No tips, no tricks, no insider trader info, just facts. Common sense facts!
SEO. I’m sure plenty of you have heard of the term. Even better some of you may know what it is and how to go about doing it. Some may only know the “old way” that most search engines are rejecting for better and more exacting options. For those that don’t read on. For those that do skip down a bit.
What is SEO?
SEO is a short form acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”. What this is or does, is offer the search engines information to try and get your site to the top of the lists. Most search engines have different algorithms for trying to find the best sites that match the terms being searched for and then return that list to the end user. Knowing the tricks of these algorithms is what SEO is all about.. or was.
Yes I said was.
Many of the Search engines are changing their tactics. Why is that? Spam, spam-ad-sites, scam sites, people who abused the system in order to get to the top of the charts and then shared those tricks for money. Sure business is about money, but not about dishonesty. Dishonest business eventually get caught and go under! Don’t be one of them and you’ll do just fine!
No really!
Changing Winds, New Practices
So how is SEO changing? You want to know the trick to it do you? Sorry there is no real trick because the search engines and their programmers are just getting smarter. The key to ranking high and ranking well is really attached to content.
Content may be “King” and design “Queen” but the rest of the court has come into their own and are being considered as a way to rate your sites. Yep you heard me. It is about the network you’ve developed and how it relates to your content.
No, not social media. That’s a part of it, to be sure, but it isn’t the end of it. It is about how your content, meta tags, titles (header, links, etc), image description, and the other aspects of web usability all interlink into your end-user’s experience. No kidding.
End-User is my word for ‘God’
Okay it isn’t actually, but I think I got my point across whether your initial reaction is a knee-jerk “WHAT! Blasphemous!” or a hearty chuckle as you get the “joke”. It is about what the End User wants and how they interact with your web site. The key to good SEO is about what you are offering to the greater whole, and how relevant it is to what the end-user has asked the search engines to find for them.
How many times have you written in a search engine for something and found…, nothing. Or Ultimate Crap! (echos like a bad horror movie) Or what’s worse, you end up with sites that try to sell you stuff in that patented single column, center-justified, giant RED LETTERS!!!!!!! With lots of little exclamation marks! All of the text talking about how awesome their product is and how it will change your life!!
Crap. You know it and I know it but they were “Optimized” for the search engines to find. So the search engines got sick of it, got working on it, and got smart, real smart.
You see each search engines for the most part (sans a few I may not know) are a business in and of themselves. Google stock is actually traded! Their business relies on satisfying the end-user. You, me, and everyone else that uses search engines to find what we are looking for online.
So it isn’t about “what is the newest trick”. Good, solid SEO is about the correct procedures to follow as well as what NOT to do!
- Meta Tags:Meta tags may not have the same importance or weight they did years ago, but they are still important in declaring what your document is about. Pick a handful, not too many, and avoid repeating words.
- Titles Tag: Use these as often as you can. Where ever they need to be use in an area that you have content. This helps to describe what it is the content is about, be it a link, and image, or other media!
- Links: Popularity and links go hand in hand. Whether is it because of negative feed back (ie. people saying ‘Oh wow take a look at THIS crap!’) or positive feedback (ie. ‘Wow how cool and useful this is! Check it out!’) people will link to your site. This is noticed by search engines. The more important the site that links to yours, the more relevant a site that links to yours, the better your chances at gaining page rank!
- Link Relevance: Only link to, or try to garner links from, sites relevant to your own. It is a logic pattern that improves your ranking. A search engine looks at irrelevant links as someone would look at a dog for sale in a food store. It makes no sense to them.
- Content: What is your site about? Is is a broad beast with a lot of information (about.com), or is is a specific creature with refined tastes and requirements (elfwood.com). Perhaps it’s a hybrid of both (tutorial sites that have strict requirements), or a community site based around one topic (ConceptArt.org).
- ** Notice that most of the sites I’ve listed here are also art-related… because my content is primarily art-related. If my site were more tech-centered I might link to Wired, or the Food Network site were I making a more food-centric site.
- Use of Robots.txt: ‘Nofollow’ and ‘follow’ rules help the sites know what pages to crawl. This can be used smartly to limit the amount of repetitive links, or to offer the engines a broader range to crawl through your site. If you have a “links” page with a LOT of out going links, so much so that it is hurting your site, try this: make it a “nofollow” and then blog about some of these sites instead. This way your links get their attention but the engines get CONTENT.
- Write: Yes write new content. If you site is very static (basic art gallery styled site) add a “professional twitter feed”, or if you don’t want to add a blog to your site, grab a free one from any of the various providers and have it’s rss feed show up on your site as a “news” section.
- Giving: Whether it’s a blog entry, a review of someone else’s product, or a partnership link, share the love. The links given out to others may reciprocate links back to you. In the Blogosphere, often when an author finds out he’s been written about, they may write about you or make a note in their journals about the article. People love attention! Give them some love!
DO
- Meta Tags: No stuffing meta tags in your header. Don’t use the same word over and over again in different forms, spellings, or formats. That will penalize you!
- No Link Farms: DO NOT become a link farm! Do not link to everything in the world, especially if it doesn’t relate to your site content! This reduces the power of your out-going links, and makes you look like a link farm to search engines.
- No Link Farmers: Like Link-Farming do NOT farm for links. It is spam, it annoys people, and eventually leads to people not believing your authority or authenticity!
- Link Relevance: I cannot stress this enough. Do NOT link to that which has no relevance to your site. Don’t bother with links from sites that are not Relevant to your site.
- Out-links-In: In other words what links to your site and from where? Confused? Okay, in short the engines also look at where links are coming from that point to your site! So those links that are relevance are equally as important!
- Content: Do not fill a site with dirbble, crap, or otherwise un-useful, unhelpful tripe. Be mindful of the focus of a site and try to keep that focus fresh in your mind always as it is updated.
- Affiliate Links: Are they hurting your rankings? What you didn’t know they could hurt your rankings? It really depends on the search engine you are optimizing a site for… yes the same way a designer must keep in mind different browser types. Ironic? I think so. Go read the different engines’ policies.
- Masking links: Some Browsers penalize your site for having affiliate links. In some cases people offer you ways to “get around this issue” by masking the links. There are a number of ways to do this, but can in the long run hurt your site. So I suggest that folks do not do this. See above. I would suggest limiting the links instead to the highest payouts, or those that are specifically relevant to your site.
DO NOT
Simplify if you can. Keep the main links on a front page to between 3 and 6 if at all possible.
Shocked?
I hope not. This is very common sense. People want content. They want to learn or share that content if they are impressed by it. So write good content and as your popularity grows so too will your engine rankings. Give something back to the net then just spam. The more focused the site the better off you are.
If you find out that you are interested in a lot of different things, take the risk to start a blog, a second, or third site based on these other hobbies. Link to them from your other sites. Just again, don’t over do it.
Content in moderation that educates rather then entices. Don’t sell, share. ~ Drakenhart
