SEO SEO SEO!!!

Hinckley | 5/15/2008 11:01 pm | Assassins Anonymous

Today I had a client who was wondering why he was being flooded with companies wanting to sell him Site Engine Optimization (SEO) so I wrote an email explaining what he could do himself, rather then shelling out the monies. I thought it was worth sharing.. so here is a little insight.

By the way, the guy in the hat has nothing to do with this post other than it showed up in images when i googled 'seo'.

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Site Engine Optimization, everyone is selling it what they don't want you to know is you can do this yourself! Basically what they are selling is advice about upping you as a result in a natural search. This is done by doing small things to improve your site and maybe they are even selling a top spot in a results page (like google ads).

Here's what you can do yourself to help search engines find your site based on relevant searches.

1. Consider what search terms a user is going to use to try and find your site. For example, if you sell digital cameras, be sure that 'digital-camera' is perhaps a folder or link in your site like
http://www.gear.com/digital-cameras/index.html

also, using this key term as much as possible (without being totally annoying) within your site will help bring up relevancy in searches. Also using h tags will help. Always use text where possible, use images for images, not for navigation unless totally necessary.

2. meta data. If you are at all familiar with html, meta data is code that is planted within a webpage, though not displayed. Its hidden information that search engines use to display when a result is found

You should add this meta data to your site. Some programs such as dreamweaver give you a simple interface to add this in, or you can code it yourself.

Basically you are listing out search key words that you think someone might use to find your site, and also providing a description of your site.

3. naming pages. look at how i title my home page of my website:
"web design and video production based in madison wi"
I try and be very descriptive, again using keywords

4. Finally, another method is buying up ad space in search engines. Of course this costs $$$, so I would recommend doing the other things first and saving money.

Keep in mind that this isn't going to make you #1 on google overnight. The key is to develop a site in a smart way and you shouldn't have to pay any service to help search engines find your site.