SEO

Succesful dating with a search engine (or What is SEO?)

November 26th, 2008 in SEO, Tutorials by Kostas Mavropalias

Her out-of-this-world appearence makes you wonder if this a human or an angel. Hew sweet and calm voice is divine music to your ears. Her strong and energetic personality feels like the topping on the cake.

You know you want her!

But, how is she going to notice you? She’s so popular…millions of people are after her, but you want to be the one!

Besides being so popular and sought after, Ms. Google appreciates good manners. Ms. Google is looking for a gentleman, or …a gentlesite.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is all about the relation between a site and the search engines, and the rules that apply in this relation are very similar to the ones applying in the relations between people.

The short-term goal of SEO is to grab the attention of the person you’re attracted to, and make him/her give some ‘love’ back. The long-term goal is to build a solid relationship where each participant can trust the other one and enjoy their common goals and ambitions.

Provide a nice sit

If a search engine comes to ’sit’ at your website, it is important that you help it be seated and feel comfortable.

In order for a search engine to sit comfortably when it lands at your site, it needs to know where it is and where it can go next. A sitemap (along with proper navigation ofcourse) will ensure that all your content is indexed properly, and it will also speed up the process a bit.

Always open doors

This is perhaps the most basic rule of website etiquette out there. It is also one of the easiest to follow so you have no reason to forget it. Whether she is about to enter your online shop, blog, forum, or any place with a door, you should always hold it open. If there are many doors, then hold them open one after the other.

Google is a free spirit. It wants to roam around freely and index information. If you’re kind to it and have your doors open, it will give you some love back.

Make sure you have your main navigation at a prominent place in your code. Remember, google does not really care about the visual appearence of your site – not so much anyway, it only cares about the code structure and the semantics.

Remove dead links, if any.

Provide additional navigational links to relevant content at your site from within your content.

Google can not use forms, so if you have important content that is accesible only after submitting a form (member’s area, etc), provide an alternative access path for search engines.

Don’t lie

People lie in relationships and for a certain period they may get an ‘advantage’ of some kind. But very often these lies come to the surface and then things go really bad. This may even lead to a break up.

Exactly the same thing can happen in the relationship between your site and the search engines. If you try to lie (known as black-hat seo) you may see your site’s ranking go up for a short period and get more visits, but it’s almost certain that in the end you will end with a serious penalty and never see the first search results page again.

Put effort

No relationship is easy, so why it should be any different with the search engines?

If you demand dedication, then you should provide it yourself too. Sure you can achieve some quick results in a relatively short time, but this won’t last long.

Successful SEO is all about effort and persistance. You need to keep an eye on everything:

content
copy
competitors
code
search engines

So if you’re dedicated and really put effort in this website – search engine relationship, will everything be ok? Well, as in real life, the short answer is no.

Sometimes you may find yourself trying really hard to improve your rankings, to appear above your competitors in search engine results page (SERP), but to no avail. No love back!

Fortunately, if you keep working, optimising and testing, you will achieve your goals sooner or later.

SEO is a long not-so-predictable relationship. Expect to travel long, fail sometimes, but in the end see the fruits of your effort.

Have you experienced this relationship yourself?