Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
#34665
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
#34693
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
#34694
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
#34739
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
#34742
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
#34761
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
#34815
Writing for the Robot: How Employer Search Tools Have Influenced Résumé Rhetoric and Ethics 
To date, business communication scholars and textbook writers have encouraged résumé rhetoric that accommodates technology, for example, recommending keyword-enhancing techniques to attract the attention of searchbots: customized search engines that allow companies to automatically scan résumés for relevant keywords. However, few scholars have discussed the ethical implications of adjusting résumé keywords for the sole purpose of increasing searchbot hits. As the résumé genre has evolved over the past century, strategies of résumé “padding” have likewise evolved, at each stage violating one of four maxims of the Cooperative Principle. Direct factual misrepresentation violates the maxim of quality and is of course discouraged, but résumé writers have turned in succession to violations of manner (formatting tricks) and then more recently to violations of quantity and/or relevance with deceptive keywording techniques. The authors conclude by suggesting several techniques to business communication instructors that may encourage students to create more ethically sound résumés.
Amare, Nicole and Alan Manning. Business Communication Quarterly (2009). Careers>Resumes>Search Engine Optimization>Ethics
#35384
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
#35514
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
#35648
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
#35657
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
#35769
Diagnosing Technical Issues With Search Engine Optimization
Which pages have the search engines crawled? What kind of pages are they? Has the search engine Indexing indexed all of the crawled pages? How’s the search engine ranking traffic?
Robot, Jane. SlideShare (2009). Presentations>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization
