Posts Tagged ‘SEOmoz’

SEO Theory 101: Tips, Tricks, and Tools

Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Search Engine Optimization is something tough to get your head around if you’re new to it.  There are two main ways in which people go about SEO.  The first is using white hat methods, and the other is using black hat methods.  Personally I choose to use white hat methods that I know will work today, and a year from now.  Some black hat methods may work today, but Google is smart enough to detect it down the road.

Today pretty much all the information you ever need is found on the internet.  I find a problem learning SEO is that there are so many bogus non-educated people out there pretending to know the secret bullet to get to the top of Google.  You have to realize that there is no secret way to the top.  Below I share all the knowledge I have on this issue, as well as some tools to make the job easier.

The On-Page factors

These are the factors that you the developer have direct access over.  The following are several key areas to give extra weight to your targeting keywords:

  1. Title tag – probably the most important tag to optimize as this defines the content to follow
  2. Meta Description – Google uses this as a teaser when it displays your listings.  Grab the users’ attention here.
  3. Meta Keywords – arguably not that important these days as it has been used to spam search engines and Google now relies on its own intelligence to determine prominent keywords
  4. Headings (h1, h2) – I still see a lot of designers avoiding these tags for the sake of the presentation of a website.  Remember CSS can format these to your desire, but remember to mark-up your content semantically first.  H1 holds the most important, H2 the second, etc…
  5. Alt / Title Text - Remember Google can’t find text within images, so it is important to provide alt text.  This also provides accessibility for those users using screen readers.
  6. First 100 Words – The first 100 words is what will in the end attract a visitor or drive them away.  Google knows this and places precedence to this content.

Other general suggestions is avoid inline styling or JavaScript as all it does is make the mark-up more complex and gives Google less actual content to index.

Off-Page Factors

Off page factors are what really drive me nuts sometimes.  These are factors that you can’t always control.  The following are a couple to keep in mind:

  1. Link building – I guess this would be a logical place to start.  Link Building is tough, time-consuming work.  The usual way to get people to link to you is to create great, unique content.  Black Hats would argue that doing lots of link exchanges and joining link farms would be beneficial.  I on the other hand would say it is better to build your back links gradually, and focus on quality not quantity.
  2. Domain age – register your domain for 5-10+ years.  This tells Google that you are not one of those spammers that signs up a domain for a year and then lets it die.

I know I have probably missed a few points in regards to general SEO tips, but there are plenty of good blogs out there to keep you up-to-date in the SEO war.

Lastly I am going to recommend to you the following tools, as you embark on the journey to the top of Google!

Firefox Plug-ins
Web Applications
Desktop Software

Got any other tools or tips you employ? Let me hear them in the comments below!

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