Search Engine Optimization: What Works Now?
Recently, a client asked us to review a report entitled “Web Site Optimization”. The report was written by an SEO consultant and it reviewed a web site that we had recently redesigned for this client and provided a set of recommendations. After I read the report and had a chance to reflect on its contents, it occurred to me that much of the search engine optimization landscape has changed in the past few years. Recommendations that were appropriate a few years ago may not be useful anymore.
First and foremost, content is king. Search engine and their spiders, crawlers, indexers, etc. are much more intelligent now that they were even a year or two ago. Techniques such as keyword stuffing, cloaking and landing (or doorway) pages aren’t as effective and may actually penalize web sites. Write quality content that your users will find beneficial. Now,
Second, links to other high-quality web sites are good. It’s the same advice that your parents gave you when you were younger. If you hang out with good kids, chances are good that you’ll be pulled along with them. If you decide to be friends with the “bad” kids, you’re also going to be dragged down with them. Well, the same basic concept is true with SEO. First, let me provide an brief explanation about Google’s PageRank and why high quality backlinks matter. The concept of PageRank is a fundamental part of Google and its powerful search engine. Basically, PageRank is a methodology which uses the basic concept of the internet, hyperlinks between documents, at the core of deciding what web sites and pages are most relevant when processing a search request.
Third, use tools (and techniques) provided by major search engines offer to allow your web site to be more easily indexed. Since Google is the 800-pound search engine gorilla, I’ll focus on their Google Sitemaps tool for a moment. A Google Sitemap file is an XML file that describes the structure of your web site. There are other attributes that you can use to describe how content on your web site is structured, how frequently it updates, and what sections are more important than others.
Fourth, follow certain basic techniques or rules of thumb to insure that search engines can easily find, index and categorize your site. All of you probably are familiar with these rules. Don’t use frames. Use META tags. Make sure that all of your images have ALT tags. Use a robots.txt file to indicate what should (and more importantly, what shouldn’t) be indexed by well-behaved spiders.
A discussion of SEO techniques would not be complete without a list of references for further reading. Hyperlinking is the fundamental building block of the world wide web, right? I find the following authors, web sites and pages helpful: