Dear Robin,
Q: I have the questions:
a. Free hosting have a lot of publicity. If I include a site in a free hosting, the SE will penalize? Free hosting are indexed?
A:
There are a lot of problems with hosting your site at the free hosting companies, like Geocities. First off, if your site is for your business, it doesn’t make a very good first impression if you haven’t even purchased your own domain.
Next, spammers love the free hosting companies. So, if you put your important site on them, you could be in the same “neighborhood” as spammers, and you may even find that you can’t get your site listed at all because of it. I’ve heard of engines banning all sites from particular free hosting companies before, so it can happen.
Get your own domain. It’s worth the small cost.
</Robin>
Q:b. How the SE compare two pages, to see if are equals? How is the compare algorithm, for example like checksum or similar? If is checksum, if you include few words in one page and not in the other, the checksum will be different.
A:<Robin>
If I knew the search engines’ algorithms, I would be a rich person (which I am NOT!). Each search engine has certain factors that it considers important, such as link popularity, incoming link text, relevancy on the Web page, tags, and on and on and on. The sites on top are the ones that are the most “relevant” in that search engine’s “eye.” So, your goal is to PROVE to the search engine by having very focused content, etc., that your site is truly about your important keyword phrase.
</Robin>
Q:c. Consider two domains:
myname.hostingname.com, and hostingname.com/myname.
The second it is a directory, the first is a sub-domain. Both are accepted by the SE?
A:<Robin>
Yes.
</Robin>
In other words, considering only the indexing, both domain are equal? Appears that only the sub-domain are accepted, because they don’t accept directories, but I need your confirmation or not.
<Robin>
They accept directories, but I wouldn’t use directories to a great extent. The further away from the “root” you place your important pages, the more of a challenge you’ll have in getting them ranked.
Subdomains are fine, but never abuse them.
In everything you do, think MODERATION.
</Robin>
Q:d. You say that a list of links are considered as a spam. But if a have a kind of “reference” page with 300 links? For example, I sell dogs and this is my main page, but I have a link to a secondary page in the same hosting that is a reference page for more 300 sites with dogs subjects, this is spam? True reference pages are very standard.
A:<Robin>
Not having seen your page, it’s hard to answer this question. If you make sure that your links page isn’t JUST a page of links, but that you describe each of those links, and that you use a paragraph or two of content at the top of the page, you should be okay. Your links page isn’t meant to deceive the engines in any way. It’s simply to provide valuable content to your users. The engines recognize that.
</Robin>
Sorry for my English, I speak very well French, Spanish and Portuguese, but not English. Sorry for my Bostonian accent…
Thanks again and best regards,
C. Brito
<Robin>
You’re doing great!
</Robin>
Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops
(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) in locations across North
America. She also teaches online SEO training
(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Localized SEO training is now
being offered through the Search Engine Academy.
(http://www.searchengineacademy.com) Sign up for SEO tips of the
day at mailto:seo-tip@aweber.com.
