The Truth About Search Engine Optimization
SEO is something it seems that almost everyone on the web has an opinion on, without it being clear who has the right or most up to date information. This article is a simple summary of up to date techniques that we have found through research and experimentation work well.
- You can't cheat, just make a great site!
The days of placing keywords in white font against a white background are over. This type of "cheating" is more likely to cause a poor ranking these days than to help your site's search engine presence. Stick to the techniques below, and you should do well.
- ALT Tags behind images - Designed for the visually impaired to allow a description of an image to be embedded behind the image, so that a utility can be used to read these tags and help the impaired understand what they are experiencing on a web page. Coincidentally, some search engines read these tags, including google, and use them to help catalogue images found on the web. As with all SEO, the best method is an honest description of the image placed in this tag, such as "MRose Technologies Company Logo" or "Woman Working on SEO at Computer".
- Title Tags with company name and short description. A Bad Title Tag: "MRose Technologies", a good tag: "MRose Technologies - Coldfusion and PHP Web Application Development".
- Make sure to include keywords / terms that you expect visitors to search when trying to locate your product or service
- Vary the title tags on each page within the site. Search engines pick up on laziness.
- Links, Links, Links - Links from your site to other sites have only a little value, but links pointing at your site from other sites have much more value. If the site linking to yours has a high ranking, it will "pull up" your site as well. Its all in who you know...
- Content, content, content - The more valid good content you have on your site, the more there is for search engines to catalogue. Consider an articles area, or some other area, that is designed within your website to house lots of valid content, and litter it with keywords whereever possible.
- Meta Keywords and Meta Description Tags - Again the keyword is laziness. Although, yes its true, Google does not even read these tags at this point, however there are other small search engines that do, and in the volatile world of SEO, you never know what will change next. Point is, a design with good SEO should have proper Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags. Somewhat self-explanatory, the keywords tag should contain a list of keywords that you expect your users to search, and the description tag should contain a description of the product or service you are offering.
- Site Map - A site map is nothing more than a page containing links to all other pages within a site. You will notice in the footer menu of this site, the link entitled "Site Map". This is placed deliberately, more for search engines to have the site map available to them as a grouped set of links than for any other purpose.
- Heirarchial design to copy within pages - Use H1 and H2 tags, and fill them with appropriate content. Using this page as an example, "The truth about search engine optimization" at the top should have an H1 tag wrapped around it, because it is at the top of the page, and the copy it contains is descriptive of the page, someone searching for SEO information just might find this page. Search engines give weight to the proper use of these tags.
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