Web Administration devBlog

Follow-up Questions from Spring of Web
Apr
22

posted by: Jessie DaSilva

Filed under Announcements, SEO

During our Spring of Web event on Friday, Prentiss Ladkani from the College of Education gave a talk about Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Since then, she has received a lot of follow-up questions, so I posted them here.

From Barbara Lindsey, Department of Neurosurgery

BL: First question is about the use of header tags in the menu section of the page. Is it OK or does it mess with the hierarchy of the content?

For example, I was given a template which uses <h4> for the quick menu, but there is no other <h4> in my content, therefore everything below that level, is potentially irrelevant content to the <h4> level… Do you agree? Or is it OK if the content is relevant to another higher level header ?

PL: Using the <h4> tag in your menu could potentially create problems with your site later on as you add more content and find a need to use the <h4> tag. A better practice for menu items is to use an unordered item list to create an SEO friendly menu. You can use your CSS to create a style specific to the menu so that it still “looks” like the inherent <h4> style.

BL: Second question, what is your opinion about <dl>, definition list? I have read mixed reviews about whether search engines index these constructs and whether or not they are a useful construct from SEO point of view.

PL: I do know that Google will give you a nice trust rank boost for using definition lists, but as to how it plays in with the overall ranking, I’m not entirely sure. It is certainly an under-used tag and as far as I’m concerned, if used properly, could give you an extra boost that other sites most likely will not have. You can use the <dl> tag not only to list terms and definitions, but can also use it with images and captions. Using it with images and captions will require working with the CSS to get the image and caption to display properly, but is a really cool way to use this tag.

From Micah Bolen, IFAS

MB: Does it really matter whether hyphens are used instead of underscores as dividers when naming web pages with respect to SOE? Furthermore, do you agree with the answer here: http://www.prweaver.com/blog/2004/08/26/2-hyphen-and-underscore?

PL: The article you included below agrees with most of what I have seen and read as well. Like I said in the SEO presentation, underscores are considered ‘old skool’ . In the programming word, underscores are seen as joining words, while hyphens as word separators. Google specifically treats hyphens as word separators.

Vanessa Fox, SEO guru and Webmaster Central creator for Google, recently addressed this in a podcast in March. One thing she says is that having hyphens is important for the user experience because they do a good job of visually separating words, which underscores are not often seen. It leaves user to wonder if there’s a space or an underscore because links get underscored. She talks about this in a podcast on March 6, 2009 which you can find on itunes – her channel is Office Hours and the session is called Cannonical Tag Adoption. Her talk (and unofficial transcript) was referenced here as well: http://pixelposition.com/hyphens-underscores/.