S.E.O - Search Engine Optimization, is a topic that strikes fear in a web developers heart. Its the most unpredictable aspect of web design/development. SEO is not difficult however you need to have patience. There are thousands of companies that promise you number 1 rankings on Google. This is the first sign that the company is not being honest, I don’t care if your are Sergei Brin - you cannot promise a company number 1 rankings with out a competitive analysis. Don’t get me wrong there are some companies that can get you to number one using some black hat tactics which can result in getting “Google PWNED” ( this is when Google figures out the exploit you used to get to the top and kicks you to the end of their index). Believe it or not you need Google if your goal is to earn a living from the products or services you sell online. This is google’s way of keeping things fair. OK OK I digress, so you want to know the top secret stealth l33t way to make it to the top of google. ( I sound like those lame ebooks you see online ). Here is the answer:

FOLLOW WEB STANDARDS

2 months ago I set on a mission to rank number 1 for “web development providence” on google. Below is what I did:

1. I analyzed the market ( ask myself what keyword will my client use ).
2. Created a page title and a meta description that included those keywords.
3. Made sure the the first paragraph on my page includes my targeted keywords.
4. Made sure all my images had alt tags and my links had title tags.
5. Used little to No flash.
6. Kept things table less.
7. Validated all my html and css ( http://validator.w3.org ).
8. I patiently watched my analytics.

This paid off because I kept things natural. When the search engine indexed my site it saw that it was well coded and there was keyword continuity on all pages. I was happy with this result and now I am working on “RI web development” in the same fashion. But woody I did what you suggested and it did not work? well maybe your market is super competitive or you aimed for a keyword that is too broad or you did one of the following:

1. You duplicated content ( is ok to quote another site, but don’t copy content).
2. You have 10 domains going to your site ( is called a 301 redirect use it ).
3. You went and submitted your web design business to a tattoo artist directory ( you want back links from relevant pages ).
4. Your hosting your site at a $3 shared host who also hosts spammers. ( bad neighborhood )
5. You got inpatient and completely changed your content around. ( I’ll get some comments about this )
6. You got inpatient and paid a guy named Sam to spam your link on blogs.
7. Your urls are not friendly (index.php?id=89&page=34 <- is not friendly)

I don’t claim to know the inner workings of the number one search engine in the world but I know web standards, if you follow them and you are patient; you will get results. This is what is tried and true, anything else is a gimmick that will yield temporary results and or get you banned completely.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 1:30 am and is filed under SEO, Web Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.