche. All else is good, basic blocking & tackling, such as relevant, useful, keyword-rich (But not excessively keyword-rich) content on the site and links inward from sites that Google considers established and authoritative. That's a lot of hard work!

Halfnium,

It is a LOT of work and you have to keep up with it... Because it changes every few years or so, and you have to start all over again, but it does help a lot as well... The better you have it, the better your rank.

you could almost imagine Google being like an insurance broker

it looks at all the insurance companies, what they offer and the prices they charge.

then they try to show you the best , most suitable insurance for your purpose but still at a keen price.

however if any one of the companies it looks at does not show them everything they have to offer, they might get overlooked and pushed to the bottom of the list of quotes, even if they actually may have been the best one of all.

Setting up our websites has one sole purpose, to get noticed, so if what you set up at first does not get you to the top of google searches changing it might, but it takes time, not just weeks but months.

As a shopkeeper, i used to take all my stock out of the window once a month, clean it and put in a changed and re vitalised display so customers had something new to look at

However from a customers point of view, it always needs to look complete, full of stock and finished, best not to publish at all if what they first see is off putting.

PS :: I did not think when i omitted to say there are plenty of professional opinions available in the forums as well as the amateur ones like me