Im starting out in the big bad world of web development, and from what I have been reading lately, SEO is NOT the place to start, but Im afraid that its where I have to start seeing as though that is what I will be paid to do..... so!
I know we have a bunch of SEO gurus here, and Im not asking for trade secrets (if there are any?) But Im just looking for a place to get going, get my teeth into the damn thing and move on from there. Right now Im looking at a book that Im going to get this afternoon, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, Obviously Im not going to use an hour a day like a totaly noob, but it seems to be a good starting point!
What do you guys think, and if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please help a brother out!
Full Version: SEO Starting out
Custom Search
www.seochat.com
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.webmasterworld.com
www.searchengines.com
great resources
as a starting point... err fuck there isnt really a starting point because there are just so many things to take into consideration but here are the best tips I can give you.
my top 25 tips
1 .Make sure you have a site map
2. Make sure your code and css are valid (xhtml transitional or nothing)
3. make sure your site is hosted on a fast server (surprisingly, hardware plays a huge role in ranking, if your site is slow and the hosting server is taking strain, the search engine spiders will report back to the search engines that your site is sow to respond and will will give your site negative rankings)
4. keep your pages small in size, use small , optimized images
5. dont try any smart "black hat" techniques like doorway pages
6. make sure all your links are valid
7. keep incoming links high and outgoing links low
8. get links from sites that are associated with your site , a link from a baby food comany's site wont help your car website
9. make sure ALL pages are linked to each other through a daisy chain effort, 1 links to 2 , 2 links to 3 and so on.
10. stay away from using flash or javascript for menu navigation, flash and javascript are difficult for spiders to understand. instead use text links. Plain old html is still king.
11. create "clusters" of pages that all link to your central home page with relevant information on each page with emphasis on 1 particular keyword or phrase. for instance. you have a site thats dedicated to sweets. have your main home page optimized for a theme : "sweets", you need to mention the word sweet and synonyms a few times.
Then create sub pages, LINKED TO from your home page . each sub page should then be optimized for "specific" keywords relating to your central theme. Hard boiled sweets, toffee sweets, choclates, makes of choclates, brands etc
the more specific you get the better for your ranking.
this means creating literally DOZENS of pages.
12. your keywords need to appear in the meta tags for both description and keywords as well as in the page title and a h1 header. a lot of people neglect to add a h1 because it is big. Use css to resize it smaller, have at least 1 h2 and 1 h3 . They need to be nested correctly
h3 under h2 under h1
13. do a search for the keyword thats relevant to you, take the top 5 sites and check each site's code and copy it as best you can.
14. you cant get marked as a spammer if you submit your sites as often as you like to search engines. This is a common myth. If that was the case, your competition would spam the search engines daily with your sites address.
15. DO NOT USE AJAX
on pages that you want to submit
16. submit individual pages as well as your home page to search engines.
17. friendly urls !!! make sure you get this :
http://www.mysite.com/index.aspx?article_i...id=5?submit=yes
into this :
http://www.mysite.com/sports/babyjake_wins_again.html
18. avoid using more than 2 dashes in domain names and urls
ie www.my-totally-freekin-hot-site-rocks.com is a huge fucking no no
19. Avoid using subdomains. http://sweets.mysite.com <-- rather not.
instead use directories
www.mysite.com/sweets <-- much better
20. spend 2 hours a day reading the sites mentioned above.
21 You need a blog associated with your site. ( www.mysite.com/blog )
You need to link from the blog back to your main site and you need to update the blog at least once a day, Content is King.
This will help the search engines spider your site more often.
22.you also need a video on youtube with links back to your site and links from your site back to the video.
you also need a map and phone numbers
If you see Google's new SERPS when searching for anything imaginable, you'll see sites with assocaited videos are starting to come up in the rankings
for instance do a google for "Shakira" 4th result is a video
23. You also need an image gallery, same reason as above.
24. dont bother trying to optimize for yahoo, ask msn or any other Search engine, concentrate on Google alone and the rest will follow, although DO submit your site to as many other search engines as possible.
25. Get listed on the Yahoo directory (not the search engine) as well as on DMOZ.org
it'll take time but they count as some seriously important links.
there are plenty more small tips and tricks but I'm tired and my head hurts.
If anyone disputes any of these tips I have given you, you can tell them to fuck off and that Bruce Clay
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Clay ) taught me these.
Good Luck!
oh , 1 last thing, dont call your home page "home" in your menu and use the anchor tag "home page" or "home"
if you have to, use a small image of a house and change the anchor text and URL to "sweet fantasy" or something thats relevant. linking to home page is not gonna help you.
and avoid using "click here" with a hyperlink on it , instead use something meaningful like "more information on SWEETS"
because why ?
because the search term "click here" JUST happens to point to adobe's website.
any idea why ?
because 8 gazzilion people all pointed their sites to adobe's web site with the following text
"click here to download adobe acrobat reader"
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.webmasterworld.com
www.searchengines.com
great resources
as a starting point... err fuck there isnt really a starting point because there are just so many things to take into consideration but here are the best tips I can give you.
my top 25 tips
1 .Make sure you have a site map
2. Make sure your code and css are valid (xhtml transitional or nothing)
3. make sure your site is hosted on a fast server (surprisingly, hardware plays a huge role in ranking, if your site is slow and the hosting server is taking strain, the search engine spiders will report back to the search engines that your site is sow to respond and will will give your site negative rankings)
4. keep your pages small in size, use small , optimized images
5. dont try any smart "black hat" techniques like doorway pages
6. make sure all your links are valid
7. keep incoming links high and outgoing links low
8. get links from sites that are associated with your site , a link from a baby food comany's site wont help your car website
9. make sure ALL pages are linked to each other through a daisy chain effort, 1 links to 2 , 2 links to 3 and so on.
10. stay away from using flash or javascript for menu navigation, flash and javascript are difficult for spiders to understand. instead use text links. Plain old html is still king.
11. create "clusters" of pages that all link to your central home page with relevant information on each page with emphasis on 1 particular keyword or phrase. for instance. you have a site thats dedicated to sweets. have your main home page optimized for a theme : "sweets", you need to mention the word sweet and synonyms a few times.
Then create sub pages, LINKED TO from your home page . each sub page should then be optimized for "specific" keywords relating to your central theme. Hard boiled sweets, toffee sweets, choclates, makes of choclates, brands etc
the more specific you get the better for your ranking.
this means creating literally DOZENS of pages.
12. your keywords need to appear in the meta tags for both description and keywords as well as in the page title and a h1 header. a lot of people neglect to add a h1 because it is big. Use css to resize it smaller, have at least 1 h2 and 1 h3 . They need to be nested correctly
h3 under h2 under h1
13. do a search for the keyword thats relevant to you, take the top 5 sites and check each site's code and copy it as best you can.
14. you cant get marked as a spammer if you submit your sites as often as you like to search engines. This is a common myth. If that was the case, your competition would spam the search engines daily with your sites address.
15. DO NOT USE AJAX
on pages that you want to submit
16. submit individual pages as well as your home page to search engines.
17. friendly urls !!! make sure you get this :
http://www.mysite.com/index.aspx?article_i...id=5?submit=yes
into this :
http://www.mysite.com/sports/babyjake_wins_again.html
18. avoid using more than 2 dashes in domain names and urls
ie www.my-totally-freekin-hot-site-rocks.com is a huge fucking no no
19. Avoid using subdomains. http://sweets.mysite.com <-- rather not.
instead use directories
www.mysite.com/sweets <-- much better
20. spend 2 hours a day reading the sites mentioned above.
21 You need a blog associated with your site. ( www.mysite.com/blog )
You need to link from the blog back to your main site and you need to update the blog at least once a day, Content is King.
This will help the search engines spider your site more often.
22.you also need a video on youtube with links back to your site and links from your site back to the video.
you also need a map and phone numbers
If you see Google's new SERPS when searching for anything imaginable, you'll see sites with assocaited videos are starting to come up in the rankings
for instance do a google for "Shakira" 4th result is a video
23. You also need an image gallery, same reason as above.
24. dont bother trying to optimize for yahoo, ask msn or any other Search engine, concentrate on Google alone and the rest will follow, although DO submit your site to as many other search engines as possible.
25. Get listed on the Yahoo directory (not the search engine) as well as on DMOZ.org
it'll take time but they count as some seriously important links.
there are plenty more small tips and tricks but I'm tired and my head hurts.
If anyone disputes any of these tips I have given you, you can tell them to fuck off and that Bruce Clay
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Clay ) taught me these.
Good Luck!
oh , 1 last thing, dont call your home page "home" in your menu and use the anchor tag "home page" or "home"
if you have to, use a small image of a house and change the anchor text and URL to "sweet fantasy" or something thats relevant. linking to home page is not gonna help you.
and avoid using "click here" with a hyperlink on it , instead use something meaningful like "more information on SWEETS"
because why ?
because the search term "click here" JUST happens to point to adobe's website.
any idea why ?
because 8 gazzilion people all pointed their sites to adobe's web site with the following text
"click here to download adobe acrobat reader"
dear google, rate my site k tnx bye
thats all you need
thats all you need
I'd agree with just about every point on Paul's list. If you do go for querystrings in your url's, make sure you don't use id. That will drop you even more.
If you do need lot's of outgoing links slap a rel='nofollow' on them, you don't want to bleed pagerank.
But the number one rule for SEO - Content is king. Have lots of it, focussed and specialised on each page. When it comes time to writing content, get a wordtracker.com account and do keyword research. Use the keywords you find in the metatags and the content.
Other than that, www.searchenginewatch.com is your friend.
If you do need lot's of outgoing links slap a rel='nofollow' on them, you don't want to bleed pagerank.
But the number one rule for SEO - Content is king. Have lots of it, focussed and specialised on each page. When it comes time to writing content, get a wordtracker.com account and do keyword research. Use the keywords you find in the metatags and the content.
Other than that, www.searchenginewatch.com is your friend.
oh another thing with regard to rel = "nofollow"
( you write a url like such <a href="http://www.link.com" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a> )
if you are creating "clusters" of pages
lets say you have 4 sections which are clusters around a central theme of sweets, you need to create a "pyramid" of pages working down, linking down
A = chocolates
B = boiled sweets
C = toffees
A1 = dark chocolates
A2 = belgium choclate
etc
B1 = flavoured boiled sweets
B2 = plain boiled sweets
etc
you get the idea?
when linking to a senior page, like the top page of a category from anywhere dont use rel = no follow
say for instance you are linking from B2 to A, or A1 to A or B3 to B or C4 to A then dont use rel = nofollow
but if linking from A2 to B1 then DO use rel = nofollow
you wanna preserve the pagerank within a cluster and only reserve it for outgoing links to top hirearchial pages.
( you write a url like such <a href="http://www.link.com" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a> )
if you are creating "clusters" of pages
lets say you have 4 sections which are clusters around a central theme of sweets, you need to create a "pyramid" of pages working down, linking down
A = chocolates
B = boiled sweets
C = toffees
A1 = dark chocolates
A2 = belgium choclate
etc
B1 = flavoured boiled sweets
B2 = plain boiled sweets
etc
you get the idea?
when linking to a senior page, like the top page of a category from anywhere dont use rel = no follow
say for instance you are linking from B2 to A, or A1 to A or B3 to B or C4 to A then dont use rel = nofollow
but if linking from A2 to B1 then DO use rel = nofollow
you wanna preserve the pagerank within a cluster and only reserve it for outgoing links to top hirearchial pages.
Wow, thanks guys!
Great place to start
Just one Q.... You said dont use anchor text of 'Home', are ther any alternatives to using a picture of a house? I mean (maybe this is obvious) But if my site was called Fantastic Sweets, for instanct, could I use Fantastic Sweets as the anchor text? By doing this, What is going to show up in the sitemap? I mean it would still be called Home on the sitemap, but does that matter?
Great place to start
Just one Q.... You said dont use anchor text of 'Home', are ther any alternatives to using a picture of a house? I mean (maybe this is obvious) But if my site was called Fantastic Sweets, for instanct, could I use Fantastic Sweets as the anchor text? By doing this, What is going to show up in the sitemap? I mean it would still be called Home on the sitemap, but does that matter?
you can do tht
just dont call it home
just dont call it home
Thanks.
I'm just reading on Searchengines dot com and found this:
There's no proof that a heading's size effects rankings.
Obviously this isn't the most recent article, BUT what do you think? You said use h1,h2 and h3 every time if possible, so does it really make a difference?
I'm just reading on Searchengines dot com and found this:
There's no proof that a heading's size effects rankings.
Obviously this isn't the most recent article, BUT what do you think? You said use h1,h2 and h3 every time if possible, so does it really make a difference?
The heading tags should be in every page, they do make a difference. I think they are talking about using css to make an H1 tag different size fonts. A 1.5em or 1em or (16pt vs 20pt) doesn't make a difference. If they do mean heading tags are irrelevant, they're deluded 
Hahaha, ok thanks Rev
Makes a whole lot more sense now!
Makes a whole lot more sense now!
H1 tags are very important
and they MUST include the keyword you are optimizing for
and they MUST include the keyword you are optimizing for
Y0 y0!
Loving it, this is really interesting.
Paul! Sorry man, questions.....
When you say make code and CSS valid, do you mean use something like the W3C markup validator to check for these kinda of errors, or is it something else entirely?
And, you said contact information... Phone numbers and a map. Does this really help them like you more? The map: do you mean like an image, or like a google/mapquest/yahoo map embedded into the page? (which is freaking cool btw, saw it for the first time a week or so ago)
Thanks!
Loving it, this is really interesting.
Paul! Sorry man, questions.....
When you say make code and CSS valid, do you mean use something like the W3C markup validator to check for these kinda of errors, or is it something else entirely?
And, you said contact information... Phone numbers and a map. Does this really help them like you more? The map: do you mean like an image, or like a google/mapquest/yahoo map embedded into the page? (which is freaking cool btw, saw it for the first time a week or so ago)
Thanks!
use the w3c validators, thats what I mean
and google maps would rock.
and google maps would rock.
Thanks man
OOOOOk!
Sorry, another question!
Say I register a restaurant onto a website like accessatlanta.com, and there is a link to its website included, would google count that as an incoming link?
And! How do you stick a google map onto the site itself....
Sorry, another question!
Say I register a restaurant onto a website like accessatlanta.com, and there is a link to its website included, would google count that as an incoming link?
And! How do you stick a google map onto the site itself....
unless your site is a featured one and appears on one of atlanta access's feature stories then no, because a listing on that site needs to be searched for, search engines dont know how to search such sites.
as for the google maps, I have no idea
as for the google maps, I have no idea
Damn 
Thanks
Thanks
Very very interesting. I'm guessing most of Paul's tips were used to build V9 into the site that it is today.
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