June 19, 2008
Some basics of honest SEO everybody should follow
While I hate dishonest SEO, the honest form serves a valuable purpose. And so I prepared a basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tip list that virtually every enterprise should follow. To wit:
Refine your objectives
- Figure out who you’re trying to reach, and what they’re likely to be looking for.
- Figure out which keywords you want to and can rank for.
Participate in the web
- Figure out who’ll gladly link to you, and get those links.
- Start and promote satellite websites.
- Provide SEO help to your business partners.
Clean up your website
- Make sure your listing looks attractive in the search engine results
- Use static URLs, with keywords
- Have a clean linking structure
- No forced Flash intros
- No frames
- Limited tables (<div> is better)
- Sitemap
- Pluck the HTML low-hanging fruit
- Use your <ALT> tags
- Use <nofollow> tags
I’ve spelled this out in a couple of posts on my new Network World blog, A World of Bytes. That’s right, folks. The five blogs I own — and the two others I’ve set up just for SEO purposes 😉 — aren’t enough. When Network World pinged and asked me to do yet another, I couldn’t resist.
Related links:
- Basic search engine optimization (SEO) steps EVERY enterprise should take (Part 1 — overview)
- Basic search engine optimization (SEO) steps EVERY enterprise should take (Part2 — technical details)
- Some good SEO advice that boils down to “be realistic”
Comments
3 Responses to “Some basics of honest SEO everybody should follow”
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Thanks for the post.
This post will help the enterprises and freshers of this field to some rules and tips for search engine ranking.
I heard a little SEO hint at BarCampBoston. If your company has a blog, do not make up a new domain name for it. Put it underneath your company’s own domain name, e.g. http://www.mygreatcompany.com/blog. That way, so I’m told, links to it help SEO your main site.
It’s a very simple thing, but apparently a lot of people don’t know it.
Dan,
I’m in vehement disagreement with that hint.
1. To a first approximation, it doesn’t matter. Pages get search engine respect, not sites, except in extreme cases good and bad.
2. Having a separate domain lets you optimize the blog better, for readers and search engines alike. For example, http://www.thetruthaboutwidgets.com is a better URL for SEO than http://www.acme.com/blog. And http://www.thetruthaboutwidgets.com/green-ohio-frobulators is definitely a better URL than http://www.acme.com/blog/node/17.
3. It’s not just URLs. Title tags and description tags (the two metatags that matter) are apt to be more beneficial as well.
4. Realistically, standalone blogs wind up being more “blog-like” than blogs integrated into sites. One gets more involved in the blog community with them. Marklogic’s and Vertica’s off-main-site blogs are more successful than any on-site company blogs I know, except at very prominent outfits like Sun or else at blog/social-media technology companies.
I could go on, but I’ll spare you … 🙂
Best,
CAM