Search engine optimization - Developer guidance?

Question

I've just picked up a contract to sort out a vipers-nest of e-commerce websites that a previous 'developer' left for one of my clients. There's about a couple of dozen of them using a custom shopping cart and CMS system that's too embedded to dump and works well enough, but desperately needs cleaning up, re-factoring, and bug fixing, so a reasonably substantial recoding job.

As part of this my client is desperate to ensure the best search engine placement he can get. Like many developers I've a nodding acquaintance with the idea, but no real knowledge, and it seems that it would be helpful to get up to speed on this so I can build appropriately into the code.

So can people advise on useful quality resources - books, websites, blogs etc? I do not wish to obsess over every last detail on this (he can use a specialist if he decides to pull every last ounce out - although I've always regarded such as little better than snake-oil peddlers), but I would like to build code and reconfigure templates in a manner that helps rather than hinders placement.

Answer 1

I think this Practical SEO e-book will be a useful reference for you.

Answer 2

A main concern when thinking SEO should always be usability. Make sure the mark-up is semantic, make sure the site works without javascript, css and images - in other words, make sure that 'low-level browsers' are able to read the contents of your page. Think of optimizing the site for a screen reader for the blind and visually impaired, and you will automatically cover the search engines, because that is exactly what they are - blind browsers.

A standard no-no is a table layout, mainly because it does not order the site content by relevance. To a human being reading your site, it is no problem looking two inches down instead of at the very top of your page, but the screenreader reads the code, not the visual view.

Thus, you should make sure that you have the important things - a high-level heading (preferrably <h1> or <h2>), the main menu (in a <ul> list) and the content in divs at the top of the source, and less important content (the logo, banners, quickmenus etc that aren't really crucially needed to be accessible) further down. You are always able to re-order where the stuff is actually shown in your css.

Answer 3

Look at wikipedia with styles off. See how they order their content? See how they use correct tags to label the content? These are the keys to long term success.

The most important SEO advice is to create a semantic, logical site. The content comes first and is ordered by importance. Use the correct tags, don't do tables. Then apply styles. Then apply script to make it fancy. (Like Tomas said)

Know the difference between what is content (pictures of your products) and not (your logo tiled on the background). Basically do your best to present good content in a good way. You can't game the system for long term gains.

This will give you long term placement. Most SEO companies just do tricks or links farms or worry about keywords and meta tags, so they are temporary at best. I think it is good to assume Google works just as hard to drop that crap from it's index as the SEO marketers do to included it.

According to Google's patent

1. Age of domain
2. Important sites that link to you
3. Content. Make it real and accurate

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741

Answer 4

New tag to use called CANONICAL can now also be used, from Google, click HERE