Web Design Tutorials Made Easy

When a lot of people hear the term “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization), they start thinking about how they could “outsmart” Google or any of the other search engines in order to get their page to the top. In fact, many so-called “SEO experts” try to do this very thing.

Google even warns about this:

SEO is an abbreviation for “search engine optimizer.” Many SEOs provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted. However, a few unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results.

They then continue on for a whole page on what to look for when hiring SEO experts.

Obviously not all SEO is “unethical,” as otherwise they wouldn’t have a page giving tips on how to find good SEO experts or a whole page of webmaster guidelines.

But if good SEO isn’t about outsmarting search engines, then what is it about? It’s about working with them.

Search engines aren’t dumb (well ok…the good ones aren’t), but you still have to tell them what your content is about. And that’s what SEO is all about—letting search engines know what your content is so they can properly rank you. Which, if you’ve got good content, should be pretty close to the top.

How to achieve this?

Work. Nobody said SEO is easy, and if somebody did they’ve been cheating.

Standards, semantics, clean code, and quality links (be careful with this one by making sure to closely follow Google’s guidelines) are all great things to help search engines understand your content.

Make sure your titles contain your most important keywords but aren’t so vague that you will be competing for highly competitive keywords. By nice to your readers and make sure they understand what you’re saying as well. Remember, if they can’t make sense of your titles when seeing you up on the top of the SERPs, what makes you think they’re still going to click it?

When writing your code, keep it clean. Generally speaking, the closer to the top your content is the more important search engines will view it as. This is one reason why it can be helpful to use external stylesheets and JavaScript files—it takes a bunch of crap out of your code. Granted, sites can still rank great while using tons of tables, inline styles, and JavaScript; but it’s still a good general practice whether you want good rankings or not.

Tying in with clean code, yet even more important, is semantics. This is one way to actually tell search engines what is important on your page. Writing a paragraph? Use a set of <p></p> tags, not some text with a bunch of <br /> tags in the middle. Writing that ever-so-important header? Use an <h1> or <h2> tag. This can really up your rankings on SEs like MSN, so don’t overlook this and be careful when writing them out (many of the same guidelines one would use when writing titles would apply here). Need a list of something (such as for navigation)? Use a list.

Now I can just hear some of you saying, but those are ugly! Then style them for crying out loud. Want your <h1> tag to appear as an image? Pick your favorite image replacement technique.

Before we go on to the ever-important backlinks, I want to address a common misconception about how Google uses them. It’s not quantity that matters, but quality. Places that offer free-for-all links (otherwise called linkfarms) for the main purpose of upping your PR will only harm you. Search engines are going to be looking at your backlinks to decide what kind of content you have—so the wording of the links and the sites that are providing them matter. The more important the sites linking to you, the more important those links will be considered. Do not try to buy or sell links for the purpose of transferring Google PR—several sites have already had their PR frozen for selling links like this.

Last of all, use common sense. Don’t cheat, don’t be a poser and tell a search engine you’re a poker authority when you’re trying to sell golf clubs, and be clear.

Now don’t expect your rankings to jump overnight. This takes both time and patience, and is not a get-rich-quick scheme. But with work and time, you can start ranking high. When that happens, do me a favor and shoot an email to those self-claimed SEO experts and teach ‘em a lesson.