I found the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (publicly posted just a year ago on Nov. 13 2008) very helpful for getting my head around SEO, a concept I’ve heard and only basically understood.
Interestingly enough, I found the pdf by clicking the SECOND link after my Google search (before I realized it was on Blackboard..oops). At the top of the article was a link to the guide.
I really felt the following quote was the ultimate guiding principle of SEO:
“base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what's best for the visitors of your site.” This .pdf made a great point about not worrying so much how to get your site at the top of the search results, but make sure that the rare, odd, and even strange people who will want to come to your website for people with a vampire fetish can find your portal before sunrise, and not, say, aim to inundate general vampire enthusiasts with their sordid ways.
Using unique titles also seemed like a really easy, strong way to increase SEO - both by putting the name of the site and also describing the main content of each page. So easy it’s painful to think of sites not doing!
By providing quality content and unique content, you can easily translate the design into social media buzz. Bloggers will heap on the encomiums; you’ll soon have a facebook fan page (not sure the practicality of that, but to FB users they’ll see you have a following and can register on Google like personal accounts do). Depending on how often your content changes or what type of content/services you provide, a twitter account could work for you, gaining greater exposure.
The idea of metadata also seems really easy to do.
What’s fascinating, to me, is the idea of breaking out of the “sandbox” which Search Result No. 9 and SEO blogger Patrick Gavin (soon to launch a site called DIYSEO.com) talks about here. SEO seems to be about breaking out of dev databases and into the live search results. A process Gavin distills to “quality links + time” after observing that Google releases sites in batches into their live results from tracking databases. Perhaps for the depth of links and titles about SEO, the other results appearing before Gavin were for firms you could hire for SEO, not necessarily the good resources you'd like to read to learn more about it. Interestingly, Google also talks about things to watch out for when looking to do SEO and what some unethical people are doing out there here.
It seems that this notion - of increasing SEO - relates back to that principle of design that remains meaningful across media: keep it simple. Make the words clear, concise and write with an audience in mind - how will they use your site (hierarchy), what will they likely be looking for (simplicity in navigation and in the copy you use). Functionality!
NOTE: Wikipedia was number one, and I resent that and also plan to protest by not using anything from it in the writing of this post.
SECOND NOTE: I feel as if this is surprisingly un-witty and entertaining. For that I apologize.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
"quality links + time" --
ReplyDeleteI must have missed this when I was reading. It's a great point, because just like anything else we have learned in designing a website, working in code and working in css, you have to make sure efforts towards being concise, clear and simple are there to get what you want out of a website.
For SEO, creating links and tags that expand well to all audiences, requires a lot of research, and more importantly, quality links.
What the pdf and everything else that I read suggests is that simplicity is best. Trickery not only annoys the user but can get you in trouble with the big bad press.
ReplyDelete