I know most of the Users of Stackoverflow would have knowledge about Search Engine Optimization(SEO).. Any tips and tricks about SEO for your fellow web developers ...
EDIT:
- Good book about SEO?
- Good blogs/websites about SEO?
views:
503answers:
7
+1
A:
Very generic - use the Microsoft SEO Toolkit to see how a search engine sees your web page.
Marek Karbarz
2010-01-12 07:46:07
+5
A:
Read. Read lots. SEO is a science, albeit not an exact one. A lot of very smart people have a lot of opinions on the best way to optimize a website for search engines. Not all of the opinions are good, however. The best thing you can do is try to take in as much information as possible--but all with a grain of salt--and then form your own approach based on your own opinions and your experiences.
SEOmoz is a great place to start. Grab the cheat sheet, read their articles (especially in the Technical Issues category) and use their tools.
Google's Webmaster Central is also invaluable, together with its and his YouTube channel. Make sure to follow Matt Cutts' blog and Twitter (though he's currently not tweeting) as well (he's they guy in most of the videos).
Other good sites include Search Engine Land, and its SearchCap--a daily recap of lots of interesting search engine news. Marketing Pilgrim is another good site, although it's more about search engine marketing in general and not specifically about SEO.
Then, experiment. Create sites (note: plural) where you can employ various techniques and see the results first-hand. You can even monetize your sites with AdSense or other means to get more than just knowledge out of it.
It's also worth noting that a lot of SEO are attributed to content. Search engines love blogs and press releases, as they provide dynamic content that they can index. Press releases are great because they normally generate backlinks when other sites pick them up (and edit, which prevents duplicate content for you!). Blog posts can do the same if they get noticed by other blogs.
After all, there's only so much you can do with code.
The most valuable tip I can give you, however, is to stay away from blackhat SEO. It may be tempting, but it's not worth it. It may be easy, but it's not worth it. If you get caught, you're finished. Play fair and the search engines will respond in kind.
Other than that; ask more specific questions. "How can I increase SEO" is very general and vague, and you're not going to get very good answers. "Do you think technique X is worthwhile?" or "Which is better, Y or Z?" are examples of questions that are easier to address.
vonconrad
2010-01-12 23:32:40
+1
A:
As stated, be very careful if you outsource this service. If you are interested in doing the SEO yourself, just stick to 'the basics'!
- Give images 'alt-text'
- Don't make exclusively flash-based sites.
- Fill out all tags and such completely
- Use heading appropriately
- Read, read and read some more. There are articles available for every aspect of SEO.
Keep in mind people/companies do this as a full time job, so as a single developer, you can't focus too much on SEO. Do things as you go, so you don't have to re-comb-over your complete stuff.
The Mirage
2010-01-14 14:49:28
+2
A:
From a developers point of view I would say alway think SEO when building any site which will be seen and indexed by the search engines.
- Semantically Correct HTML
- H1 H2 H3 P tags are your friends use them well
- Only 1 h1 per page.. and not the company logo / name.
- Rewrite your URL so they dont use query strings
- Page title = H1 (well the the h1 keywords)
- Alt tags
- label attributes for forms
- watch your url case. (I dont care that IIS allows mixed case, mypage.aspx MyPage.aspx MYPAGE.aspx etc) will all be seen by google as diffrent pages to fix this use the canonical url meta tag.
The vastmarjority of SEO is done by the selection of keywords and writting the copy properly. As a developer you dont have to worry about this, you job is to give the copy its best chance of working possable.
TheAlbear
2010-01-14 17:48:44
+2
A:
Adhere to all the web accessibility guidelines since essentially the search engine crawlers just like a blind user.
Dave Anderson
2010-01-14 18:03:09
A:
Excellent information , lots of helpful tips, I have been raking my brain trying to find ways as to how does one invite traffic into my blog..
movers
2010-05-12 04:57:24
A:
if you want something you can take and run with straight away, i would suggest a basic on-page seo checklist like the following:
Source: Bare Minimum On-Page SEO
--LM
louism
2010-06-14 10:54:08