DIY SEO
The buzz on SEO is so loud that it's being answered by new companies ready to do it for you. The good ones are pricey and this sector has it's own con men with false promises and seemingly easy solutions. When you do a web search the number of hits can be huge -- perhaps millions. The name of the SEO game is to get you on the top of the search list. There are no easy answers to a high page rank other than paying Google for it. Anyone that promises an easy answer or some large number of web site hits should be avoided. What's to do when you don't have the big bucks? Fortunately there's a lot of SEO that isn't black magic and you can DIY, do it yourself.
Before we venture out into the Internet to cast our grains of sand we should take the time to carefully consider what do we wish to accomplish and how can we explain it and why us in a simple but memorable way for our site as a whole and for each individual page as we add them. Your home page is the most important but don't forget that each additional page is also a grain of sand that can be discovered.
Domain Name
This is an important choice from an SEO perspective. A content relevant keyword based domain name is a plus as is one that matches your brand. Easily remember-able is also of great value. I would have loved my last name for my domain but it was parked. As a consultant, I'm my own brand. Since "Fragos.com" wasn't available I chose "FragosTech.com". I recommend you use .com -- it's the assumed TLD, Top Level Domain. FYI: domain names aren't case sensitive so "Name" is the same as "name". Capitol letters help to delineate words in a multi-word domain to make it visually more recognizable. "FragosTech.com" and "www.FragosTech.com" will both take you to my site but for search engine purposes they are treated like separate URLs. Only use one version to insure that all links to your site are counted towards putting your site higher up on the list search engines like Google return. My choice was to follow modern convention and drop the "www."
Search engines will rate each web page by a number of criteria. The importance in ranking placed on each criteria is a trade secret as may be the criteria they choose to measure. A close to the front of search list position depends on doing well in all the criteria. We may not know the formula used to rank a search return position but we do know most of the criteria that are plugged into that formula. As a designer and web developer we should strive to do well in all the criteria we can identify.
Title Tag
The Head markup section won't be seen by site visitors but it's of importance to search engine web crawlers. In the Head section, Title is the most important tag from an SEO perspective. To a search engine it above all determines what your page is about. It's the first thing a user will see in search results and once the page is opened it's seen in the window's title bar. Title is the succinct 50,000 foot view of the web page. Every page should have a unique title relevant to that pages content. Using a couple of keywords in the Title is recommended. Consider the Title on my home page, "Internet Coach & Writer in Fresno CA - George Fragos." It sums up what I do and who I am. "Internet Coach" is a key phrase that was carefully chosen because it is descriptive, differentiates and hasn't been over used.
Keywords Tag & Content Relevance
Keywords are words that you expect people will enter into search engines to find your site. There can be lot of science and statistical analysis that goes into picking the perfect keywords. Without getting into details on that subject alone I believe that common sense and understanding your business can still do a good job for you. The terms keyword and relevant are repeated many times when discussing SEO. keywords can be phrases. As a freelance I wear many hats and assume the function of many job titles. "Internet Coach" is much more unique than say "consultant", "designer" or "freelance" which are also potential descriptive keywords. It's a newer term that benefits from connotation with the more known term, "Life Coach." As I said before "Fragos" is my brand. Since many of my clients prefer to work with someone local I've include my location "Fresno CA." In the Head section there is a meta tag for keywords. Here is where you place the most relevant keywords used in the content. Don't get carried away, eight is plenty. The crawler will scan and build a list words and phrases you've used. All of those are potential keywords. Keywords from the meta tag prove their relevance by occurring in the content.
In classic writing we avoid repeating words by using different words with the same meaning. On the web consider breaking that rule for your keywords. For example, screenplay and script might be used interchangeably. With a web page on that subject I'd only use one of those terms and also place it in the meta tag of keywords. You can diminish the appearance of repetition by changing sentence structure so that a particular keyword isn't in close proximity to itself. Some web crawlers may ignore the keyword meta tag and only determine relevance by frequency of use. Being more keyword focused we're covered regardless of how the relevance criteria is measured. Always write for the human reader. Stuffing lots of keywords and their repetitions into content will do two bad things. Send the viewer elsewhere, bounce, and to the crawler indicate the page has poor relevance and may be SPAM -- placing the page farther down the search returns.
Keywords should be visually reinforced with bold and italicized fonts as well as being placed in bulleted lists and headers. This won't impact how web crawlers rate your site but it will help with your human visitors. Good SEO techniques can bring a viewer to your web page but proper visual impact will insure they stay and read your content. Viewers tend to scan a page to determine it's potential usefulness or interest to them. Emphasized keywords will help catch their attention.
Description Tag
Third meta tag in the Head section requiring special handling is the description which can be used with your page Title in the search results. The description should include some of the keywords we placed in that meta tag. The Title and description are your chance to convince a search viewer to click through to your site. Some search engines use text from the site content instead of from the description tag but that shouldn't stop us from having a proper description tag.
Validated HTML & CSS
The Opera browser people did an in-depth analysis of a large number of web sites. They found that only 4.3% of sites pass validation testing. Quite a surprise but also an opportunity to differentiate our sites. Browsers are very forgiving of coding errors but also inconsistent with how they do that. There are just to many reasons, including SEO, to write validated HTML and CSS not to use one of the numerous free tools available that validate for you. HTML standards have changes over time and a number of markup commands are considered "depreciated" and not recommended for use. The same goes for markup that is specific to only one browser. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a number of these and they shouldn't be used either. Some high level GUI site coding tools generate code that includes depreciated markup and in some cases browser specific markup. Frequently the code they generate isn't optimized for efficiency and small code size. Bloated web pages aren't SEO friendly.
Heading Tags
Heading tags are in the Body section and greatly help the viewer visually scan web pages. They are similarly important to web crawlers that use heading tags to both summarize and prioritize page content. Crawlers expect the highest level tag to be "h1." If sub levels are used the numbers shouldn'd be skipped. At the very least most high level header tags should include keywords.
Image Markup with Alt & Title
Images and animation can be powerful visual components of a web page. Images create special problems for web crawlers which can't extract text information from them. Use the alt sub tag to provide the text description of images and use the title sub tag to provide pop up descriptions of the action that will be taken when the image is also a link. You can use a command line browser like Lynx or Elinks to see the crawlers view of your web page. Text in alt and title are also checked by crawlers for relevance and can therefore effect your position in the list returned by web searches. Image alt tags also help the visually impaired access your site with a screen reader.
Images can both add and detract from a web site. Images are window dressings that improve the visual impact but do little to provide the content that both web crawlers and humans want. Think about the last time you visited a site that started with a flash animation that you had to wait so long for it to load that they also included a button to skip and go to real content in case your patience wore thin. This makes some sense for Hollywood movie sites but for little else. Also realize that the most important page of your site provided little or no text content for web crawlers who will rank your site poorly because they had little they could examine. Text in images can't be seen by crawlers. Will the crawlers think this is SPAM or other site of little redeeming value. If a flash animation has real value to your site, link to it.
Links with Title Tags
When a user hovers the cursor over any link, text or image, the browser will look for a Title tag in the link markup. This text will then appear in a pop up "tool tip." If you will the title is an enticing summary that will encourage a click through on that link. When images are used for links not all viewers will interpret the image the same way and the Title "tool tip" will help the viewer interpret the image the way the web designer intended. It's appropriate to use keywords in the title description that come from the target. Generic Title tags like "Click Here" should be avoided -- something like "See my Photo Album" is much better.
XML Sitemap
Search engine web crawlers like XML sitemaps because a mapped site is easier to crawl. They can be easily created with any one of the many free web services -- much to easy not to do. In simple terms a sitemap lists all the pages on your site that the crawlers will want to examine. The best site maps include the date last modified, frequency of change and a priority indicating the relative page importance. The site home page would of course be the most important.
Link Building
Following SEO coding practices in important but so are links from other sites. Links target groups with common interests that will be more likely to follow your link and take further action.
The algorithm for determining Google Page Rank is complex and evolving on a regular basis. Google's algorithm is a well kept trade secret in part so that no coding slight of hand can impact it. If Google catches you trying to cheat their system for ratings you will be relegated to the end of the search results. One consistent component is the number of quality relative links pointing to your web site. Links from link farms will hurt you. The best links links are from sites with high page ranks that address information relative to your content. Building links is time consuming -- there aren't any quick fixes.
The best links of all are those that others create because they wish to share the information or offers they found on your site. Internet word of mouth. There's no substitute for well written useful content on your web site or in your blog. Another good source is guest posting and commenting on popular blogs. A link to your site is frequently a reward for your contribution. Just commenting "great post" won't get anyone to follow the link you were rewarded with. Your comment must provide useful insight that makes readers want to see what else you have to say.
Some forums will use your user name as a link to your web site. You should also put a link to your web site in your forum membership signatures. A good link gives you a double hit as count of links and as a viewer driver to your site. If you post or comment regularly your tally will build. I generate at least a couple of links this way every day and some days over a dozen. By participating in the Internet and leaving my link bread crumbs I've created thousands of links from quality sources. It take time but a little bit every day adds up fast.
Social Media
I've mixed feelings about the value of social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Much of the popularity of these sites comes from the fact that they require little effort or on the part of participants. A presence on the Internet without having to learn anything -- they do it if it's free and easy. There is a lot of relationship building involved, but much of it has little intrinsic value. I have a presence on Facebook and Twitter but wonder if doesn't get lost in the ocean of inane useless facts and off color images. I don't care to see a Twitter entry like "Went to pee." Plato said "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." People participating in social networks should heed that advice. I do announce accomplishments as well as changes to my web site and blog on Twitter. No one on these social networks will be finding out when I had a bad hair or did something I wish I hadn't. Both will of course occur but that's just more information than the world needs to know. I participate because of there popularity but don't depend on them for primary sources of marketing and link building.
Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon provide an opportunity for your visitors to recommend your site or article to others. To benefit from this you need to provide buttons on your site for this purpose. People won't take the time to write a review but when it's as easy as clicking a button they will do it.
I've recently found http://SocialTwist.com which provides an interesting service for free. They give you a button for your web pages that when clicked run a Javascript routine makes it easy for you to "Tell-a-Friend" about what you just saw. What's really nice is that this feature will make your personal address book available for you to send email, IM or Social bookmark. Go ahead and give it a try:
