Indeed, for those who argue that search engine optimization is simply a skill set, this is just the beginning. To quote one contributor to an SEO forum, “SEO is a skillset. To make your web design search engine friendly, you must consider avoiding:a. Use of frame. Search engines have difficulties to index all your framesets. Even though they can index some frame pages, users would only access to part of your webpages only in case they can find your website from search engines, e.g.. Some do not recommend this technique because it can be misconstrued as cloaking (sending one page to the search engines and another to visitors), but because you actually are trying to show the same site that the visitors see, it isn't really cloaking. I also mentioned putting keywords in outbound links to another site. If it’s possible, try to make sure you also have key words in inbound links TO the page from another site. Why would I say the Black hat SEO is a necessary evil? I don't care for keyword stuffing, nor tiny text; So do politically correct people, who try to manipulate others to their way, or try to cover up their own shortcomings by giving a dog a bad name. Analytics is a skillset. Web Authoring/Publishing is a skillset. Paid Search Marketing is a skillset. Coding is a skillset. Web Design is a skillset (and an art). Business Analysis is a skillset. It is important to remember that in order to be able to optimize the search engine result of your website, you need to make sure that you pick the appropriate keyword phrases, especially if you are only a small or mid-sized company. You should use the keywords that your potential customers may use in their search in the Web, and such keywords should be used in specific areas of your webpage. Lastly, Web business owners sometimes do not label their links and images descriptively, making it very difficult for their visitors to know what they are being directed to. Being descriptive as possible not only helps visitors, but it can also help online businesses, especially those trying to market a particular product since Web business owners can use their main keywords and phrases in their link and image labeling, making it easier for them to direct potential customers to their site. Vanessa Arellano Doctor You should also put key words in your site’s META description. Keep the key word close to the left in the description. Gary recommends using a full sentence. Some search engines actually show the contents of this tag in the results under the link for your page, so you want this to look attractive to potential visitors. For example, “Dog collars, leashes, pet beds, pet food and more for the discerning dog lover can be found here.” not only are they rather old, they are plain silly. And I agree that spamming is inconvenient, even though we have all learned to live with it. Apart from that, sites with no content raise my ire. Is your web site’s content entirely original – or is there duplicate content on the web? This is very important for a couple of reasons. First, as you know, Google penalizes for duplicate content, and it often can’t tell who had any particular piece of content first. Second, copyright laws apply on the web as well, and copyright holders are within their rights to demand that stolen content be taken down. We’ve had to do that any number of times here at Developer Shed. This cuts both ways; we also make sure our writers aren’t infringing someone else’s copyright. Okay, so you have the right key words in the titles. Did you put them in the META key words? That’s a section in the page’s HTML. While Google has de-emphasized META key words, it’s still a good habit to use them. Keep them down to 128 characters or about 10 key words that cover the themes of your site, separated by commas, with the most important ones first. That’s all I could fit into this article. Next week I’ll finish covering the technical aspects you need to focus on, then move on to the other areas that Gary enumerates in his checklist. Expect to see a lot of attention paid to links. I think I’ve given you quite enough to check off until then! Meta Tags and On-Page Optimization A good place to start putting key words is in the title of your pages. Gary recommends using a one-word buffer; for example, if your key word is “dog collars,” you might use “cheap dog collars” or “compare collars for dogs.” The buffer is there to avoid setting off over optimization penalties. Remember that you should use only one key word per page; in the eyes of the search engines, if you use two or more key words per page, you’re diluting their relevance. It is -- but there are certain caveats. And even those who frequent SEO forums are not in agreement as to whether it is a good occupation to pursue, what properly constitutes SEO, and what the field will look like in five or ten years. Some are convinced it either won’t be around as a separate field, or simply won’t be recognizable. In this article, I’ll try to tease out the various viewpoints and give you something to consider as you advise others seeking to learn more about SEO as a career. Perhaps it will give you a new perspective on your own field. Gary divides the list into four separate areas: * Meta tags and on-page optimization. * Technical issues. * Linking. * Other issues. I’d like to note that he doesn’t discuss how to determine what key words you should be using for your web site; that’s an entirely separate topic, and worth an article (or several!) in its own right. Once you have decided what key words you want to use on your web site, however, the meta tags and on-page optimization category (perhaps the largest of the four) explains exactly how to use them. What is SEO? Basically, search engine optimization means making adjustments to a web site so that it scores high on the search engine results pages for particular key words and key phrases. This calls for making a variety of changes to the pages of a web site; some of these will be visible to those who view the site, and others won’t. But that’s only the beginning. Since Google’s algorithm counts links to a web site from other sites as “votes” for that site, one of the jobs of an SEO is to build back links. There are a number of ways to do this, from buying links to soliciting reciprocal links; the rise of blogging, web 2.0, social search/bookmarking sites offer other ways of building back links. One tried-and-true method involves building “linkbait” – content that is so useful and compelling that visitors to your site naturally want to link to it and tell others. Fortunately, someone has. I can’t take the credit for this; that belongs to Gary Beal, who you may know as longtime SEO Chat poster and moderator GaryTheScubaGuy. Gary has been an SEO for ten years, specializing in search, pay per click, affiliate management and email marketing. He's currently affiliated with . Feel free to read the basic list as well as the comments on the forum thread. I’m going to expand on the list a little by trying to explain why some of these items are important. Since the list is a little too long for me to fit into one article along with all the explanations, I’m going to cover it in two parts. The idea of linkbait brings up another point. Search engine optimization can embrace a number of skills. Creating good linkbait, for example, may require excellent writing skills, some programming skills (if your linkbait is interactive, like a mortgage calculator), and an intuitive knowledge of what visitors to your (or your client’s) web site would find useful. A good command of HTML and related skills for building web sites will also come in handy for any SEO. 24.Checking the List: SEO Details By: Terri Wells When you’re new to SEO, or even if you’ve been optimizing web sites for a few years, it can be a bit overwhelming. There is so much to remember to make your site climb to the top of the search engine results pages. What’s worse is that the search engines keep modifying their algorithms, so you need to change your tactics regularly. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone came up with a checklist? Are we going too far, though, by lumping SEO in with search marketing? Aren’t search engine optimization and search engine marketing two different things? Not according to some of the contributors to the SEO Chat forums. One of them argued very simply that “SEO is a subcategory of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SEM is a subcategory of Internet Marketing. Internet Marketing is a subcategory of (you guessed it) Marketing.” As a field, marketing isn’t going away any time soon, which implies that SEO is a good career choice. But it presents anyone entering the field with some special challenges. Between this article and the previous one, you should now have a fairly comprehensive understanding of everything you need to check and work on to perform a complete search engine optimization of a web site. As with many things, the devil is in the details. But it’s a small price to pay for the rewards of increased traffic – and conversions – that you can hope to achieve from an organic climb to the top of the search engine results pages. Good luck!
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