Ok, so you have created a site that you wish to share with the world (that is, unless you only created the site to get a grade - head shake and disappointed look). Often times, making the site is the easy part. Getting other people to notice the site is the hard part. As a matter of fact, some people make money just trying to get other people’s web sites noticed. So, I guess it’s about time we talked a little bit about search engine optimization [SEO]. How does someone get their site to the top of search engines such as Google or Yahoo? They probably start with these simple techniques (in no particular order).

Love Your Content

I’ll be the first to admit that after I spend hours pixel tweaking for the design of a site I don’t want to think about content. I dread thinking about content. Why can’t I just leave my lorem ipsum text in place and bask in the glory of my creation? I have actually been working for quite some time now on a complex formula which explains the importance of content. Can you guess the correct formula?

Yeah, pretty easy right? Content is 100 times more important than all that pretty stuff. We create web pages to share information with people. In most cases, this information needs to be in the form of text based content. So, love your content and give it the respect it deserves!

Pay Attention to Content Hierarchy

The order of the content on a particular page should somewhat match the order of importance for the message in the content. Use rich heading tags in your page to map out your message. The most important heading or headings should be wrapped in h1 tags, the second most in h2, and so on and so fourth.

Use Description Rich Words in Your Content

Be conscientious about the words you are placing in your content. Without spamming your own page, place as many description rich words in your paragraphs as possible. Again, place the really important stuff (the stuff that represents the message of your site) towards the top of your page.

Title Your Pages

Why should you title your pages? Let me see. Maybe so your site doesn’t get ranked with Untitled Document as your search engine rank title…the dreaded black hole of the Untitled Document. I guess it might be kind of cool to try to get ranked above the Shania Twain redirect page! A good title is crucial. This is what people are likely to see when and if you do get ranked in a search engine.

Use Standards Based Web Design

I recently read a great article from A List Apart regarding how web standards can help you on your SEO quest. Though a bit dated in terms of Internet years (the article is from Sept. 1, 2003), it definitely had some interesting points that I would like to echo.

1. Make sure your content is readable. If the text at the top of your page is the largest and most important on the page, make sure it is wrapped by an h1 tag. Otherwise, it might carry no more significance than any other text on your page.
2. Standards help to improve your file size and content ratios. The more good content an engine spider can read, the better off you will be. If the spider gets a bit lost in an overabundance of tags it can’t effectively do the job it came to your site to do.

This is why CSS is so great. We can get all of that styling information out of our page and into an external document, helping that friendly little spider to get to our important stuff.

On the other hand, do standards really help to get us to the top of Google? An interesting article/experiment from Mike Davidson indicates that standards should be implemented more as a matter of design professionalism than anything else. However you look at it, standards can only bring good things to your site.

Use Appropriate Meta Tags

Meta Tags can help provide more description to a spider looking at your page. Though they are surely not a high factor regarding your site rank, I do believe they have their place. Meta tags fall in line way after good content, headings, and a descriptive title, but they are in line. My advice would be to add at least a keywords tag (with maybe 10 words that describe your site best) and a brief description. Good content will trump these any day, but it won’t hurt to have them anyway.

Rapping it All Up

In conclusion, there are many things you can do to help your site grow into a search engine powerhouse. Good, rich content will definitely get you there faster than anything else. Love your content and the rest will fall in line.