[wdvltalk-social] OT ;-) coldfusion

[Christina Lannen]

SEO is completely independent of the programming language.  It all renders
out as HTML.  Now if the HTML generated is so convoluted (nested table after
nested table with font tags all over the place, closing tags missing, and
it's just awful code) the spiders may just chuck crawling the site.

Ideally the site should pretty much CSS (look Ma no tables), JavaScript in
an external file).  Title and alt tags used appropriately (don't do keyword
spamming), and truly you should be written for the audience and not the
spiders.  Each page should have its own title and META descriptions.

And sometimes a site is so poorly coded, laid out (navigation just plain
sucks) that it has to be redone.  And before any design or code is written
the SEO needs to be planned.

I'm tired so the following may just be a tad bitchy, but what is it with
clients that at the very beginning don't want to pay one red cent, or just
don't care about it...then come back and ask why no one is finding them?
And still don't want to pay anything.  Like duh!

Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: wdvltalk-social-bounces at wdvltalk-social.org.uk
[mailto:wdvltalk-social-bounces at wdvltalk-social.org.uk] On Behalf Of joseph
harris
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 7:14 PM
To: Web development and beer
Subject: Re: [wdvltalk-social] OT ;-) coldfusion

From: "David Blakey"
> The interesting feature of this discussion is the apparent link
> between SEO and the script language.  The SE specialist may 
> code only
> in PHP, but surely the code has little to do with SEO.  We have 
> been
> told for some time that the content is one of the main drivers 
> for
> high SE visibility.
>
> If the SE specialist wants to recode to give users more control 
> over
> content, then I can understand the need for this.  (There may 
> be a
> lot of hard coding of content that is not SE-friendly.)  But 
> does the
> SE specialist need to understand the scripting language?
>
> Given that the current scripting language is ColdFusion, which 
> lends
> itself well to being a front-end vehicle for back-end content, 
> I
> would be surprised if the current scripts contain much hard 
> coding,
> apart from meta tags.  And most sites must surely generate meta 
> tag
> content from the back-end, too.  (I question whether meta tags 
> have
> much relevance to the major SEs these days, but I don't pretend 
> to be
> an SE specialist.)
>
> This situation sounds as if the client has not kept control 
> over the
> work that the SE specialist is supposed to be doing, and is now
> having the project scope creep out to involve recoding.  That 
> isn't
> what SE people are engaged to do.  It's as if the makers of a 
> TV
> commercial wanted to dictate the make and model of cameras used 
> in the shoot.
>
> Regards,
> David
>


David,

You are spot on with the 'not kept control' bit.   But the blame 
otherwise is a bit different. [As I understand it, and it has 
been a bit like pulling teeth  ;-)]

The client is essentially a salesman who has come up with a quite 
clever and original book idea - with which I gave a little 
editorial help - and which is selling quite well.   [He sent me a 
copy as a thanks and it is good]   Some years - two, three? - ago 
he paid 'thousands of $' to have a website built but he desired 
and desires no understanding of the activity.

He has recently engaged a fellow list member - who I have respect 
for and therefore think the story may be more complex - to apply 
SEO, since he feels the site is not producing results.  She has 
no understanding of coldfusion but is happy with php.   In the 
course of a series of posts I have told him to sit down and 
rethink what he is trying to achieve with the site - and to learn 
a bit about coding !;-).

He has also pointed out he gets amazingly high sales at bookfairs 
with demonstrating the way to use the book;  the obvious is to 
make a site which duplicates that!

For some reason he has fallen out with the host, though not I 
think a rancourous matter, simply an inability to see what needs 
to be done.   So, having engaged the SEO expert, his first 
thought was just to spend a little on getting the site rewritten 
in php and hosted on such a place.   While there has been a 
raging debate - and I had not appreciated what coldfusion was at 
first - it seems that the site could, as you and Cheryl indicate, 
be easily rewritten in php.

Like you I wonder at the SEO person having a problem with what 
the code is, but I can't imagine I have the whole story.   Not 
that that has ever stopped me having an opinion ;-).

Joseph 

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