January 21, 2004 | View Comments (19) | Category: Web Mastering
Summary: On Search Engine Optimization and how to improve it for "non-blog" sites.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a lost art amongst many web designers nowadays. A lot of times the perception is that if you have a blog and develop using web standards then your site will rank highly in the search engines, which for the most part is true. But what about the sites that are not run by blog technology? You know those other sites you have to create to actually make money? Many times you will find that one of your client's highest priorities is to be ranked highly in the search engines and it is mostly up to you to get them there.
The first step is to decide what keywords you want to be ranked highly. It really is not ideal to build a page and hope that the search engines figure out what you want them to pick up. Each page should have 1 or 2 major search terms that you would like them to notice, so choose wisely.
I would argue that this is the most important element to get ranked highly in searches. If each page is labeled with a proper title then this will alert Google and other search engines of the importance that your keywords have on the page. For some great advice on how to write page titles check out this article, Writing Better Web Page Titles.
The second most important aspect for high SEO are the headers. Through the magic of technology, search engines are aware of the fact that words placed inside of <hn> tags are more important than those placed inside of <p> tags, so this is another detail that you must choose wisely. My advice would be to keep the headers as short as possible and place your targetted search terms within them.
This is where CSS sites are really helpful. Search engines love to read content over code and a quality built CSS site will usually have less code than a table-based site, therefore allowing the search engines to pickup the content. It is up to you to make content with substance.
The more the site is updated, the more the search engines will spider it. Pretty simple.
I can offer no advice about link exchanges and what not, but I can tell you that if the content is of quality then other sites will link to it. The more sites that link to you, the better.
There are many "professionals" out there who focus solely on SEO. I am no expert, but many of my pages are placed highly in the rankings because of the reasons listed above. It is a known fact that Google loves blogs, but there is a reason it loves them and that is because they usually do all of these things really well. Non-blog sites could do the same.
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"Many times you will find that one of your client's highest priorities is to be ranked highly in the search engines"
That Is so , so true scrivs I have client at the moment and the main thing they are concerned about is to be ranked high in search engines.
Steven
I forgot to add this link into the entry. A must read for any webmaster:
http://www.scribbling.net/entry/394/
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Hey scrivs, its jag5311 from sitepoint.
Great write up. For some reason, I am always drawn to articles written about valid code and SEO, it always interests me. Anyways, unfortuntely, I must include a shameless plug because of what I have to say. My site, www.gamecubecheats.info , has been online for about 1 month now. It uses valid xhtml 1.0 transitional and no tables. I did this for all the appropriate reasons;
1. Cached images
2. Faster downloads
3. Easy Printing (i setup a nice print stylesheet for easy CHEAT prints
4. And trying to get on search engines better.
I had an old site, gamecubecheats.net that still receives some of the top spots for the term "gamecube cheats". The guy wouldn't sell it back to me (because I had to sell it to him because I couldn't maintain it at the time). He doesn't touch it. How it looks today is how I left it. I didn't like that, so I wanted to start up again and I came up with a new design, architecture, and more. Nice thing is that I was on google and yahoo within 2 weeks of release, so that was good. I currently fall on the 2nd page of google for the term "gamecube cheats" and I am wondering if that had something to do with the fact that my "content" section falls in my source code below the menus and stuff. What do you think? I don't use absolute or relative positioning, so it falls more with the document flow versus putting my content on top and positioning it somewhere else on the page. I currently get about 1300 a week on my site, and I would love to increase that to 5,000 if possible, so I am working on it.
oh, and because I use a database for my site, I have it setup so that the changes depending on the page you are on. So for a cheat on Madden 2004, it would say MADDEN 2004 gamecube cheats or something of that nature. I have not included tags which is something I probably SHOULD do since some search engines still use it. I wouldn't mind your thoughts on all of this though.
Keep posting, I love what you always have to say.
jag5311
jag5311 (http://www.gamecubecheats.info)
I have this problem on a former site that I used to write on. There is one entry on that site in particular that rates higher in searches than a similar entry on this site. The only thing I can think of right now is that the file is an HTML file and not PHP and that maybe there are some people linking to it that I do not know about.
It is possible there are some backlinks going to your old site and none to your current site. Google could also possibly place favoritsm over "older sites" or something. Over time though things could definitely change, especially if Google does another of its infamous updates.
Another thought is if the old site is a static site while the current one has dynamic pages then that also could have an effect.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
SEO is something that we pay particular attention to. Even when concepting a site, and arguing for certain parts of each layout, we empasize strongly with the client what would be better for search engine ranking.
Some of our past clients that are no longer with us have such poor SEO that when someone searches for them, our site comes up where we have them in our portfolio section. We even get calls at our office from people wanting information about products sold by a client that we have not worked with in 3 years.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
Along with backlinks, even the link text is pretty vital for google...and the 'alt' tags are generally ignored ('title' tags work, though).
check out http://webconfs.com for some good SEO tools..
jinesh (http://jinesh.org/)
two (moderately) brief comments...
first, "professional" SEO people are almost all a combination of scam artist and spammer. There are some legit ones out there, but they are few and far between (and hard to find, because the phonies have no compunctions regarding the spamming of search engines). Most of us know this already, but just in case someone doesn't... fooling the search engine is a *bad idea*. Sticking with the sort of thing Paul's talking about is good. Though the code to content ratio is only very vaguely true, in that google will only process the first meg or so of source code it encounters -- it simply ignores the source code, it's not a strike against you.
Second, Paul --
If you google like this:
link:http://www.9rules.com/whitespace
it lists the pages that link to that page. 1340 links to the whitespace homepage in google... not too shabby. :-)
Anyway, google the old URL and find who's linking to it and email them to link to the new one. No reason to send traffic *that* way.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
The actual size of your indexable site seems to be a big factor too. Having a lot of internal links (especially to more pages with relevant content) adds credibility to your coverage of whatever topic.
I think that alt text does make a difference, too. I once had a personal blog that I wrote really only for friends and family (e.g. I don't think I was getting too many links from others) but it showed up high on all sorts of topics I touched on only in single entries. It seemed to be the direct result of repeating the entry topic in captions and alt tags for thumbnails that accompanied each entry.
Of course in the end nothing beats relevant and plentiful content.
What about a good robots.txt file? How big a factor is that? http://www.robotstxt.org/
Great entry (again). I'm really enjoying the "how-to" bent of your entries of late.
mahalie (http://www.mahalie.com/blog/)
Good place to look for information... the horses mouth, so to speak.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
and especially this: http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
I should qualify my earlier remark. Google ignores the extraneous HTML; however it does put some weight to where things are located on the page, and for this, CSS positioning rules because you can take your navigational divs that are at the top of the page visually, and make them the last item in the source code, pushing your body content higher. Doesn't seem to make nearly as much difference as it used to, though.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
You're no expert indeed. Try searching for "whitespace" on google, that will tell you how expert you are regarding this subject matter.
KT
You are right on that one. As of right now I am only #6. I should only speak of these things when I am #1. Amazing really seeing how whitespace isn't even a topic here and is simply the name of the site.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
not that amazing... because it's the name of the site, it's several times on every page... and you have good linkage for other reasons, which boosts your overall ranking. Most design resources probably only mention whitespace on a page specifically about it.
:-)
hmm... have you ever had a blog entry specifically about whitespace? I bet you could take number 1.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
So flip the switch, Doctor Furter!
We're all beginning to shiver with antici.........pation.
heh
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Great topic Scrivs! I've just been trying to find techniques that produce results consistently. What a nice treat to open up white space and find you talking about it.
SEO is really something I'm trying to improve at. I like what people have said so far! Looking at this topic from another angle ... what things will make a search engine reject your site or page? What things should we NOT do as web page authors?
Your thoughts?
Quasi
a couple things not to do...
don't use graphics, flash, java, or anything else in place of real text for your content... don't use javascript to display said content, and especially don't use javascript for your links.
But mainly don't try to fool the search engines.
If you go to any major search engine and search around under their submissions guidelines they'll usually have pretty good advice on what to do and what not to do.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
use the overture keyword research tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ to discover the COMMON LANGUAGE in use to find products/subjects like the ones the web site needs. then use these exact phrases in your content to improve your position, yes, add them to the title tag, but also code your site logically with all headings being inside H1, h2 etc tags as this increases importance.
backlinks (to your site form other web sites using your target keyphrases) is also another massively important way of getting traffic.
mark rushworth (http://www.newmediadesigns.co.uk)
Mark,
I think the overture tool is played out. First off it's not very accurate (anymore) and everyone fights for the keywords on the results, so whats the point of fighting for those keywords? Kinda ruins the point of a tool to she you what peeps are looking for doesnt it?
SEO King (http://www.eyeflow.com)
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#1
Well said Paul! :-D
Let me add a couple of detail:
:: Comment tags ::
Only Inktomi (read: yahoo) does support them, but others will do. Comment tags could be used to increase your page's keyword frequency. They should be placed in every single page and, as we said for Meta description tag, do not contain a keyword more than 3/7 times.
:: Themes and design ::
This's new. A theme is a common topic throughout the site. To be sincere, I didn't understand how search engine's crowlers work to identify a theme, but what they looks for is clear. A theme is built by keywords in text, links, title tag and meta tag. It's a soup with those ingredients. Even the site's design has became important. Some search engine, such as Teoma, measure how long your visitors stay in your site and how they click on it (do not ask me how it works). So, if your site is pleasant, interesting, fast and usable, it will be better ranked. And, if it's really so cool, give me your url, I'm curious.
:: Alt tags ::
A search engine can't see images, but can read text in their alt tags. You can use them ever for manage (increase or reduce) some keaword's frequency. Also, alt tags help to make your site more accessible for differently-able people.
Keep writting!!!
m.
JTG Mark (http://jumpthegap.com/)