SEO - Is there a Magic Wand?
Wed Apr 6, 2011
Author: Doug McDonald, Lead Developer UVS
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving visibility of a website in search engines by the natural un-paid "organic" search results. SEO looks at how the different search engines work, what is being searched for, and the terms entered into the engines. You can optimize a website by editing its content and html along with associated code to increase it's relevance to keywords and to remove barriers the search engines might run into when indexing your pages. There is much to be debated about SEO techniques due to most search engines not disclosing their ranking algorithms.
To start things off lets address the issue of Google or other organizations certifying SEO companies or declaring one better than the other. Contrary to what some SEO companies would tell you, there is no such thing as an SEO certification. No organizations exist that can certify that a company is qualified to perform search engine optimization services. There are no tests that a SEO company can take to prove that they are qualified. In addition there there are no courses that will prove that a company can do SEO. There are courses people can take that when passed they will receive a certificate of completion. Remember this only means that they completed some course and should not be focused on. There are directories where SEO companies can pay to be labeled the "#1 SEO company" or to receive awards. Don't let these directories or awards fool you into thinking that the SEO company must be good. Ask for a list of their clients or do some research and find some of their clients and see where they rank.
This article is not to discount SEO companies just to make you aware of some simple changes you can make to your site to improve SEO while avoiding some of the mis-information.
Meta tags are a hot topic and some people believe they matter others that they don't. The truth is that they have be so abused by spammers that the engines don't put any stock in them. They are used but their weight in the searching algorithms is very low. Page content is more important than meta tags. Search engines will return results based on their perceived relevancy to the search phrase. The more relevant your site appears to be the higher your listing will appear. This involves more than simply repeating phrase or term several times. Make the title and heading tags use the search phrase you are aiming for and have the keywords you want in the text content of the page.
Flash can be used when creating a site but should be limited. Don't use flash for primary navigation or for textual content. Keep your textual content separate and use Flash to enhance the user experience. You lose semantic markup when you put content in Flash. You can't tell search engines it's bold, a headline, etc. You will lose those signals to the ranking algorithms.
Clean URLs (http://www.website.com/rv/keystone/fifthwheel/103/Keystone_Montana_3000_RK) are a nice way of presenting a url to users but some people consider this "cloaking" and is thus risky. This is not true, if your intentions are honorable, then there is nothing wrong with rewriting the urls in this fashion. You are helping the engines by removing session IDs, tracking parameters and other superfluous parameters from the URLs across your site and adding relevant information about the site.
Site speed can impact ranking. It's not dramatic, but it is important. It also impacts user behavior and the search engines are looking at far more data every day about how users interact with sites.
Search engines will look at your CSS code. Things like hidden divs can work against your ranking.
JavaScript-based links will be followed. Google engineers have stated that they are crawling JavaScript links more-and-more. Don't rely on Google parsing your JavaScript links, but don't assume it will choke on them either.
These tips are just scratching the surface of SEO but will get you pointed in the right direction and begin improving your ranking. Do some research, there is tons of free information about SEO on the internet. Before paying a SEO company try some things out for yourself and see how high you can get your site ranking. I think you will be surprised by how adjusting some page content can improve your organic ranking.
