Topic: SEO

[ober]

I don't know enough about it so I always tell my clients they need to find external companies to do that type of work for them.  I need to beef up on the topic so I can actually make it one of my tools in my service offerings.

Any good sites or books or anything I can review to get me started?

[micah]

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

the easiest thing from a programmer's perspective are clean and accurate page titles and URLs.

like "mywebsite.com/page-title" not "mywebsite.com/page.php?id=3249

and structure the pages in a common folder hierarchy.  like "about-us/our-history"

then make sure the valuable content on the page is all in plain text and formatted well.  Instead of just using a larger, bold font, heading text should be in styled <h1> tags and subheadings in corrisponding <h2> etcs...

for meta tags, the description is wicked important.  Google basically ignores keyword lists though.

when cross-referencing links on your site, make sure you use descriptive link text.

instead of "learn about dogs, click here"  us "learn about dogs."

just doing those basics will sky-rocket a site in the rankings.   For more detailed quirks, read up on the document linked to in that google aritcle i included at the top of this post.

[Steve]

Maintaining SEO and positioning can be a PITA. Keep that in mind before you get into a contract for it.

[ober]

Maintaining SEO and positioning can be a PITA. Keep that in mind before you get into a contract for it.

That's exactly why I don't offer any of those services.

[Steve]

So you just plan to design the initial seo into the page and then hands off? In that case it is no so bad.

[Mike]

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291

the easiest thing from a programmer's perspective are clean and accurate page titles and URLs.

like "mywebsite.com/page-title" not "mywebsite.com/page.php?id=3249

That is complete and utter bull crap.  Google has long ago fixed it so that parameterized urls work just as well.

Forget meta tags as everyone knows they can't be trusted.

Content and proper markup will get you further than anything else.  Avoid duplicating content or use canonical links.

Google is well aware of the various manipulation methods and does fight against them.  What they care about is serving relevant information which means your content is the most important thing.

[micah]

I would hardly call it bull crap. 

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329

[Mike]

I would hardly call it bull crap. 

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329

And where do they say that it affects SEO?  From an SEO perspective it is bull crap.

[Steve]

Mike is right on this one. The biggest emphasis Google places on SEO is content. In fact they follow those trends, like Mike is saying with fighting back, and black list offending websites to keep those companies from manipulating results. derp. derp.

[hans]

I thought I read an article that said google is caring more about quality content than SEO. So SEO might not be a huge concern if you simply code a good website. Follow some of basic rules google has listed to let it crawl your site efficiently and you'll probably be OK. I honestly wouldn't waste a bunch of money on what I generally consider to be snake oil.

[Steve]

Quality content leads to SEO. They are trying to eliminate irrelevant and spam sites, one they noted specifically in an article is ehow.

[micah]

I would hardly call it bull crap. 

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329

And where do they say that it affects SEO?  From an SEO perspective it is bull crap.

I just want to revisit this because I hate being told I'm wrong when I'm not...

Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on
your website can not only help you keep your site better organized,
but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by
search engines.
...
If your URL contains relevant words, this provides
users and search engines with more information about the page
than an ID or oddly named parameter would.

(from page 8 "Improve the structure of your URLs")
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

emphasis added

sure, to your point, they don't specifically state that using friendly URL's effects page rank but they never divulge how they rank pages.  I think its safe to say that they compare the keywords in URLs to the content of the page and factor it in, even if its only in some minor way.

Most every SEO blog, book and guide mention user friendly URLs for SEO.  I can't find any that speak to the contrary.