Metadata: Seven Tips for Writing Better Keywords

The shift in how search engines treat keywords is significant. They tend to ignore the keyword metatag and rather look for keywords in the actual page content. This means that you need to figure out your keywords before you write any content. Then, you include them throughout your content, particularly in headings and summaries.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2004). Articles>Web Design>Metadata>Search Engine Optimization

Be a White Hat SEO for Your Intranet: It's Good for Accessibility

The SEOs with white hats conduct legitimate optimising of web pages to make the site come up appropriately in the Search Engine Results Pages (also called SERPs). The back hat SEOs implement tricks to appear high in the results pages even if the web site is not necessarily relevant. The range of tricks is astonishing. But most of the techniques used by white hat SEOs were similar if not identical to the guidelines given by accessibility experts.

NetStrategy-JMC (2006). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Search Engine Optimization

Optimize Your AdWords Campaigns

Both AdWords and YSM are much more complicated beasts than the old banner networks ever were, and coming to grips with them can be a bit of a headache.

Oxer, Jonathan. Internet Vision Technologies (2008). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>Search Engine Optimization

Right to Reply: SEO's Glory Days Are Not Over

In a recent article on Netimperative, Mike Grehan examined if the traditional role of SEO was becoming outdated, given the rise of social media. In this article, Eliza Dashwood, Director of Sales and Marketing, Ambergreen Internet Marketing offers a counter-point to Mike’s argument.

Dashwood, Eliza. NetImperative (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>Search

Common Sense SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Checklist

I don’t “really” know anything about SEO. What I do know is the folks at Google and other big search engines are just human beings like us who have created and constantly tweak the search algorithms. Their goal is to give us what we want when searching, the best possible websites relevant to what we are searching for. So let’s set aside all the fancy technical stuff and just use some good ol’ common sense.

Coyier, Chris. CSS Tricks (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide  

Welcome to Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This document first began as an effort to help teams within Google, but we thought it'd be just as useful to webmasters that are new to the topic of search engine optimization and wish to improve their sites' interaction with both users and search engines. Although this guide won't tell you any secrets that'll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content.

Google (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Ten Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic

In the last six months, we've been lucky enough to help quite a few companies and websites drive significant traffic to their sites. Many of these campaigns have been constructed around the goal of building search engine rankings, as this is our primary business, but we've also found that our ability has given us great power in the fields of brand-awareness and marketing overall. Thus, the following ten processes are primarily about building traffic and through it, attention.

SEOmoz (2006). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization

This guide is designed to describe all areas of search engine optimization - from discovery of the terms and phrases that will generate traffic, to making a site search engine friendly, to building the links and marketing the unique value of the site/organization's offerings.

SEOmoz (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Ranking Factors

This document represents the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. Together, they have voted on the various factors that are estimated to comprise Google's ranking algorithm (the method by which the search engine orders results). The result is a resource of incredible value - although not every one of the estimated 200+ ranking elements are included, it is my opinion that 90-95% of the knowledge required about Google's algorithm is contained below.

SEOmoz (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Indexing the Web—It’s Not Just Google’s Business

Web databases do much more than passively store information. Part of their power comes from indexing records efficiently. An index serves as a map, identifying the precise location of a small piece of data in a much larger pile. For example, when I search for “web development,” Google identifies two hundred million results and displays the first ten—in a quarter of a second. But Google isn’t loading every one of those pages and scanning their contents when I perform my search: they’ve analyzed the pages ahead of time and matched my search terms against an index that only references the original content.

Mullican, Lyle. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

Your Website is a Satellite. Contextual Search is the Sun

The internet is more like the heliocentric model championed by Galileo, with search as the sun. It is an ever-growing collection of distribution channels, each with their own audience, revolving around an increasingly contextual search experience. It’s time to expand your perspective to account for this. But, like Galileo, you may have a hard time with the authorities as you start to act on this understanding.

Tipping Point Labs (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search>Search Engine Optimization

The Illusion of SEO vs. the Reality of Great Content

SEO techniques will increase your search rankings and SEM will get you traffic on the top search engines. But a boatload of quality content will also accomplish these things and prepare you for the more contextual future of search.

Tipping Point Labs (2009). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Search Engine Optimization

Is Your Key Content Drowning in News?

Many web editors spend a lot of their time writing news stories for the company web site. However, traffic analysis frequently reveals that this content is not very popular - and that users may in fact miss the key content they come to find (product data, addresses etc.) because it's practically drowning in news stories.

Furu, Nina. Content Strategy (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Search Engine Optimization

How To Get Better Search Engine Rankings

If your company web site is currently not ranking well at search engines, you are missing out on a vital source of web traffic. Here are some tips for improving your search engine rankings yourself (without hiring a search engine optimization company).

Content Strategy (2007). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet

The ten essential categories for good optimization are: important HTML tags, search engine indexing limits, title tag syntax, common canonical issues, 301 redirects on Apache, search engine robot user agents, common robot traps to avoid, robot meta tags syntax, robots.txt syntax and site map syntax.

Dover, Danny. SEOmoz (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

The Seven Sins of Blogging, Sin #6, Being Unfindable

How can you enable readers to naturally find the content in your archives? How can you make the hundreds of posts you write more visible and prominent, especially if readers are looking for it? This is partly what the field of findability is all about. You can implement several easy aggregation techniques to increase the findability of your content. You can add tags and categories to your posts, and readers can navigate your content this way.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Web Design>Blogging>Search Engine Optimization

Calculating The True SEO Costs Of Major Site Changes

Over the past year we have worked with a number of organizations that have chosen to relocate their sites from an existing domain to a new domain. One of the questions that always comes up early in the process is “how much traffic are we going to lose?” It is an excellent question and not an easy one to answer, but in today’s column I am going to explore that exact question.

Enge, Eric. Search Engine Land (2009). Articles>Web Design>Redesign>Search Engine Optimization

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2

In this installment of Search Matters, we’ll continue our discussion of ads in search results. Understand what makes a good ad. Limit cannibalization. Provide ads for internal merchandise instead of third-party advertising. Pay special attention to ads on pages that appear if there are no search results.

Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce

Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 1

Conflicting demands make many UX professionals think of ads as a necessary evil. Customers frequently go out of their way to say they hate ads, while marketers always seem to try their hardest to stuff as many of them as they can on each search results page on your site. This leaves many UX design professionals caught in the middle, trying to balance the ad equation—and frequently failing to fully satisfy either customers or marketers. For this 2-part column, I’ve teamed up with advertisement and eyetracking research guru Frank Guo to present real-world strategies for successfully integrating ads into your search results. The goal is making money without unduly turning off your customers.

Nudelman, Greg and Frank Guo. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>E Commerce

Three Questions to Ask When Creating Web-Based User Documentation

If Web-based user documentation can improve a company’s Web site ranking, then it makes sense for technical writers to take advantage of this fact. So if you’re writing Web-based user documentation, how willing are you to change your writing style for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) considerations?

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2010). Articles>Documentation>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

How to Redirect URLs Without Losing Link Juice

For this installment, we address a question about redirecting users from old URLs to new ones. A 301 redirect is the surest way to pass link popularity to the new URL and de-index the old URL in a URL rewrite scenario. The trick is making sure that the server header status is a 301 permanent redirect, not a 302 temporary redirect or a meta or JavaScript refresh.

Practical eCommerce (2010). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Stalking Competitors' SEO Tactics

Despite my contention that Internet marketers need to stop obsessing about rankings, an examination of the SEO tactics of competitors that outrank your site can be extremely enlightening. Stalking a competitor's SEO tactics can uncover content optimization and link building opportunities that are already proving effective for other sites.

Kocher, Jill. Practical eCommerce (2010). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

SEO for Technical Writers: Optimizing Your Content for Search Engines

Technical writers are seeing an increasing amount of their documentation move from print and local installation to online (server-based) formats. As your documents move online, you'll need to consider how to help your users find the information they need.

HelpScribe (2010). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization

Targeting an Audience of Robots: Search Engines and the Marketing of Technical Communication Business Websites    

This paper explores the extent to which technical communication businesses with Websites are attempting to reach an audience of prospective clients through an intermediary audience of search engines. It draws on a survey of 240 principals of these businesses, brief interviews with half of them, and an analysis of their sites. Results show that search engines are among the most helpful methods leading people to these business sites and that higher levels of such search engine helpfulness are strongly associated with higher percentages of clientele who originate through these sites. Most businesses take search engines into account at least minimally; however, meaningfully pursuing that audience requires ongoing investments that some technical communication businesses are reluctant to make.

Killoran, John B. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (2009). Articles>Web Design>TC>Search Engine Optimization