SEO - At the Starting Gate

We live amidst a blizzard, a veritable tsunami, of articles, blogs and comments about SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Dig into this avalanche of information and you will find that there is little consensus as to what SEO is all about, indeed with some consultants the definition itself is up for grabs.

This article will not attempt to sort out the controversies, arguments and points of contention between different page design strategies and recommendations that advise how to construct a web page so that it is most attractive as search engine food. Rather this article is one viewpoint, honed through diverse web experiences since the earliest days of the Internet. The audience for this article is: a) individuals who have personal web sites and are interested in more visitor traffic, a greater audience for what is presented; and b) Small Businesses that cannot afford an SEO budget as a discrete line item, indeed have few funds to expend on anything related to marketing. Nonetheless, smarts and considerable hours will allow for a serious SEO campaign, one that is worth the effort and will return the one result that counts above all - more visitor traffic to your personal page or company web site. SEO Resources 1 and SEO Resources 2 for beginner and intermediate level web masters have many links for each topic mentioned in this article. These pages are updated frequently, new links are added monthly.

1. SEO - Search Engine Optimization for Beginners
a) Search Engine Optimization is those techniques that optimize web sites/pages for search engine spiders, code/design approaches that are presumed to make pages most amenable to indexing by search engines, and therefore provide a 'near best fit' to what search engine companies look for as they rank best to worst web sites within relevant categories of knowledge and human activity.
b) "Context is Everything" said Dr. Murphy and this is assuredly the First Law of the Universe, applicable to everything from politics, to personal relationships, to science and best web sites. Page Rank is the term that defines the obvious. Higher the Page Rank, higher is the love that Google or another search engine bestows upon thee. In practical terms, higher Page Rank increase the probability that for your chosen keywords, title phrase and meta tag description, your page will appear nearer the top of the displayed list that is returned on search queries.
c) The Holy Grail of this game is to appear within the first ten listings displayed by Google for a keyword/keyword phrase relevant to your site. However, the playing field is not level. The corporate world and wealthy entities everywhere bid weekly for their important keywords and so greatly influence their Page Rank and by default yours as well.
d) Is SEO Dead? The idea might seem ludicrous, given the premises already set out in this article but it is a subject of serious discussion this winter of 2007. Those suggesting this possibility range from serious SEO professionals with fine career resumes, to the twenty somethings at Digg for whom attitude is all, the attention returned worth its weight it gold, "so let us be outrageous and offend established industry experts" (which they have successfully done recently). Is SEO Dead ? is on the list of those questions not discussed here. If you are interested in the arguments, posts and blog posts are easy to find.

2. What is a Best Web Site?
a) Almost every article you'll read for advice about designing 'best' web pages will start by advising that Content is King. By that phrase is meant Integrity is King. Ideally your web site, be it personal, academic, information reference or business should be a presentation about something you are seriously, passionately interested in.
b) Web gurus detest cynically designed web sites, those sites whose only goal is to make money in any way possible. A common approach is to create web sites that are little more than link farms - dozens if not hundreds of links to products that are believed to have wide appeal. Such sites are little more than web, junk mail flyers and there are thousands if not a few million such sites.
c) Google and Yahoo in particular have recently reworked their search engine algorithms - those enormously sophisticated programs that mandate how a spider works its way through your site and what it chooses to extract and database. This latest generation of search engine algorithms do a superb job attempting to read the human intent behind the search words/phrases that humans use. These algorithms are also quite good at identifying link farms and other species of cynically designed web sites that serve no good purpose (link farms, extreme pornography, extreme violence etc) so that such sites will not be included in search engine databases, and therefore cannot be reached via the usual search engine queries.
d) If you care about something, know something about it, have a serious commitment to sharing that interest with others - be that interest academic/personal or commercial - that you are in the best possible position to create fine content that search engine spiders will eat up for lunch and then stash in their databases so others can find your web site.

3. Plunge into page design . . .
a) Avoid Flash and all other animations if possible because search engines cannot extract useful site info from them except perhaps the title or alt tag for an animated gif. If you must have Flash, then try to place such animation on a secondary page, not on the home page. If you must - for some reason - insist on Flash on the home page, do so in a small dimensioned window that is not above the fold (that upper portion of a web page that does not require scrolling to read.)
b) Remember that Google's search engine programmers are just beginning to tackle the problem of reading Java Script. Assume that anything contained within js cannot yet be read properly by a search engine spider.
c) Do Not Use Frames, they are old fashioned, and they look it.. Also, it is difficult for search engines to penetrate a framed site.
d) Try to keep home page file size to 60K or less so as to minimize load time.
e) CSS (style sheets) and dynamic html give search engine spiders migraine headaches. Basic web pages do not need to use these advanced techniques, try to avoid them wherever possible even though every introduction to web page design attempts to teach the basics of dynamic html. If you can master the technicalities, there is a decrease in overall code footprint for your site but that will not necessarily translate into faster page load times. High end corporate web sites, university level sites and those on similar scale must of necessity use CSS these days but this article is not addressed to that audience.
f) Rigorously minimize file size of all graphics that are loaded from a web server. Web jpgs should be saved at high compression -3/10 - they are after all not intended for hard copy publication. The Paint Shop Pro jpeg optimize tool is very good, better than anything in Photoshop.
g) If you are not working with the generic design basics of white page and black font, choose link, active link and visited link colors very carefully so they are immediately readable.
h) Do not worry about adverts or search boxes driving traffic away from your site. If your site is excellent and content is king, than visitors will return again and again.
i) Learn basic html, learn to write code. If using a program such as Dreamweaver, realize that such programs frequently insert unnecessary code quickly creating a page with code bloat. Read each page's html line by line, learn to recognize unnecessary tags and code and then remove them. Avoid creating 'cells' with such programs using mouse drag because code bloat is unavoidable. Even when carefully editing code in Dreamweaver and its relatives line by line, character by character, html will still be automatically inserted as the program tries to think for you. Proof code carefully, endlessly, and prune relentlessy. Unlike the Yahoo Search Engine, Dreamweaver cannot read my mind :)

4. Tags
a) Much has been written about the death of SEO but don't believe a word of it. Granted some companies have abandoned optimizing pages for SEO, but the bottom line is that most people head for their favorite search engine to find what they want on the Internet. Search engines will never die or go away, therefore optimizing for what they prioritize is incumbent upon all of us.
b) Tags matter, don't ever think they do not. Search engines read the Description Tag and Title Tags and accord them high priority. Spend time to write Title and Description tags according to best standards.
c) Keywords and Keyword Phrases remain very important !! How else can one use a search engine? Research those keywords that are frequently used to find sites with your content themes or commercial products. Don't imagine that you can think of the keywords that other people use with search engines to find sites with your subject matter, themes, products or services. I am widely published in both technical venues and platforms that are oriented towards the general public. Each of my attempts to predict user keywords by which my site might be found has been a near failure.

5. Submit your site monthly - but not more frequently - to at least the three major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN Livesearch.
a) Learn about site maps, their different formats and those preferred by Google and Yahoo search engines. Update your site map whenever page changes are made on your web site, and then upload site maps to Google and Yahoo. Site maps maximize the ease and thoroughness with which a search engine spider can go through your web site, there is no way to minimize their importance. Site Maps are literally maps of a web site, written to a format (xml, txt etc) that search engine spiders can easily digest.
b) Establish a Google Account and use Google WebMaster Tools. There are recent additions to Google WebMaster statistics that are invaluable, particularly Query Stats for Top Search Queries and Top Search Query Clicks. Submit site maps to Google in .xml format according to the recently established standardized format.
c) Likewise establish a Yahoo account so that you can submit site maps directly via Yahoo Search. Note that Yahoo will accept site maps in several formats: rss, txt etc.

6. Advertisers
a) There is much to consider when placing advertising on your site. Many academic sites find any advertising offensive. As they are institution supported, the possible revenue generated is of little concern when weighed against the public face that academia must present.
b) That said, we enter the world of Google Ad Sense which has taken the Internet by storm. If you site is accepted to the Google Ad Sense program, that may be all the advertising needed.
c) Otherwise, it is highly advised to choose advertisers whose products and services are contextual, and have an obvious relationship to your web site content and/or product line. Latest updates to the major search engine spiders are rather good at detecting contextual relevance for advertising, or not, and rewarding the site accordingly with higher or lower page rank. Google's success at delivering contextual ads via Ad Sense is excellent.
d) Look at banner and button ads from a design point of view. Designs that clash with overall page design are best avoided. Advertisers usually provide a variety of banner and button designs to choose between. Examine each closely for best fit within each page design. Many web masters are convinced that text ads call forth greater attention, more clicks per view and therefore greater sales. Likewise ads placed above the fold, indeed at the very top of a page, are believed to be most effective.
e) Pay Per Click is everywhere, including a few companies that attempt to compete against Google. Decide if revenue projections justify providing yet another route by which visitors can quickly and easily leave your site. However, as emphatically stated above, if your site is captivating, genuine and content rich, visitors will return again and again so long as the site is active and new material can be expected from time to time. You will not lose serious visitors or customers to ads or out links.
f) No comment here about Click Fraud, its likely frequency and what can be done about it. There are plenty of articles, stats and comments about this controversy on numerous sites and blogs that watch Google and PPC closely.

7. Digg, Delicious, Squidoo... the Social Web
a) Social book marking sites will never replace search engines, contrary to some recent blog posts. Nonetheless, storing and sharing bookmarks is a very important service and these sites have implemented a user friendly interface for the storage and collating of favorite links as libraries of bookmarks. Registered users of these sites can then decide, or not, to share such links in the public web space of the social book marking site, procedures to do so are fast and easy to implement. Social book marking sites are creating huge databases of sites chosen by their registered users, but these collections of links - bookmarks - are only available at the individual user's discretion. Think of the 'tags' that accompany these bookmark collections as keywords by which those searching within the site can find your bookmarks, favorite links.
b) Search engines, on the other hand, construct their databases 'objectively', and of course these databases do not represent a giant library of millions of individual favorites. Search engines also crawl social book marking sites and therefore such sites represent an Internet space that is extremely important. As social book marking sites (and soon search engines that specialize in such databases) contain millions of links to web pages and sites, we have come full circle and once again highlight the importance of SEO. On this page, you'll find links to all the important social bookmark sites - see button bar at bottom of page.
c) If you have the time and are so inclined, write and publish articles on sites such as Squidoo and Search Warp. These articles will place your company name and web site url into an Internet user space that is growing at an exponential rate. Each article published on such sites constitutes a web page, and therefore it must be crawled by search engines who forever pursue their holy grail to database everything on the net that matches their guidelines for acceptable content.
d) Post to blogs and forums when possible and where relevant. Blog postings and forum comments are also crawled by search engine spiders. In sum, search engine databases, which are accessed via keyword searches, contain much more than urls to discrete web pages.

* * * * * * *

OK.. enough! Now get to work and enjoy your web adventure.

Reader Feedback in the Guestbook will receive a response. However, our overloaded schedule will often mandate a day or two delay before a reply can be made. Your patience is appreciated. Understand that my personal and professional activities on the web over more than a decade have not resulted in great financial success, indeed some have had no commercial objectives whatsoever. Therefore what I recommend carries no implied conclusion, however 'soft', that if you follow these guidelines, riches will rain down upon your activities. For the record, Blumenberg Associates LLC has no contractual or fee based relationship with any company mentioned in this article. We do have commission based relationships as a web site publisher for several SEO and Keyword Optimization companies: see adverts and links at SEO Resources 1 and SEO Resources 2 pages.