SEO 2.0 Tips and Tricks for Designers and Developers.
Design
I’m still surprised how many articles there are on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). People often ask: “What is the trick?” The answer is simple - there is no trick, rather a few simple rules. So, pay attention and quit looking for shortcuts because there aren’t any.
Choose a domain name that is not indexed.
You want to start with a fresh name so try to find something that is not already in Google’s index. This often happens when you register a domain that may have been active not that long ago. Check here to see if your site has already been indexed.
A good friend of ours ran a successful web design company for many years under the domain EBusiness-Apps.com. However, E-Business applications were everywhere and didn’t leave them very much room to stand out. When the company decided to re-brand and launch as Nitobi, they were clean and clear in Google’s eyes and able to make a fresh start.
Metadata.
Metadata is very important and often overlooked by designers and developers. The title, description, and keyworks should be different on every page. Do not get in a habit of including a header file that dumps in the same content on every page. Rather, create a function that has three string parameters, title, desc, and keywords. The content in your metadata should appear several times in the body/content area of the page.
Use clear markup.
Web 2.0 is all about style, but let’s not get carried away. Traditional inline styles like h1 – h6, strong, and hrefs can all be replaced with span and JavaScript, but that will not do anything for your page rank. These tags are called text weight, and any words weighted more should be keywords and appear in your meta. One other note: “click here” are not keywords, so don’t use them in your hrefs.
XHR and SEO
XHR or Ajax is a huge part of Web 2.0, but that content is not indexed. Unless that content is hard linked on some other page, don’t rely on it helping your page rank. Consider having the content available as full pages and link that to your sitemap. When creating your sitemap, remember the new standard that is being established.
What is in a name?
Don’t forget your domain name, directory name, and file names are all weighted higher so use them, too.
Lastly, lets get fancy.
Dynamic content or database driven content should use mod_rewrite to change to friendly urls. For example:
www.example.com/viewcat.php?id=5
would be better described as
www.example.com/category/books/
In our example we wanted to view a category 5 which translates to books. This can easly be setup with some forward thinking. Here is a great article on how this can be setup.
Post Lanuch
Now that your site is live, SEO is even more important!
Make sure you manually add your site to the big three - Yahoo!, Microsoft/Live Search, and Google. It is easy to buy some magical software package that will automatically include your website in 1000’s of search engines – don’t be fooled. After the search engines are done, move onto directories and submit your site there. This will take a lot of work, but it is critical and worth it! Check Google for a list of free directories.
Forums, blogs, emails, and all other marketing material should have your domain name, brand, and logo on it. Make sure you are building relationships with other people in the industry, and work on keeping your content fresh. Make sure you give your site time to grow, and don’t be tempted to change everything when you don’t see results right away. It can take up to 4 months before results start pouring in – Be patient.
Further Reading
I hope you have enjoyed this article. Please check out the following great resources for more information on SEO:
Matt Cutts - Matt Cutts works for the quality group of Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues.
SEOMoz.org - SEOmoz is a Seattle-based SEO company that provides SEO/Web Marketing services to companies around the world and serves as an educational and news hub for the SEO/M Community.