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SEO Design

Why is coding for SEO important?

  • Coding may have a direct affect on search engine visibility.
  • Knowing what search engines deem as important can improve a site's performance.
  • Knowing the do's and don'ts (hacks) can keep your site from getting banned.
  • Coding for SEO affects the bottom line.

Contents

Different Types of Search Engines

Directories (human based, MSN, Yahoo and LookSmart)

  • Manually place web sites or web pages into specific categories based on the content of the web site
  • Very difficult to modify a directory listing after the initial submission
  • Content should be unique. Editors don't want to place sites with identical content in the same directory

Search Engines

  • Use software robots called spiders to retrieve information from web pages
  • Search engines keep an index or database of the words and phrases they find on each web site they crawl
  • Search engines then enable the users to search for keywords found in these indices
  • Update their indices about every four to six weeks

Pay-for-placement (pay per click)

  • Guarantees top positions in exchange for payment
  • Marked by labels such as "Featured Listings" or "Sponsored Links"

Hybrid search services

  • Get their results from both directories and search engines
  • Labeled by where they get most of their results from
  • Example: MSN gets most of its results from LookSmart which, is a directory so MSN is labeled a directory

Search Engine Listing

How do search engines begin finding web pages?

  • Start from major ISPs, such as AOL and the most frequently visited web sites, such as Yahoo
  • Index the words on every single page of a site and following every link found within a site.

5 webs design rules "Good design is good SEO"

A web site should be

  1. Easy to read
  2. Easy to navigate
  3. Easy to find
  4. Clean and accessible markup (CSS & HTML)
  5. Quick to download

SEO success factors

  • Keyword rich text
  • Must use HTML text on the page VS images
  • Use the words and phrases that the target audience will type into search queries
  • Keyword prominence - where keywords appear on a page
  • Keyword frequency - how often keywords appear on a page

Site + page architecture

  • Must give crawler based search engines access to keywords
  • Navigation schemes
  • URL structure
  • Page layout
  • How related pages link to each other

Keywords/keyword phrases

Keywords/keyword phrases

  • A set of words or phrases that a target audience uses to find products or services that are offered.
  • Search engine spiders analyze keywords and phrases to determine the relevancy of a site(based upon the search engines' algorithms).
  • To obtain maximum search engine visibility, it is key to understand how the target audience is searching for the type of information offered on a site.

Primary text placement (used by most search engines to determine relevancy)

  1. Title tag <title>
  2. Visible <body> text
  3. Text at the top of a web page
  4. Text in and around hyperlinks

Secondary text placement (used by some search engines to determine relevancy)

  • Meta tag text
  • Alternative tag text
  • Domain and file names

In addition to how keywords are included on a page, several other attributes are used by search engines to determine if a site is relevant for a user's search.

Prominence (Good places for keywords to appear)

  • How "high up" on a page the key words occur
  • HTML title
  • Breadcrumb links
  • Heading/headline
  • Introductory paragraph
  • Conclusion paragraph
  • Calls to action

Proximity

  • How close key words are to each other on a web page

Frequency

  • Determined by the number of times a key word appears on page divided by the number of words on the page
  • It's good to replace pronouns with key phrases, but it's important not to overdo it.

The goal of keyword research is to develop an understanding of which words and phrases that end users are likely to associate with the content on a site./

Keyword research process

  • Look for patterns in existing content - what words are used the most
  • Determine what words end users use
  • Conduct competitive analysis to see who else competes for targeted keywords
  • Conduct analysis of search engines are results

Navigational Schemes

Having several ways for user to navigate through a site is a hallmark of making a site useful as well as usable.

  • Navigation schemes that are usable and useful for a site's target audience are likely to be friendly to search engines.
  • The exact combinations of navigation elements and how they work together should be driven by the goals and needs of the end users of the site.

Types of site navigation indexed by search engines

  • Text links
  • Navigation "buttons"
  • Image maps
  • Menus (form and DHTML)
  • Flash (only Google can index Flash links)

Information design/page layout

Structuring the pages in such a way that key words and phrases are near the top of the page (prominent) makes a site search engine friendly.

Examples of this include

  • Primary and secondary navigation structures are at the top of the page
  • Labels for navigation elements use key words or phrases
  • Important content (from and end users perspective) is located near the top of the page
  • Unique content is located near the top of the page

Cross linking strategy

Hierarchical cross linking

  • Vertical cross linking
  • Breadcrumbs

Contextual cross linking

  • Horizontal cross linking
  • Related links
  • "You might also be interested in…"

Link popularity is another component of the algorithms used by search engines.

Link popularity is determined by

  • Number of links - how many people link to you
  • Quality of links -
  • Number of times people click on links to your site
  • How long end users visit a site
  • How often people return to a site

Link development

  • You should develop this organically by the links that you include on a site as well as
  • strategically by getting included in directories.

The basics - search engines and code

Keywords

  • Two most consequential places for keywords are in the <title> tag and in the visible text.
  • Meta tag, alt attribute and title attribute are considered to be of secondary importance.

Unique content

  • Search engines have filters that determine duplicate content.
  • Web spiders have faster and easier access to content near the top of a (X)HTML document. (Embedded CSS, HTML, Javascript can impede SEO.)

Hyper text links

  • The location of links in the code can affect site indexing on a search engine.

W3C standards and triadic paradigm

  • Search engines prefer valid mark-up. Sloppy coding harms SEO, especially in navigation regions.
  • Directory editors look for pages that download quickly.

Site popularity

  • Optimizing site performance, good usability and accessibility will increase site popularity and therefore will increase site visibility.

Coding strategies: key concepts

W3C standard and best practices.

  • Follow the W3C standards regarding (X)HTML, CSS and Javascript to improve site performance, usability and accessibility.
  • Avoid code hacks and cyber marketing tricks which may get a Web site banned.

W3C Triadic Paradigm

  • Separate presentation, structure and behavior.
  • Optimized mark-up pushes relevant content to the top of the (X)HTML document.

Linearization

  • Refers to appearance of (X)HTML when devoid of all presentation.
  • Is reflective of the sequential order of underlying code.
  • The underlying (X)HTML, it's order, structure and semantic mark-up are important to a Web spider.

Use Semantic Mark-up

  • Mark-up tags with the appropriate (X)HTML tags.
  • <h1>- <h6> for headers,

    for paragraphs.

Optimize mark-up

  • Externalize CSS and Javascript -
  • Results in faster downloads and tighter code.
  • Do not define mark-up presentation in the XHTML document.(i.e. width="",bgcolor="")

Validation

  • Using W3C's or Dreamweaver validation to verify integrity of CSS and (X)HTML.

Optimize and externalize CSS

  • Use CSS hierarchy, specificity and cascade to reduce code bloat.
  • Avoid excessive and unnecessary use of classes. (Pollutes CSS and mark-up)

Order the code for SEO

  • Visual order of the page can differ from the sequential ordering of the (X)HTML.
  • CSS can create a compelling visual presentation while optimizing code for SEO.
  • Use the Div box model instead of table base layout. (Increases download speed.)

Reduce graphics

  • Use CSS to create eye candy that can reduce amount of graphics.
  • CSS makes spacer gif's obsolete.

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