SEO is Easy dont believe the hype!

Seeing loads of questions re SEO on linked in at the moment, and their generally followed by some cryptic answers trying to make this practice into some black art. So I have decided to publish some of the techniques I have discovered whilst developing sites as a web consultant and in some of my permanent roles.

Content Is King

Content is king, if you don't have any content you wont get any traffic, obvious really.Keep your content as high up in the html as possible, this is because there is said to be a point at which the crawlers will stop reading your html. This limit is discussed/flamed on the usual SEO forums.

There are several good ways to achieve this:

• Have you CSS & JS code called separately and don't put it directly in the HTML


• Also try to put headers etc below the main body and use css to bring back up to the top.

Use semantic HTML markup

This is another simple and obvious when you think about it. If you use come clever font with a image background for your page titles. It will visually stand out and make reading the page easier, however if your markup is

<span class="pagetitle">Really Interesting Article Page title</span>

then the crawlers not knowing anything about class="pagetitle" will just see it as text. If however your page title is within a heading tag i.e.

<h1>Really Interesting Article Page Title</h1>

its clear to the crawler that is page title and can give it the relevant key word weighting.

Don't keyword spam

Simple if you stick your desired keywords in every other word or sentence, the crawler will see it as spam and mark you down accordingly. Instead write your content and if you don't find your keywords appear in the text naturally, rewrite your copy so it appears once or twice.

Note: its argued that putting the keyword in bold may help, though again this is subject to many "discussions".

Don't link spam

For similar reasons as above having links to your site on a link farm or links on your site to a link farm, is likely to get you marked down. instead put some decent links within your content that cross reference your topic.

Think about you keyword placement

Where you place your keywords makes a difference.

• Placing a keyword within your meta tags i.e. <meta keywords="keyword,another keyword"> may not have a big impact


• Placing a keyword within your content is better i.e. <p>this is some text about keyword</p>


• Placing a keyword within a heading is better i.e. <h1>article about keyword</h1>


• Placing a keyword within a url is better i.e. http://www.domain.com/keyword-article.htm


• Placing a keyword within a domain is best!!!! http://www.keyword.com

Remember following these tips will help you get your content get noticed. They wont guarantee that you will get a rank 1 for your keyword, keep in mind there may be a site out there that just gets more traffic, or has better content.