Seo 101

Hi People,

Below follows a little compilation that I've created over the span of 2004-2005. The original article can be found at the Odd Circle Website if you'd like to see the updates. The document is very basic since I didn't have the time yet to elaborate much on diverse subjects like link-sharing and PPC. Please refer to the original document for updates on that. Comments are welcome.

Aloha,
/Eddy

Search Engine Optimization 101


ORIGINAL SEO 101 DOCUMENT
Copyright Odd Circle Development 2004-2006

This particular page deals with optimizing your site for search engines. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This article deals with how to have your pages better accessible in a search engine like Google, Yahoo!, MSN or AltaVista. There are many myths going around the internet that certain SEO techniques are totally irrelevant. We're here to see if that's true and how you can use this for your site. These rules apply to (almost) any website no matter what the content. So stick the virtual wrench in your site's source when you're totally informed. This document will be updated and new additions will be added periodically. I'm not planning on updating this post right now.

1. Keyword Meta tags
Some people say that Meta tags in your html code don't do anything at all, some say the opposite. Well, if you rely on Google to bring you all the traffic, you might want to ignore keywords, but it never hurts to include them at all. Choosing keywords comes down to relevancy and modesty in the amount of keywords. Don't use more than 25 keywords at all times. For example, your name is John Smith and you have a web site that deals with selling art through the internet. Keywords like: "johnsmith.com Good Art Here"; are useless. Google already knows that you are John Smith if you state that somewhere on your web site. Especially if your domain name is johnsmith.com to generate these keywords; look through your text and see which words pop up the most. If you have a paragraph like:



Considering the text above, you might consider keywords like so:
John Smith, Surrealism, Photo realism, Picasso, van Gogh, Monet, 20th century art, catalogue

2. Other header-HTML tags

2.1 Page-Title Tag - <title>
A good title tag is a good start for optimizing your web site. Search engines search mostly by content and title tags so be very picky about the actual title. Yet there is a limit in length that you can use. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) states that a title tag can't be more than 60-80 characters because of the size of the window. Yet if you go to Google and check the length of the top10 titles in your search results they are usually not longer than 35 characters. Furthermore the highest ranking pages usually have a brief context-rich title so you can instantly see what the content is about. So if we take the example provided in 'Keywords,' an optimized title would be: "John Smith: 20th Century Art" and for the shopping cart section: "John Smith: 20th Century Art Store." The word 'Online' is redundant since everything on the internet is online just like the .com (dot com) extension, so "JohnSmith.com: 20th Century Art Online" would be deprecated / obsolete.


2.2 Meta Description tag
The Description tag is an important factor for many Search Engines. Google will display this piece of text directly underneath your Website's title on the Search-Result page. Choose your keywords wisely while compiling this piece of text.

3. Smart Content

3.1 Spell Checking

Whatever you do, make sure to check your document for any typos and make sure that your abbreviations are right. This is because Google and other search-engines browse through your content and index your site on behalf of it. If you don't believe me try searching Google for: "homepge" (http://google.com/search?q=homepg)

3.2 Front-Page Friendliness

Make sure that your front page (index.php) contains a welcome message that clearly states the reason / content of your website. Search engines fetch your front-page first and then go on to the rest of your site. This happens through 'clicking' links that are on your front page that link to other pages. Put the most important information in the first paragraph of your website. It is believed
that search engines spider the top of the page with more importance.

3.3 W3C Compliance

Make yourpages W3C compliant. W3C is the group that sets the standard for web-languages such as HTML, XML, RSS, etc. This means if you're creating a document that is supposed to be 100% strict HTML 4.01 compliant, you can't end a parent tag before you close the child tag. Meaning:



The above is a 100% illegal action. It should be:



Even though it might show up in your browser as 'good' HTML, it is not. To check this, go to the W3C HTML Validator* and check the outcome. If your page is full of errors try fixing them immediately. W3C compliance is important on any web pageunder any conditions. If you have Forums and/or BLOGs on your site, it's hard to control this (because of user-input) yet the front end should remain 100%
compliant. You should also take care of empty tags / containers. If you have this in your code: '<font></font>' you know what to do. This happens a lot in WYSIWYG editors such as Dreamweaver, FrontPage etc.
* = W3C HTML Validator: http://validator.w3.org

3.4 News Feeds

News Feeds - Usually RSS or ATOM feeds - are handy files (written in an XML syntax) to get your website indexed thoroughly. Basically, RSS & ATOM feeds carry information that you've entered on your website or BLOG to any device that can process it. Such devices are: Yahoo! Search, Google Search, and dozens of
syndication websites. There are several tools online to create these feeds if you don't have a dynamic website, but the best way is to generate these feeds yourself.
The first thing you should do is submit your RSS/ATOM feed into Google's Sitemap (Google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/) program. This program allows Google Search to spider your website on a frequent basis resulting in fresh content and maximum exposure.

3.5 Other HTML-tags

The <h> tags will slightly increase your Google rank. Bold text will also slightly increase your rank (more so than regular text.) You should always provide an "alt"-option-tag in your images this for W3C compliance and slight search engine optimization. (more keywords)

3.6 Inbound Text
Inbound text (the inner-text that defines your link) should always be optimized. Links shouldn't be: "click here," they should be like: "3.5 Other HTML tags." Remember: search engines travel by links, so link properly and with keywords.


4. Site Wide Optimization

4.1 Site Maps (Non-Google)

This is handy for search engines as well as for the actual end-user: create a site-map. A site-map is a page containing all of the links (to major pages) on your site. When the search engine finds this page it 'auto-magically' spiders all the linked pages.

4.2 robots.txt
robots.txt is a small file so tell the search engine where not to enter. This is handy if you want to exclude an admin area or another folder / file from the search results. Yet if you have:



In your root folder, no search engine will find any page on your website. This is because this is a restriction to the root-folder.

4.3 Update very often

Update your website very often, this for two reasons: end-users stay interested (more traffic) and the search engine won't think that your website is dead and gone. Furthermore, more news means a live RSS feed.

4.4 Interesting Content

Write about interesting topics; don't write monotonous paragraphs that go on and on repeating the same thing. Try to differentiate your website from others by offering 'exclusive' content.



Something like this means less traffic = less linkage = lower page rank.

4.5 Don't use Hidden / non-descriptive content

You might have seen this phenomenon in while searching for a specific web page. A totally 'blank' website filled with hidden text. DON'T do this! You might risk the chance of being removed from a specific search engine by doing this. Also don't use words that describe pornographic content in your keywords if your site is about hamburgers. You'll face the same removal risk with this one.

4.6 Long Articles: Table of Contents

If you have a very long article (like this one), use a table of contents. 1. for the end-user and 2, for search engines. More descriptive links = more traffic.

ORIGINAL DOCUMENT

Very informative, thank you.

google and most other major SEs don't care about W3C
have you tried to see if google.com is W3C valid?

I agree.

However, it's always good to have a clean code and as less markup as possible. If you code W3C compliant you mostly achieve that, but of course it can be achieved otherwise, too, even better in some cases.

Nice 101 though, good work!

Those two things have nothing to do with eachother. Whether their own code is valid is their problem, but has nothing to do with their search bots.

And yes, they (read: most s-engines) most likely do care about the W3C, albeit indirectly, because it's easier for their respective bots to find information from websites that have structurally valid HTML; ie: proper inheritance (not "<foo><bar></foo></bar>"), proper tag attributes, relevant meta tags (although in decline), and so forth.