Search Engine Optimization…aren’t you tired of hearing that one?

I was tooling through some of my old notes from seminars and classes I took on Search Engine Optimization and thought to myself, “Man, things sure do change from month to month about SEO.” And really it does. I have notes that say do use Meta Tags, Don’t use Meta Tags, Use Submission Services, don’t use them, content vs. context, and MORE! So, I thought I would give my personal experience on how I’m improving my own SEO and my clients. I always say, if you want information…google it! You’d be surprised how much of this stuff is out there.

Much of my experience came from trial and error. I do subscribe to the belief that google analytics are the BOMB, however, I also pay for a service or two that allow me to get more detailed information on each of the websites I’ve designed and maintain. SEOMOZ has a ton of good information on how to get the keywords and meta detail that will help you improve your site.

Now, when you go to SEOMOZ my suggestion is do the free method for about 3 months and then decide if you need to pay or not. They’ve got so much good information for free, you may not need the paid subscription.

LINKS

A lot of people say you need to “link” to other people’s websites and get a “link” back. I’ve even got it in a bunch of my notes from class. But what my experience tells me is that you need more than that. You need “Back Links.” I may not be calling them the term that the industry uses, but that is what I call them and I know this improves SEO for a fact. So how do “back links” work? Read on kids.

Back Links

In order to get your back links picked you will want to figure out what the most important word or combination of words that you want to be found on the internet is. For me, it’s currently “web design,” as I want to get people to know I can design websites at an affordable rate. I do also offer the full gammet of marketing, but I am a pro (and I know it) at designing and coding websites. So what I’ve done is link the word “Web Design” on all of the websites that I’ve designed and linked them “back” to the page that talks most about “Web Design” on my website. Makes sense right? So if you visit www.justincrouch.com and look at the bottom of the page, it will say Web Design by Syl Wilson Marketing right? Now click on it and it doesn’t take you to my home page, it takes you to the page where my “Web Designs” are on my page. So I have done about 50 websites since last August and been linking with this method. Guess what happened? Ahhh, I don’t need to rub it in – LOL!

So if you want to increase your SEO, that’s a free tip for ya! Trust me…it’s gonna make your google analytics go through the roof. You are also going to want to figure out what the “right” keywords are to be using. Here is the perfect place to get them: http://www.seomoz.org/keyword-difficulty Now, you’ll want to go “Pro” to use this, but just get the free trial and they’ll let you use it. You can find out what the right keywords that you should target based on your current content. Lets say you are trying to get more folks to your site about your school…but the keyword density says the main word throughout your site that you should use is store..Well now you know that you’ve got to do some rewording on your site. It’s not going to lie to you trust me.

You might also hear that there is something called “Static websites” and “Dynamic Websites”. So what I say that means in simple terms is if you have a site that when you click off the home page to another does this:

http://www.website.com/?phpid=5462&=awdehnawkd786&sessid=98723nhr7334h24&trp=7y332b788777&stp=211k24bnnqpn

then you’ve got a Dynamic Website. But if you have a Static website you would see this:

http://www.website.com/page1.html or http://www.website.com/aboutus

So think of it this way…the Dynamic website is hard to understand as a human being right? So the search engines (really they are called spiders or crawlers) too will have a problem understanding that long string and just pass you right on up. There are plenty of other sites they need to look at and read in a short period of time, so why would they try to decipher that?

Keep your site STATIC please!

Okay, last tid bit as this post is getting too long and you’re probably wanting to get back to your own site. Flash…best way to describe this is to say it’s fairly BAD to use, but I’ve tested some uses of Flash recently and had GOOD LUCK. If you embed the Flash into a iframe on a section on your site, but not the entire site, and use CSS and HTML surrounding it with content, you’ll be safe. Do not put flash on more than one page however. I had bad luck ranking when I did that. An example of a site using flash and actually ranking well is http://www.timpersonandassociates.com/. This is a clean site with just a tad of flash.

Remember, iPhones and Mac OS’ don’t read flash. Search engines don’t either right? Well, just surround it with content, put your keyword and meta tag detail in the header and be sure that you are putting relavant content about all of it on the pages. You’ll be fine.

So let me know if you find yourself suddenly ranking in the next couple of months. I normally see a spike within 2 weeks. People think I’m a genius, but really, it’s just experience. Once you know how to do it, you’ll be a “pro,” as they call it too.

P.S. I am in no way a pro, just speaking about what I’ve found that works. Feel free to pay someone thousands of dollars though if you prefer!