All You Need to Know About SEO

All You Need to Know About SEO
Yes, I know the thread title is rather "authoritative" and that people will think I'm talking out of my rectum, but I don't care. I've seen enough garbage, baloney, and flat out lies about SEO to gag a maggot a thousand times before getting to Hell and back, and I've had enough of it.

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Earlier tonight I wrote a post in another thread, which had started out as a "what to do before SEOing a site" but I got carried away and ended up belting out a "bunker buster" as you may choose to call it.
Now, while the topic at hand may not have anything to do with the Google Sandbox effect (I won't even debate if it's real or not, since I could honestly care less) or how to pick your keywords (or what tools to use - and let's face it, like coffee, everyone has their favorite brand and flavor), this WILL teach you what you really need to know. You'll learn a bit about HTML semantics, how to properly use HTML elements and attributes, so even if you're an HTML coder, you might want to listen up and pay attention anyway, ya just might learn something.
Now, I know I'm going to get flamed for this, especially by the radicals among us, but you know what? I don't care. You can negative rep me all you want, and it still won't matter. I'm a developer by trade, and among my sites under development is a search engine site for a niche I'm very passionate about (table-top warfare gaming). Anyway, on to the show as they say. :D
Update: Due to the 20K character limit, one tip got added to the third post in this thread - please consider that part of the second post. Also, while the content is copyrighted BY ME (and yes, I will not hesitate to issue DMCA takedown notices if I find it published elsewhere without my permission), the three column layout example is in the public domain; this means you can do anything you want with it except copyright it and pass it off as your own work.


Contrary to popular belief and accepted conventional wisdom, search engine optimization should be done before you write one line of code. After all, a big part of SEO is actually marketing - in this case, you're marketing the Web site to search engines. And the best way to market to the search engines is to market the Web site to your potential visitors and customers. So how do you do that?
Pick a topic you want your site to discuss (or a product/service you want your site to sell).
Plan out the major sections of the Web site (home, about, news, contact, and so on are good places to start).
Write the content for the pages and sections of the site bearing in mind what keywords you want to target. If you don't know how to do this, go to your local public library and borrow a copy of "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso.
When you're done writing the content of each page, look at the content and see how much of the "fat" you can remove. Users generally prefer text that is short, sweet and gets right to the point. If you're going to be talking about items in a list, use a list (as I am here).
When reducing your page content, make sure you keep the content as naturally flowing and organic as possible, without shooting yourself in the foot or removing any keywords you want to target (remember to keep the keywords relevant to the topic you're writing the page about or the product/service you're promoting, reviewing or trying to sell - again, "Web Copy That Sells" by Maria Veloso will show you how to do this).
Review your page content again. By now it should be short, sweet and to the point. Your visitors will thank you (since they don't sit down and read, they skim), and if your keywords are still blending in with the content, then you're 1/3 of the way there.
Once that's out of the way, and you've chosen how your Web site will look (which fortunately has NOTHING to do with the search engines), you will have to focus on the site's development. It doesn't matter a bit if you use static HTML, XHTML, PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, etc. All a search engine sees is the (X)HTML and the text content. Search engines have gotten better at indexing .pdf files and are now starting to be able to index Flash files, but for the purpose of this post I'm going to concentrate on plain old (X)HTML. So let's get started.
First and foremost, use the least amount of clean, semantic and valid HTML markup possible. Web pages follow a natural flow order of header, menu, content, sidebar(s), and footer. Structure your Web pages like this whenever possible. While search engines may not care if your pages are constructed with semantic markup or layout tables, your users will benefit from the use of semantic markup (since it'll be easier to access the page from a Web browser, screen reader, mobile phone, PDA, or whatever comes along in the next few years) - and it'll mean less work for the search engines as well (piggy-backing on the "human effect").
While really not a tip, I have to say this anyway; following the advice in the previous point will also help ensure that your pages load quickly (especially for dial up users). Which is a bonus, since if the page loads quickly, you won't be wasting as much time getting the visitor's attention (meaning you'll be more likely to keep them at your site longer - which can easily lead to conversions of regular repeat visitors or even customers); this can lead to other sites linking to yours later on (it also makes it easier for the search engines to get to the chewy content goodness in your pages as well).
Validate your code. This really isn't an SEO trick, but a page that is error free will be easier for the user agent (whether it's a browser, cell phone, PDA or search engine spider) to deal with than an error-ridden page.
Use headings appropriately (again with the semantics!). H1 is for the page title, not the site title. Don't use more than one H1 heading per page. If you think need more, then that means the page in question probably has two or more topics that are competing for attention, and thus should be separated (have one topic per page). H2 through H6 should be used when necessary, and always use at least two of them in the same nesting when you do (a great example of this at work is your local newspaper - pick one up and read an article or two).
Title attributes (title="text goes here") are good places to place keywords, but make sure the ones you use are appropriate to the page - and the section of the page you are placing them in. If it looks unnatural, it probably doesn't belong. Remember, title attributes are like tool tips - great sources of additional information. Just don't abuse them (if you're going to use them in your menu, try not to place keywords in them, just provide a brief description of what the page is about instead).
Same thing goes with image alt="alternative text" attributes. Use the alt attribute to identify what the image is about (if you're selling puppies, and you have a picture of a Jack Russell Terrier in your page, have the alt="" text identify the picture as a Jack Russell Terrier puppy). Note in this example that I used some keywords with the attribute. Let's say someone looks for Jack Russell Terriers (or "rat dogs" as I like to call them - hey, you don't like it, blame it on the movie "Crimson Tide") in a search engine; in this case, the keywords "Jack Russell Terrier" would be picked up in the search results, and if given enough weight by supporting content around it, can even drive human visitors to the Web page in question by ranking well.
I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but don't forget about semantics. If you have only a sentence or two, don't use a <p></p> element block to mark it up (as always there are exceptions, for example if you have blocks of paragraphs and one of them happens to be only a sentence or two). Either leave it alone, or use something more appropriate (depending on the situation, it may either be a DIV or a SPAN). Mark up your menus (and other lists of links) as unordered lists.
When adding classes and IDs, keep the semantics in mind. Just because your sidebar may be on the left today doesn't mean it will be tomorrow (if you change the design). So don't use "left-column" for your sidebar, just use "sidebar" instead. If your sidebar contains nothing but advertisements, mark it up as "advertisements" or "ads" instead. As for the menu, I prefer to identify the list menu (the main site navigation) as "menu" rather than "nav" or "navigation".
There are some common "SEO Myths" that the crackpots and frauds will try to sell you on (like with the rest of their snake oil offerings - which are just that - snake oil). Some of the leading ones are "content first page design" "multiple H1s per page" and keyword stuffing. Let's look at these real quick and find out why they're about as reliable as spreading butter on a fresh burn wound.
Content First
Content First design centers around keeping the page content as close to the top of the Web page as possible. While I don't disagree that this can help the search engines (it does - as I've said before in other threads), what "content first" in this sense does is puts the page content (what you read) before the menu - sometimes even other page elements like the header (which, along with the menu, should be the only things between the content and the top of the page, unless you want to include helpful links like those to a site map, FAQ or help page, or a search box). Yes, the search engine spiders will have to go through the links to get to the content, but as long as your menu isn't as long as the Brooklyn Bridge, it won't matter since the search engines will still get to the content and index all of it anyway (which is doubly true if the page content is short, sweet, and to the point - which I talked about earlier).
If you want to help your visitors get to the content right away (while still having the search box/menu between the header and content), then include a skip link between the header and menu. It's really simple, and looks like this:
<div class="skip">
    <a href="#content">Skip to Content</a>
</div>
Code (markup):The DIV is around the link because inline content cannot be a direct descendent of the opening <body> tag in Strict (X)HTML DOCTYPES. Also by using a class of "skip" on the DIV, you can style the link to appear when hovered over (you can see this in action over at www.molly.com; just hover over the header - she even has a blog post on how to make your own). If you have a DIV wrapping your page's content, then you can safely remove the DIV and apply the class to the anchor instead.
The #content ID will lead the visitor (or search engine) to the DIV with the ID of "content" on the current page. I chose "content" because that's what the main page content is. Whether you're selling tickets to a Cubs game, CDs of Rush's latest album "Snakes and Arrows" or blogging about how much the new Fantastic Four movie sucked (if you thought the movie was great, you can replace "sucked" with "rocked"), the DIV that holds the content should have an ID that you can refer to with the skip link.
Now, if you want to see an example of a Web site that has so many links and other detritus that it will take a search engine or mobile user FOREVER to get to the content, check out my city's Web site (no I did not design it) at http://www.aurora-il.org. Turn off the CSS in your browser, or take a peek at the source code. That's a LOT of menu links - most of which shouldn't even be where they are. Especially the left side menu's links (those should be after the content, and positioned on the left side using floats and negative margins). The top menu is pushing it (it's a large dropdown menu), but since it actually serves a purpose, I can forgive that.
Multiple H1 Headings
H1 should be used to identify the title of the Web page. Which means it should be used once. This element is often abused as the Web site's title, even though that job should be left to a DIV container with an ID of "header" with an IMG element inside it (containing appropriate alt="" text; I also advocate using an empty title="" attribute to overcome an Internet Explorer bug, but that's one of the few times I suggest breaking my rules about Web semantics) for the actual logo (other branding, like a background, can be applied to the DIV via a stylesheet instead). If you're using more than one H1 heading, you're either abusing the search engines like Jacko would... :eek: -- ok I'll shut up before I get banned :), not using the element properly, or have two or more topics on the page that should be divided into separate pages (this will also help prevent keyword dilution, which I'll touch upon briefly a bit later). One H1 heading per page, that's it.
As for other headings, use them as needed, but always maintain an outline-like structure when using them. Here's an example of what I mean (bear in mind this is only an example).
[b]H1 Heading[/b]
    [b]H2 Heading[/b]
        Ooh, yummy page content.  I wonder if I can have cake and ice cream with it.
        Ooh, yummy page content.  I wonder if I can have cake and ice cream with it.
            [b]H3 Heading[/b]
                Speaking of cake and ice cream, Oberwies Dairy has the best ice cream in the Midwest.
                Speaking of cake and ice cream, Oberwies Dairy has the best ice cream in the Midwest.
            [b]H3 Heading[/b]
                But where will I get the cake?  I want to have my cake and eat it too!
                But where will I get the cake?  I want to have my cake and eat it too!
            [b]H3 Heading[/b]
                Oh well, I guess I can still have ice cream for breakfast tomorrow morning.
                Oh well, I guess I can still have ice cream for breakfast tomorrow morning.
    [b]H2 Heading[/b]
        Speaking of cake and ice cream, I like chocolate cake and Neapolitan ice cream.  Especially when watching the Cubs and Bears beat up on everyone.
        Speaking of cake and ice cream, I like chocolate cake and Neapolitan ice cream.  Especially when watching the Cubs and Bears beat up on everyone.
Code (markup):See how neat and structured that is? (Please forgive the wacky comments, they're just illustrative fluff.) If I had, for example, one H2 and two H3s, I'd look at how the page's content was written and re-write if necessary so I wouldn't need to use the H3s (I'd probably replace them with H2s if the content was appropriate). Also, if I had two H2s but one H3, I'd get rid of the H3 entirely if I couldn't get another sub-section of content related to the content identified by the H2.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a rampant problem. Often times you'll see sites stuffing keywords for things that have absolutely nothing to do with the Web page. Other times you'll see relevant and appropriate keywords, but you'll also see too many of them. How many is too many? Usually when you have more than three in a single element (excluding paragraphs) or attribute. If it looks unnatural to you (as a regular user), then you're probably using too many of them and should cut them back a bit (or a lot, depending on how many are there).
When you do use keywords, make them blend in with the content as much as possible (you should have done this before you even sat down to write one line of code or let your WYSIWYG editor barf up the code for you). For example, last year I wrote a post elsewhere on Digital Point's forums about how to use PHP and server side includes to make it easier to maintain a Web site over time. Take a look at that last sentence. Notice how I used "PHP" and "Server Side Includes" in the link? Those are keywords that are included naturally in the link to reinforce what the link to the forum post is about. I also didn't stuff the link to the gills with keywords either. Just two (in this case "PHP" and "Server Side Includes") was all I needed. And chances are you probably didn't realize it (or the link to Cubs.com earlier). Also remember that having too many keywords can dilute the strength of the keywords you have.
The Truth About Page Rank
Warning: PageRank is a moving target - what was written here today may not be true tomorrow or next week. use it as a baseline and conduct your own research afterwords. Heck, I may have even gotten a thing or two wrong here (I'm only human afterall).
Speaking of links, don't forget that PageRank is all about links. Google has a preference for natural links (like the one I gave in the above paragraph) and will give them more weight if used properly. The more natural links pointing to your Web page, the higher your page rank will probably be. The more links pointing from your page to other pages, the lower your page rank will most likely be. Ideally, you want MORE links pointing to your page than you want pointing out. Bear in mind this works for EACH page, not your whole site or domain. Google doesn't care about your whole site's PR (which doesn't exist) - it weighs pages, not sites, after all.
One thing I like to do, and this has far more to to do with usability than search engine optimization (the search engines will benefit from the human-first approach, which confuses many people and convinces them that the search engines prefer this method when they really don't care either way) is to include natural, relevant links to other pages of my Web site in my page content. I'm not talking about the menus, or a site map here. I mean organic links, like the one to the PHP/SSI tutorial I wrote last year. Obviously, the link would lead to a page on my site that was related to (and relevant to) the page I'm linking from (for example, if my page is about teaching people how to review movies, and I have a review of "Pirates of Caribbean 3" elsewhere on my site, I'd probably link to the page as an example of how to write an effective movie review), rather than something totally unrelated (like vacation trips to the Caribbean). What I'd be doing is giving some weight (or credibility) to the Web page I was linking to. While this will bleed some PR (PageRank) from the current page, if you link your own pages into a "web" of pages (responsibly, don't over-do it), it'll balance out in the end, and you may (doesn't mean it always will) even enjoy a net profit on your individual pages' PR before the external links to your pages start coming in.
And please, for the love of all that is good, don't use nofollow on links - you're doing the owner of the page you're linking to more harm than good, so if you do, you might as well just use plain text anyway and avoid linking altogether.
What about META tags?
5-10 minutes at most. They're practically worthless, but they're nice to have, since they will remind you what keywords you're targeting. Unfortunately this means your competition will too, but you can't win them all. Spammers and black-hatters abused these elements so much that the search engines give them about as much weight (and credibility) as a bouncer at a private nightclub gives a person who's name is not on the guest list.
Ok, now that all that's out of the way, and your site's done, go out there and promote it. Submit the site to the search engines (preferably by hand, it only takes a couple minutes), include a link to the site in your forum signatures, comment on blogs (leaving a link to your site in the "Your Web site" form input field if it's related to the blog and not otherwise spammy). Don't worry about buying links or submitting to directories - Google's actually discounting "paid links" (they're even suggesting people report paid links to them), and most directories aren't worth submitting to anyway (especially if you have to pay). If you find a couple reputable free directories to submit to, go ahead and submit your site to them (since you won't be losing anything) and spend your advertising/marketing/promotion dollars (or Euros or yen or rubles, or whatever currency you use) elsewhere. Traditional marketing and advertising (there is a difference between the two) will kick in at this point.
The TITLE Element
Not much to say here, other than to keep them short, to the point, and make sure the page title comes first. You can (and should) put your site title afteword, but use a delimiter so people can tell the difference between the page title and the site title (even though they're in the same element). Here's an example.
<title>Chicago Cubs Win 2007 World Series - Skewed View of the News</title>
Code (markup):Don't expect quick results (though you CAN get them if you follow my advice), since "quick results" can be lost just as quickly. What I suggested above is a proven method for long-term sustainable growth, which is what you want anyway. It's better to be strong and stable for a long time (like a large rock) than to be like a shooting star - you get noticed quickly, but you'll be gone just as fast if you choose the latter.
After that, just continue writing quality content that others will kill their own mothers to link to, continue promoting your Web site to the public, and you'll most likely be fine. Then, and ONLY then, should you worry about optimizing your site for the search engines - oh wait, no you shouldn't, since you'll have done that already without even realizing it. :D


Thank you.
I had a great read. It's a good summary of what to do for optimization.
I don't see why this should get flame, when there is so much junk out there.
Keep it up.


Great post :) A few good tips there ;)


Good post, I just brushed over it but most I read is pretty dead on.



Thank you.
I had a great read. It's a good summary of what to do for optimization.
I don't see why this should get flame, when there is so much junk out there.
Keep it up.
yah i enjoyed it too Dan Schulz. have bookmarked and to make sure i dont miss a thing, would you mind if i copy everything? not to make another seo book but for my sites. im a newbie and every read is a good lesson for me. thanks for the infos by the way....great stuff keep it up and dont bother if anyone drops bunker busters...u know what to do right?


I had to edit the post a bit (I originally wrote it on the fly as a response to another poster's question in another thread). As for the layout, if you want to use it in your own work, go right ahead. It's officially PUBLIC DOMAIN (meaning you can do whatever you want with it, except copyright it).
Just don't copy the post. I'll be reproducing this post in a Web site to be launched later this year. If you wish to link to the article, feel free to (cite this thread as the source until the site goes live).
EDIT: If you want to copy it for your personal use (meaning to print to paper or save on your computer), go right ahead. Just don't re-publish the content elsewhere.



yah i enjoyed it too Dan Schulz. have bookmarked and to make sure i dont miss a thing, would you mind if i copy everything? not to make another seo book but for my sites. im a newbie and every read is a good lesson for me. thanks for the infos by the way....great stuff keep it up and dont bother if anyone drops bunker busters...u know what to do right?
Actually, and I hope you don't get offended, but I would mind. I'm planning on cleaning this up and putting it on a site I'm working on. However, if you like, you can write a review on it, citing excerpts from this thread as needed, and then just cite the thread as your source (I'll even get the site URL to you afterword so you can amend your page when it goes live if you like).
EDIT: If you want to copy it for your personal use (meaning to print to paper or save on your computer), go right ahead. Just don't re-publish the content elsewhere.
But as for the Web page template, see above. :)


Very good knowledge. Thank you very much.


thanks for sharing this one :)



Actually, and I hope you don't get offended, but I would mind. I'm planning on cleaning this up and putting it on a site I'm working on. However, if you like, you can write a review on it, citing excerpts from this thread as needed, and then just cite the thread as your source (I'll even get the site URL to you afterword so you can amend your page when it goes live if you like).
But as for the Web page template, see above. :)
Click to expand...
okay no problem...


Just so you know, I updated a few things, cleaned up the second post, and added some new content. I really don't like the 20,000 character limit but I can understand why it's there.


Good stuff. People can easily get carried away by fancy SEO ideas and often forget about fundamentals. Thanks.


It's really not just the fundamentals of SEO. It's also the fundamentals of Web development, which unfortunately really isn't taught by anybody (especially schools and books).


Excellent post - good read!


it's a great post. i loved to read it :)


great reading I actually read all of it


There's more coming, trust me on this. :D
It's just going to come in fits though, given the demands of my schedule (and helping people out here and on SitePoint when I'm not too busy dealing with the rest of the forum staff - fresh squeezed Mentor, served daily).


will bookmark and read later more in detail...but from what i saw...can it be that you do NOT have a big priority on page title ? My experiences are that page title is extremely important, so..defintly put keywords in the title !

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