first 250 words (in SEO) are..

[tim460]

which/what/where? Particularly in a blog (or any kind of site). Do the 250 start at the first post?

Or do they start at whatever is at the top of page and then go down? For example, let's say a header has a image with alt tag, then underneath is a nav bar (with and about page link, terms of use link...) then the posts. Does this mean 250 starts at the header alt tag, titles for the pages in the nav bar (then what is written on those page?), then finally the posts? With all that's written a blog's "pages" listed in the nav bar, 250 would end in the terms of use, so I presume none of that content is used?

I know we touched on aspects of this before in related posts (or on some board), but not exactly this question.

[Lee]

They start at the top of the HTML coding.

Regards,

Lee

[Lee]

Here's a nice tool to actually see what a search engine spider see's as they crawl your pages too....

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engin...-simulator.php

Regards,

Lee

[tim460]

Thanks! Fantastic tool, so useful. Perfect answer to my questions.

[HunkyLuke]

nice tool, thanks for that link!

[Bec]

Wow, that saved me some grief! I plugged in my latest site www.cheapadulthostingxxx.com and it came back with the links I've got setup and I could see real quick that I had some errors with them and I was able to quickly go back into my site and fix them proper in about 5 minutes! And it (the simulator) reminded me that I hadn't setup my metas yet! That rocks!

[basschick]

thanks, lee - it showed me that i forgot meta on the new tour i'm testing

[MediaGuy]

which/what/where? Particularly in a blog (or any kind of site). Do the 250 start at the first post?

Or do they start at whatever is at the top of page and then go down? For example, let's say a header has a image with alt tag, then underneath is a nav bar (with and about page link, terms of use link...) then the posts. Does this mean 250 starts at the header alt tag, titles for the pages in the nav bar (then what is written on those page?), then finally the posts? With all that's written a blog's "pages" listed in the nav bar, 250 would end in the terms of use, so I presume none of that content is used?

I know we touched on aspects of this before in related posts (or on some board), but not exactly this question.

SE user-agents will read all the body text in a page, then in links, then in image alts, and see how they all relate to three things:

• title
• keywords tag
• description

What text displays in a listing depends on the search terms used; they'll generally list the page title plus grab 150 to 250 characters from the relevant area/s for the search result (25-40 words or so).

If you're just using the sitename or title as a search term, then the listing will use either the description meta or, if it's appropriately tagged (say you put it in a proper h2 tag or even in a div id="description"), the description you have for the site visitors in the body of the page.

I'm still trying to figure out how or why Google (for example) decides to use the description meta instead of the description body-text for one site or blog, and the other way around for another - though it might have something to do with keyword relevance and/or density.

[tim460]

Thanks, MediaGuy!

[Oogleman]

Another useful tool for those with many pages/large sites on one domain.

http://www.dead-links.com/