[uf-discuss] Re: Precise Expansion Patterns

[Sarven Capadisli]

This is to address "SEO" and anchors (<a>) in documents.

Fortunately, good SEO is more complex then boiling down well-ranking
in SERPs into how the anchors are set in a document.

Regarding: http://microformats.org/wiki/anti-patterns#empty_hyperlinks

point A) if there is no href attribute and value set then the current
document is not pointing to any resource, therefore there is no impact
on PR as there is no weight to distribute between documents.

point B) Google or any other search engine will not simply ban a Web
site from the left-field if there are no obvious indicators ("bad
intentions") to be delisted from SERPs. Needless to say, getting
banned is not a quick automated action and "spamming" goes much
further then that.

Moreover this is like suggesting using URL fragments (internal link
anchors) in href is bad for SEO.

In addition to all this, I do not think that microformats should be
concerned with the SEO practices as there are many guidelines out
there and which method works well for one site today on a particular
engine may not necessarily work tomorrow. Therefore, I strongly think
that we move away from these sort of practices.

I've written about good SEO practices (read: good Web development
practices) if anyone would like to give it a read:
http://www.csarven.ca/internal-seo-guidelines

By mentioning all this I am not suggesting the usage of empty anchors
(no href attribute/value).

-Sarven