How does Cufon affect SEO and Search Bots? [closed] - image

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I've been searching the web and can't find an answer to the question
of how using Cufon affects SEO (the way bots from Google, Bing,
Yahoo... read the page). I know the original text is still there, but
it is inside a tag, inside a tag, and is next to
a tag (instead of next to the word that should be next to
it). In other words, do the search bots read "search by", the same
way they'd read the cufon generated html below?
<cufon class="cufon cufon-canvas" alt="search" style="width: 72px;
height: 28.1667px;">
<canvas width="95" height="28" style="width: 95px; height: 28px; top:
0px; left: -5px;"/>
<cufontext>search</cufontext>
</cufon>
<cufon class="cufon cufon-canvas" alt=" by:" style="width: 36px;
height: 28.1667px;">
<canvas width="68" height="28" style="width: 68px; height: 28px; top:
0px; left: -5px;"/>
<cufontext> by:</cufontext>
</cufon>
I really like cufon since I'm not much of a graphics guy, but I also
don't want to ruin any good SEO I've got going.
Thanks in advance for any help or advice,
Chuck Foster

Cufon does not affect SEO at all. Its rendering engine is written in Javascript, and search engines don't read Javascript.
The code snippet you posted is what HTML looks like in your browser after Cufon has done its job; the search engines will only see your original html (the one you view when you click on View > Page Source in Firefox for instance).

A handy tip I learned while reading up on Google SEO is to take a look at your page in a text-viewer to give you a sense of what's visible to Google. You can do that with this handy tool: http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/lynx/lynx_viewer.php
Notice how your cufon shows up just fine.

Theoretically Cufon shouldn't affect search rankings as it is rendered after the page loads by Javascript. The actual source code still contains the heading. Despite this I found that there were quite a few conflicting opinions about the search-friendliness of Cufon so I've done a small study to try and get some data on whether it does actually affect rankings, here it is: Cufon SEO Effects
The study finds that Cufon doesn't have any direct effect on search rankings, although you could argue that the marginal increase in a page load time on a site that includes the Cufon Javascript file could potentially affect rankings, although in my opinion this difference would be minor.

No SEO impact at all. Much better than sFIR IMO for two reasons. 1. Faster, 2. Simplicity

I have found a great article which will prove there is no "negative seo" in cufon..
http://www.aerodesigns.co.uk/blog/negative-seo-effects-of-cufon/
Thanks..

Related

styling via HTML 4 attributes is not the same across browsers [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
Why is it that my CSS is not applied the same in all browsers? For example, for the below code:
<body align="center" background="F:\photos\sravan\wi7.jpg">
I can see my text which is aligned center and with background in Chrome, but not the same in Mozilla! Why is this happening?
Browsers restrict access to file:// resources for security reasons. AFAIK, you can specify image locations in the same directory only, i.e. your HTML file would also have to be in f:/photos and referenced using a relative path, ie. sravan/wi7.jpg.
Also, as pointed out in the comments, the notation you are using is not CSS. Specifying visual properties using HTML attributes is an outdated technique and it's better to switch to actual CSS. Learn about its basics e.g. here or on one of the sites recommended by Robert.
Your code is not CSS
Instead you should have HTML and CSS as in:
<body>
content
...
</body>
and body CSS
body {
background-image: url(URL to your image and not local path);
text-align: center;
}
Learn the languages
No offence but I warmly suggest you learn HTML and CSS before delving into writing any reasonable code.
Introduction to HTML
Introduction to CSS
HTML Specification
As per W3C specification body element doesn't support align attribute and background is deprecated in 4.01 and not supported in HTML5. So don't use it as an attribute. Define style using CSS:
in separate CSS file that you reference in HTML
add style element inside head HTML element
(not recommended) add style inline with your element:
<body style="text-align: center; background-image: url(wi7.jpg);">
Because of the way that CSS works having many inline styles makes your application hard to maintain and also intrduces new CSS hacks that you have to use in order for your page to render as expected. Separation of concerns rules. HTML file is your content definition, CSS file is its style. Keep them separate whenever possible.
General advice
Since browsers try to follow specification there may be differences between their rendering of HTML+CSS. Some may be very strict about it others a bit more loose. Try to stay within specification and you should get better cross-browser results.

Masks not working in Gecko

I am trying to mask an element that has some images inside of it, using only css.
i have done this and it works fine in webkit using -webkit-mask-box-image and its doing just what i want, but im having trouble using other browsers.
gecko is supposed to work using mask, and that tag does show up in firebug, but it doesnt actually use the mask.. i've also tried converting the png im using to base64 data uri, but to no avail.
example: http://jsfiddle.net/nNLta/
does anyone know the correct way for doing this?
HTML
<div id='wrap'>
<div class='masked flashing-anim'>
<div class='the-mask' >
<ul>
<li class='blink_1'></li>
<li class='blink_2'></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div class='the-outline'>
<img src='img/real-stuff.png' height=500 />
</div>
</div>
CSS
#wrap {
position: relative;
}
.the-outline, the-mask {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
}
.the-mask {
height: 500px;
width: 360px;
-webkit-mask-box-image: url(../img/the-mask.png);
-moz-mask-box-image: url(../img/the-mask.png);
-o-mask-box-image: url(../img/the-mask.png);
mask-box-image: url(../img/the-mask.png);
mask: url(data:lotsofchars);
}
example: http://jsfiddle.net/nNLta/
Part 1
mask is not the same as mask-box-image unfortunately. If you read the (rather sparse) docs you will see it is applicable to SVG only. More on this later.
Currently Gecko doesn't support 'mask-box-image' - if you search the MDN you'll see it applies to -webkit- only.
Additionally I don't think this is actually spec. Webkit has had this capability/concept for ages (in various forms like -webkit-box-reflect) and I think that it's just a hangover from those days. I'm not sure whether this will even be adopted by all browser vendors (although I hope, and it makes sense that, it will).
Part 2
To use the svg dependant mask: css property you need to create an SVG element and reference that. Here is a guide. I've not used this technique before so I'm afraid that's all the detail I'm going to go into right now.
An alternate option
If you don't need a clever repeating/growing mask why not create a large png and overlay the text/image you wish to hide. I'm not sure I understand what you are ultimately trying to do but this seems pretty simple to me. The obvious issue is when you need the stuff behind the mask to be selectable/interactable (err..interactive that is...); for instance when you wish to apply masking to text or links. A way around this is to use pointer-events:none which is supported in Gecko and Webkit (but nothing else...). Here's more from the MDN
Sorry I don't have better news - if none of the above is helpful please feel free to leave a comment with your specific requirement and we'll see if we can't work around the browser limitations.
Hope this is helpful!

What is the easiest Javascript framework for a newbie web developer?

Put your foot inside the boots of an expert developer that is new to web development.
Certainly he will must deal with JavaScript and probably he will encounter a bit of difficulties with choosing a framework for its job.
For general purpose: which one do you suggest if the an easy usage is the first requirements?
I've worked with jQuery, script.aculo.us, and mootools, and I would highly recommend jQuery, which seems to trump a lot of the other frameworks in its ease of use.
For someone who is familiar with HTML and CSS, jQuery fits the paradigm really well, and makes the transition into Javascript very simple.
For example, with html such as this:
<div id="content">
<h2>Heading</h2>
<p class="featured">This content</p>
</div>
You might have CSS selectors that looked like this:
#content {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 760px;
}
#content h2 {
font-size: 110%;
}
#content p.featured {
font-weight: bold;
}
In jQuery, you can manipulate those elements using the same selectors:
$('#content').hide();
$('#content h2').html('New Heading');
$('#content p.featured').css('border', '#cccccc 1px solid');
jQuery also has excellent documentation that can really help a beginner jump right in.
I would also put a vote in for jQuery. I have found it to be simple to use, easy to learn, powerful, well documented, feature rich, extensible and backed by a great community of plugin developers.
See here for a comparison by feature.
In the past three years, I've used Prototype/script.aculo.us and jQuery. From the two, I prefer jQuery.
Generally, everyone uses jQuery these days. I like it pretty well.
You might also check out MooTools. Depending on your past experience, you may find it fits your style better.
I'd personally go with jQuery too. That's what I use these days when I need that sort of thing.
Well documented and a plethora of plugins already available.
From a newbie: I have been using jQuery and it creates big results with only a little skill. The more skill you build with jQuery, the cooler and easier things get.
jQuery supports a lot of selectors, It’s easy to add/remove attributes to any HTML element, makes ajax and json easy to use and has a big helpful community.

h3 tag text/image replacement, does this hurt seo?

I'm trying to "replace" text with an image in all of my h3 tags. I want the image to be in the html to avoid multiple h3 classes as this is being done for a portfolio and there will be about 10 h3 tags on the page. My image is 156x44. My question is, will this be viewed as an attempt to hide, stuff keywords by google for seo purposes? If it will then does anyone know a better way to accomplish this?
CSS:
h3 {
display: block;
width: 156px;
height: 44px;
overflow: hidden;
}
Html:
<h3><img src="images/project001.png" alt="Project 001" />Project 001</h3>
Matt Cutts addresses this question himself over at threadwatch. Pretty much he says to freely do text replacement, just don't try anything spamy like keyword stuffing. Later he clarifies that they:
...flag text that appears to be hidden
using CSS at Google. To date we have
not algorithmically removed sites for
doing that. We try hard to avoid
throwing babies out with bathwater.
So they might not be penalizing sites at all at this time for using CSS to hide text.

Finding a blog site with good code block support

This has probably been asked before but I can't find any relevant post using the search system.
I'm looking for a site where I could host my own blog. Unfortunately, I found none that have the kind of code block friendliness found on our very own stackoverflow (not one where you have to manually convert < and > into < and >).
If the answer is "there is none, duh!", and I am condemned to install my own blog software, then which one should I use for a "coder blog" -- knowing that I'd like it to be ultra-simple to set up.
Thanks.
I use a combination of BlogEngine.NET, Windows Live Writer and a WLW extension to format/place the code block in my blog.
Scott Hanselman has a blog post about this topic here.
There is a pretty sweet client-side (jQuery-based) code formatter here that you also might want to check out, that sounds blog-software agnostic.
I use appengine and bloog mostly because of this feature (and because I can extend it anyway I want). The good thing is it's relatively easy to set up and free. If your blog makes enough traffic to go over the limit for free accounts chances are you can get your money back from it.
I was pulling my hair out trying to format code on Blogger until I found this handy utility. It's not a perfect solution, but it goes a long way.
This css script might be useful to all - It is not for syntax highlighting but works well for presenting the source code in original format :
<pre style="font-family: Andale Mono, Lucida Console, Monaco, fixed, monospace;
color: #000000; background-color: #eee;
font-size: 12px; border: 1px dashed #999999;
line-height: 14px; padding: 5px;
overflow: auto; width: 100%">
<code style="color:#000000;word-wrap:normal;">
<<<<<<<YOUR CODE HERE>>>>>>>
</code>
</pre>
How to use :
Paste this snippet in text editor,
paste your code in <<<<<<>>>>>> block.
Copy all and
paste to HTML view in blogger(or any other) post editor.
BENEFITS : Simple and easy to use, less configuration, easy to reconfigure, no extra software

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