What is SEO and why is it... good?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Itís a term that people throw around often but few really understand and even fewer can correctly implement. There are a couple types. In this article I'll cover good SEO techniques for the initial setup of a website.
In terms of your website, SEO uses a combination of keywords, meta tags, semantic HTML and good common sense to increase your standings in search engines like Google, Yahoo!, etc. Let's take a look at these one at a time.
A word is worth a thousand pictures
As far as the search engine is concerned, much like a head of lettuce, graphics are 10% nutrition and 90% water. Aside from a bit of metadata in your image tag, graphics do very little to inform a search engine about the content of your page. Keyword-rich text, on the other hand, will do you a lot of good. You have all the reason in the world to write good keyword-rich copy on your site anyway so as to inform the viewer why they're there in the first place. So, code your text well (see below) and youíll be killing two iBirds with one digital stone.
In order to use this technique to your advantage, make sure you spend time coming up with as many unique terms as possible. Remember that your page is in competition with 600 billion other documents currently available on the web. So, if youíre selling candles, do try to be a bit more creative than just saying "lovely blue wax" and "this one has a wick". Give your item a personality to distinguish itself from the millions of other candles available. Thatís the trick to marketing in an endless sea of similar products. Consider the before and after examples below:
Bad
Our candles come in a variety of colors like blue, red and green. They smell pretty like a bouquet of flowers on a spring day.
Good
Crafted from fine Columbian Bees Wax, this collection of uniquely scented candles offers aromas like Corinthian Leather, Gorgonzola Nights, and Poplar Tree Bark Dog Collar.
Well, you get the idea.
MetaData
The efficacy of metadata is getting a bit blurry these days. Most people will tell you that Google, among others, no longer even takes into account ìdescriptionî and ìkeywordî meta tags because of amateur (and often ignorant) webmasters putting a ton of irrelevant content in these fields. However, a very powerful tool comes in the form of the "title" field. This is the text that appears at the top of your browser window, gets saved as the default name of your page when someone bookmarks the site and appears in bold as the result of a search. The title carries a lot of weight for search engines and needs to be carefully considered for each page.
Say what you mean, mean what you say
Semantic HTML is simply the process of letting your code help tell your story to the search spiders (those programs launched by search engines which crawl over every website on the internet attempting to index them by content). Basically, if youíre writing a heading, you put it in a heading tag1. If youíre writing a paragraph, you put it in a paragraph tag2. What youíre doing here is defining the hierarchy of your information in no uncertain terms so the spiders understand which content is describing the purpose of your site.
This process takes a little more brain power than just plowing through your code to get the page up as fast as possible, but its so worth it. Another benefit of spending this time up front is saving it on the back end. This kind of stuff makes it easy to update after the fact - especially if you're handing it off to another designer.
It makes sense, doesnít it?
This is my favorite part. Good common sense is possibly the most important part of SEO. Donít hide your valuable information in graphics that the search engine canít read. Donít copy and paste a bunch of stuff from other sites into your own ñ even if itís the perfect content. It's gotta be uniqe for the search engine to catalog it for you.
Here's a good one: Speak right to your viewer. Not over her head. Not like you're talking to a child. Know who's coming to your site and tailor the content for them. Don't try to catch a rhino in a butterfly net. Use the right tools for the job.
Oh, and donít forget to write real content even though youíre concentrating on keywords so hard. Getting into the search engines is only half the battle. Once someone gets to your site, you need to give them what theyíre looking for and get them excited enough about it to follow through to whatever end you choose whether its filling out a form, making a purchase or getting them to call you. And you need to do it better than the other guy. And thereís always another guy.
1w3schools.com on heading tags
2w3schools.com on paragraph tags
