SEO Essentials
Search Engine Optimization is a hot topic amongst web-masters at the moment.
There is always vast and varied discussions about SEO and many different approaches and opinions on the subject.
The most common SEO tip you will here is link-building – there are hundreds of companies that provide these services – most of them now use the term “ethical Link-building” or “ethical SEO” – Allthough there is such a thing, in my opinion this has become nothing more than a buzz word and ethical SEO is a lot more complex than just 3-way link building that is so popular at the moment.
In actual fact, link-building is one of the last things that should be focused on, and actually isn’t really deployable until your website is spot on in every other area.
Things you should focus on before link-building
- Content – this is REALLY important; content needs to be fresh and original, the biggest mistake is copying text from another site – go through all of your sites content (print it out) and update it – make it interesting to read. Google favours original content and you will see great benefits from producing it.
- Design – This donsnt mean bright colours, flash-animation and floating menus, it means implimenting a clean fresh layout that is fluent throughout your site and makes your visitors experience an enjoyable one (look up UX or user experience for more information). The important things are using structured content – headings, paragraphs etc. Using a simple menu that is the same on all pages and that enables your visitors to navigate easily to any page on your website.
- Coding standards - All website languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc) have standards – for example, the HTML standard is set out at W3c.org and you can validate your HTML here. Writing valid code has SO MANY benefits, to name a few: it greatly increases the chance of your site displaying correctly in most common browsers, it minimizes errors, it makes you stand out to major search engines such as Google and there are many more advantages.
- Google Webmaster Tools – Although people say Google is secretive and are always trying to “crack” Google, they actually tell you a great deal about there search algorithms and how your site is indexed and displayed – you just need to look carefully. Opening a Google Webmaster account is a great place to start – you can submit sitemaps, check for indexing errors, see how many pages are currently indexed and there is also an abundance of information available about best practises for search engine optimisation.
- Keep your site fresh – its not enough just doing all of the things above. If you want your website to be successful, it needs to be kept up to date – add new articles/information or news, write a blog about whats happening in your industry – if your website is stagnant, it will not stay in the search engines.
So where is link-building?
Link-building is dead in my opinion. The days of trading links for mutual benefit are gone. When your site is first launched Google will give you some credit (A site I own has PR2 and it isnt linked anywhere, it is not visited either).
Google Favours
- Outbound links that are not reciprocated – If you come across a website that is interesting and you think it would be useful to your visitors, link to it
- Inbound links that are not reciprocated – This is why I said link-building is the last thing you should do – If you publish interesting content people WILL link to you, and when they do of their own accord, its much better than trading links.
Google Dislikes
- Reciprocal linking – If you trade links for the very purpose of building back-links, Google will ignore these links – they’re clever!
- Useless directories – Google will ignore links if they appear amongst thousands of other links in a directory
- 3-way linking – this may fool Google at the moment, but not for long, if you participate in these schemes, they will do no good in the long term – you’ll just find that your linking to a load of rubbish sites that are desperate to get visitors, and a load of rubbish sites are linking to you that were probably created JUST to link to sites like yours!!
Comments are welcome on this subject!!…
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