Search Engine Optimization

by Paul on August 11th, 2004

Search engine optimization (SEO) is just one of those things some people are really, really, really good at and others are left to just wish they were good at it. No matter which camp you are in it is important to understand the fundamentals for success in search engines. Before I begin to explain some of these let me tell you that no matter what, great SEO requires two things: time and patience.

Choose Your Keywords

The first step is to decide what keywords you want to be ranked highly in with the search engines. 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.

Keyword density is a term that you will seen thrown around often with regards to SEO and it has to deal with the percentage of times your keywords show up in the content. From what I have read it is suggested that a 20% ratio is acceptable without looking like spam to the search engines.

Page Titles

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.

Headers

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 n> tags are more important than those placed inside of

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.

Headers are also user friendly as they help to breakup the flow of your articles and keep your readers’ eyes from getting tired.

Code-to-Content Ratio

This is where CSS-based 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.

CSS sites usually have smaller sizes and therefore the content stands out more to the spiders that crawl your site. If you have a table-based site and the content is stuck behind 25kb of table code then more than likely you will get beat by a CSS site with similar content.

Frequent Updating

The more the site is updated, the more the search engines will spider it. Pretty simple.

Links

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.

Keyword Density

Before I mentioned that you should have a select 1 or 2 keywords per page that you would like to optimize for the search engines. The only technique that I mentioned to do this however was through headers. Another subtle way to increase your keyword density per page is through title attributes.

The title attribute, used inside of anchor (links) tags, is a great way to increase the keyword density without even getting in the way of the users. However, it does let the search engines know of the importance that the keyword has on your site. I have only recently found out the importance of them and begun using them more often.

DMOZ Listing

Google and many other top search engines refer to dmoz.org for their directories. You can manually submit your site to the directory, but be prepared to have some patience as it can take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of months to get listed. But once you do, expect your PR to increase a bit.

Tools

Two useful tools that I have found that help you keep track of how well your site is doing in Google are:

Search Engine and Keyword Tracker: A useful and free online tool. I could only get the JavaScript working in Opera however, but it has really become invaluable for measuring the performance of my sites.
Web CEO: Desktop application that measures performance through different search engines. Also includes some other useful features. I am considering buying the full version (via Smiley Cat).

Content First

Putting the content at the beginning of your site can also play a huge role in how you rank in the search engines. A little known fact about Google is that it only indexes the first 101kb of a page and after that it stops. So try to keep your pages slim and filled with great content. 101kb is a lot for a single page anyways.

Guide the Robots

Web Robots FAQ. Thanks Mahalie.
Help the Googlebot

Pretty URLs

I recently read somewhere that Google will follow dynamic links, but only up to a certain number (sorry I forget where I saw it), however, normal links/urls Google loves. But then this is always a changing thing and Google can follow dynamic links pretty well supposedly. However, it is also said that with dynamic pages Google will only spider so deep in your site before stopping.

This is the fun part of SEO: the guessing game. In any case I think it is a good idea to keep URLs looking good and clean (like they are here).

No Secret Formula

There is no secret formula to success. The search engines constantly move in regards to how they rank sites so your best bet is to focus on making pages for your users. Don’t expect instant success with newly created pages unless you are already established. The longer your site is up and running the better your chances so stick with it.

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