No I do not use that tag. Just the tagging field that is/was available within FW for identifying the images. And many times I will use HTML text to describe the images too.
Hereâs a good answer for your question:
http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/anchor-links.html
From a buyer stand point they will be looking at credibility not just knowledge and sites like that do not lend to credibility. They are made for search engines and not people. Thus the long URL's and keyword enriched content designed to get rankings.
Lots of SEO design sites like this to drive traffic to a main content sites or affiliate, adsense, PPC offers.
If this is a client site then the only thing that matters is that leads are generated and sales are made, though I have no doubt sales are also lost due to the credibility perception of the site. Did your client share with you how much is made directly from this site?
Donât mistake me here - Iâm not talking about appearance, Iâm talking about source-code, the DOM and the methods on figuring out what makes the difference between your way of SEO and mine (which is not much). Iâm here to learn, but my definition and understanding of creating websites (whether No. 1 in google or not) is slightly different.
After a decade of inspecting Freeway generated pages, I got now this typical and expected example.
No semantics at all regarding the HTML-structure. Leaving ID and span styles unnamed. And so on and so on. Elements (caused by positioning absolute") appear wild disordered.
Let a screenreader âreadâ your page loud, and youâll wonder (or itâs me wondering - who knows?).
Headings!
What your definition of heading is, is exactly the opposite of mine.
Hemingway wrote âThe old man and the seaâ - and he didnât write âThe Old Man and the Sea tells the story of a battle between an aging, experienced fisherman, Santiago, and a large marlin.â
I remember a huge discussion about all this back in FreewayTalk - cause I still have some grey hairs from them.
But whatever it is or not: Youâre obviously successful. Thatâs fine for me.
All I can do is to apologize, saying:
âI donât want to be as successful as you.â
Sometimes Iâm fine being the second best fish.
Cheers
Thomas
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This is GREAT!!!
Let the Haters Hate 
carry on @Rgator this is fab and very timely for me!
my friends site and shopt (which I have to drastically redo for her) had⌠2 sales over xmas.
dismal.
it needs LOTS of looking it!
so, any advice is great. cheers,
CARRY ON!
Lively debate is always interesting.
and funnily enough I was just looking at the topics in THIS course
⌠is that a long enough url ofr you? 
Awesome! profound even, especially the very first quote⌠you do the SEO first! THEN create the website!
FABULOUS!
and leads to the final quote! ⌠it never being found!, Shiny as it might beâŚif not SEO ranked.
So, @Rgator,
this site is pretty much a worst case scenario, but has a functioning shop, so Ive been loathe to go wild on it before xmas, it is my friends and her only source of income, apart from street markets.
Where would I /you start with that one?
I have woocommerce installed and have the graphs for sales and traffic, SO, Im quite happy to go to town on it for her, I have her permission and will do it with her (despite her? 
) and can then again, show up the Graphs for traffic and sales! 
this is Tres Cool!
Web Design wise I guess I am still very much a beginner, but keen and happy to learn new stuff.
fab!
ps, page load speeds are not the best - see that pretty HUGE image you view? well, its 8.4MB or was! I might have sampled it and downsided it for her by now, I cant remember. she is rather arty and her stuff is pretty but she doesnt get technology at all really and each time I suggest a change, she will then go off and do itâŚimmediatley! with no clue, ie the GREAT BIG⌠word PICTURE âŚheadings! that only showed⌠the words. didnt even link. omg.
SO, to this end, I have now banned her from her own site! she is not allowed to tinker!
She is ok with this but I have to come up with the good instead! ah!
Iâm going to follow this thread
That is not the type of long URL that I am speaking of. Your example does not contain SEO keywords and locations, it is merely a directional URL.
An example of a long-string URL for SEO purposes is: http://coloradopressurewashing.com/Affordable-Professional-Power-Washing-Industrial-Commercial-Property-Maintenance/Denver-Aurora-Vail-Eagle-Steamboat-Springs-Lakewood-Front-Range-Limon-Boulder-Highlands-Ranch-Lone-Tree-Castle-Rock-Golden/Dustless-Blasting-THE-New-Alternative-to-Sandblasting-Eco-Friendly-for-all-of-Colorado-by-Lightning-Mobile-Inc.html
See how all the words in this URL are speaking to the search engines? The example you point out does not contain much in the way of supplying the search engines information to drive the ranking up. About half of this URL contains nothing but the clientâs potential service areas so that when someone is searching for that particular service in that particular location, the search engines see that this URL contains info that the search query mentions.
Well, you are basically asking me to analyze a subject I know nothing about. What I see in just a quick look is that maybe this website it not first speaking to the search engines and THEN to the prospective customers. I think that maybe you need to sit down with your friend and plot out how you all would think people looking for her products without ever knowing of her brand and products would conduct their searches. What would be their practical search queries?
Once you have this pretty well figured out, then you convert those answers to the websiteâs content. Use the images to capture the audienceâs attention, use text to explain the images to the search engines and use the bodyâs content text to first capture the search engineâs attention and then to talk to the viewers. (Does this make sense?)
Then since all your linking is done by buttons, text links and the like, do not be afraid to be very descriptive with the URLs. I truly think that using folders/directories that are well long-title named to contain the sub pages really is helpful in the SEO factoring as I have seen it work for many years now.
Also learn how to get the most out of your images without having to use such large file sizes. Photoshop or another image editor is all you need to fix that problem. Also you might decide to not produce the JPEGs using the maximum quality setting and rather go for about 70%.
Responsive vs. Mobi
Now I am sure this little tip is going to get everyoneâs hair in a tizzy, but I would not be mentioning this if I have not been watching it work for my clients now for well over one year.
For the last couple of years there has been much talk about how Google will score against your websiteâs content if it is not a website that works well for mobile devices too, thus so many of the webbies panicking and going with a responsive design, even though many responsive designs simply SUCK! You can really tell when someone is making a website for all platforms and it is coming from a lousy template. Many of them either suck when viewing them on a desktop or vice versa, when looking at the moblie deviceâs version.
IMHO it is better to make a website that looks great on the desktops and yet another wesbite for the mobile devices. And there is a great way of doing this that IMPROVES your SEO factoring! It is called .MOBI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mobi This domain has been around for over a decade now and it is very useful.
So you build your mobile website to YOUR specifications, of how you want it to look and work and not how it works responsively! Youâll be surprised at how much nicer a website you will then be able to build for your clients. What I do is try to basically match each and every page of the desktop website, using the same verbiage and images, just maybe in a different arrangement that works better for the smaller plarform.
Then for each of the desktopâs webpages, the first thing I put into that webpage is the directional information in at the very top of the < head > for each page. So for an example, when someone with a mobile device shows up at http://coloradopressurewashing.com/ they are immediately redirected to http://powerwashing.mobi and each of the desktop websiteâs pages have their own directional script to send the mobile device to that corresponding mobile webpage.
Is this a lot of extra web work you might ask? Yes, you better believe it is! Making the mobile websites is a longer time consuming project than making a normal website. So why do this you ask?
Because a .mobi website is scored just the same as a normal website when it comes to the search engines and Google does not penalize a website that is a desktop website when it sees the mobi directional in use. So when doing a search engine analysis for one of these websites, one will find BOTH the normal website and the .mobi websites listed in the same search results! So therefore the goal is to have both websites listed on the first page of the search results and that happens for my clients, so yes, the time and effort is worth it for you and the client.
Yes, My job was to increase their yearly gross from 3.5 million dollars to 5 million per year, which has happened since taking over their web working. Mind you their business umbrellas at least 15 different specialities that all could be their own single business and my job is to increase them all, which is a big task and it is much easdier to be dealing with a client that only has a single or just a couple âspecialityâ trades under their belts.
This is NOT web work for a boutique or the like, these are professional services for commercial and industrial properties, so it is very specific and technical work and therefore those clients want to see the information that proves to them that they are looking for the company that does have the most knowledge, the best equipment and the skilled technicians to handle the work.
Like when looking for a commercial or industrial electrical contractor, that takes convincing by generating âknowledge and expertiseâ on the webpages, not merely nice images and short quotes.
So yes, it is all about INCREASING the clients sales/gross and that is exactly what I do with my web working.
I agree with some of what you say here certainly! With something like PineGrow I will be able to continue using my style of writing SEO for the client and then even make it better learning how to properly use the ID tags, styles and the like, as since youâve mentioned, are missing in my Freeway Pro work.
Once I start doing that my websites will only show up that much closer to the top spot always. It is amazing how many times I can get a search query to list my clients on the first page of results already, so any added improvements is certainly a plus!
Yep, I understood your point. I was just being humorous - fail
yes, thanks, I got most of that, apart from the entire SEO thing on my list of things to do on the rebuild of that site. A problem I have is each time I mention doing something with her, she then goes off and does it on her own. Cluelessly! I then look at it in dismay as I realise what a world of further woe she has created for me, dropping all h1 Text links and replacing them with pretty font IMAGES - which linked to NOTHING was her last one. Like I said , she is now banned (voluntarily may I add )
And yes, thanks, it certainly does make sense. And it is obvious that that proceess doesnt seem to have taken place with the former web admin.
I just inherited it and got the shop working, as it didnât and she hadnât sold a single thing in 3 years! It it had its first sale to BELGIUM 2 days later! (Hello Belgians! - thereâs a lot on Pinegrow you know! I have no idea why -friendly bunch)
I often wondered whatever happened with .mobi!
we started to look into in Uni, along with XHTML2 (oops) at about the same time, 2003-4-5.
it seemed to be wiped out by responsive design
-which effectivly means a lot of web sites now look like a hello world Bootstrap starter kit on Desktops 
@Rgator having read all the posts hear and taking what I know of SEO practices I can see where you are coming from and what you are trying to achieve. Essentially you are taking the approach of long tail keywords where you can get quite specific with each specific page and the keywords it uses on them.
By combining them together and applying them to relevant places, page title, h1-h6, image alt tags, and used appropriately throughout the body text you can be fairly exact in targeting a web page for search engines but you will only see the page show up high in search engine results when somebody searches and uses a number of the words/phrases you have targeted.
For example if I search for âpressure washingâ I get a huge number of results (5,410,000) but if I search for âlakewood colorado pressure washingâ I get 126,000 results. So the more specific you can be per page with your on page SEO the better youâre chances are of appearing near the top but the hard part is getting to the top for the very specific keywords âcolorado pressure washingâ which you do very well on (#2 spot out of 628,000) but you do have coloradopressurewashing as the domain name which is gold dust.
Good to see this discussion and to get other peoples point of view.
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Interesting discussion on an expansive topic, so just throwing this out there.
With proper responsive design clearly taking over a number of years ago, both the m.site subdomain & site.mobi domain usage is not widely used anymore: .mobi is currently used by approximately less than 0.1% of all the websites statistically. With proper responsive design you can serve different CSS, different image sizes or even display entirely different content patterns across breakpoints, within one development cycle, which has now become the standard. With the release of their mobile algorithm in early 2015, they have continued to improve it at a rapid pace ever since for checking a sites mobil capabilities and performance aspects. It should also be noted even Google presently suggests âresponsive web designâ - vs - different domain, subdomain or subdirectories.
I certainly agree that proper SEO and a complete and thorough understanding of your client, thus content is at the forefront, however closely paralleled with responsive usability. With each however, proper aesthetics and site structure also play a huge role in user experience. You can have proper SEO, content, etc., and if you fail to present a professional ascetic and structure with it, certain people will still bounce once they arrive. User retention should be given equal value with user arrival. Depending on a sites visitor statistics even low percentage bounce rates caused by poor aesthetics can yield big numbers.
Retaining people and providing a clean, professional, intuitive experience is paramount also. A lot of times people whom are not directly familiar with any of the businesses that fall within their search query, opt for a (aesthetics) professional appearing choice on a subconscious level. This is based upon the perceived confidence it provides in their services to the person searching - vs - others that may have improper ascetic, structure, etc., that can be called into question directly or subconsciously. Again this is for those searching with no previous knowledge or recommendation of a business within a certain field or needed service.
So many factors can also play into all of this including UI / UX, design & aesthetics, proper understanding of client, user / target audience, emotions, psychology, subconsciousness, wide ranging technical aspects and considerations, to name just a few, etc., etc. Attraction and retention is science unto itself, many times being played out within seconds of a search or the arrival of a user at a site.
It is a field unto itself that many solely specialize in both as sub-departments within companies or complete business entities, due to itâs complexities. Similar can be said for why programmers focus on programming, designers focus on design, etc., as each discipline can be very expansive and complex unto itself requiring different knowledge and skills. Iâm not saying a person canât learn or be good at multiple disciplines, however. Many in fact have too by necessity or being forced by budgets and competition, this has increased tremendously over the years in many fields and disciplines. Many succeed while others simply get by with this multiple discipline approach. Specialization has itâs advantages and disadvantages as well, both have their place.
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On site SEO is only one component to SEO and traffic generation in general. There is also off site seo and the number of sites that organically link to yours. Here is an excerpt from Google about how their algorithm determines natural organic links from unnatural.
> ## Make sure that other sites link to yours > Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your site develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links to your site are placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines. Some of these types of links (such as link schemes and doorway pages) are covered in our Webmaster Guidelines.
Only natural links are useful for the indexing and ranking of your site.
Source â Optimize your site for search engines (for beginners) - Search Console Help
Natural conversation links or links that come from an on topic forum where people are discussing the topic your site or page in your site is talking about will have more weight than just a link on a door way page somewhere.
From what I take from the above by Google is that if all of a sudden hundred or thousands of links to your site magically appear out of no where then your site could be hit with penalties and depending on the content and tactics the site could be deindexed. There was A LOT of issues with that in the not to distant past, then the updates that gave penalties to having lots of back links to your site. Itâs something that has to happen naturally but does not mean it needs to take years not with proper use of social media for instance.
Though the quickest way is to buy PPC or Pay Per Click and Ads on sites like facebook that can target specifically the people you want to come to your site. You can make thousands of dollars in hours just by a few well placed ads. Having several hundred targeted individuals with money to purchase and actually want to buy your product and are ready now is worth more than thousands of untargeted traffic that happens to come across your site.
Having both a paid and organic approach to your marketing plan is the best option as long as it is targeted to buyers and not just joe blow that happens to come across your site and has no interest in your product at all.
Do you have the break down of how much that actually comes from online versus offline, phone, trade shows, print and broadcast media etc⌠Because in this instance we are only focusing on online sales and not the entire revenue of the company as a whole where most or a large block is not from the internet directly but other mediums.