Getting Started With SEO (part 2)

The thing about SEO is that there really aren't any experts. Okay, maybe the geeks at the big search engine companies, like Google, are the experts. After all, they make the rules. But that's just it. The rules aren't public so the people, like Lora and I, who do this SEO stuff professionally don't have an actual rule book to follow. We have to find information from other sources or through trial and error. All of the other sources got their information from other sources or trial and error too. So, it all really comes down to trial and error. And there's a lot of error out there.

For the non-professionals who try to do their own SEO there seems to be a lot more myth than truth in the mix. And, just like bad HTML coding practices, this error stuff gets readily shared around with others as though it was gospel. And on and on it goes. The worst part is that much of the error gets spread around the 'net as fact, good fact. I have seen dozens of professional websites providing what they claim to be the secret to SEO success repeating one myth after another. A lot of the published and shared "tricks" of SEO aren't good SEO at all. In some cases they can be down right dangerous to use.

The next big problem is that SEO rules change from time to time too. They change because the search engine geek guys figure better and better ways to do things AND they change because there are a lot of people trying to beat the system and get better results than their pages deserve. The search engine geek guys don't like this very much so they change the rules to fool the fools. This makes it harder for the honest SEO people but, in the long run, it is better for everyone.

This means, of course, that any printed and bound SEO book will be out of date before the ink is dry. There are some good SEO sources on the 'net, a few good newsletters, blogs and forums, and a handful of decent tutorials on the basics, but when it comes to the details you need to get current information from someone who is up to date. That's why serious companies pay to have their SEO done by a real professional.

The whole idea of SEO is to have your page show up when it is asked for and to not show up when it isn't. So let's see if we can get the real scoop on all of this. How can you make your website more SEO friendly?

First, we need to remember that SEO is not the purpose of your website. People is. If you are selling things from your site you
probably don't make too many sales to search engine bots or spiders. I know I don't. If you have information or pictures to share, like on the Beautiful Fairhope site, you mostly want people, not search engine spiders, to see it. So don't let this SEO stuff go to your head. First and foremost you want your site designed to benefit your human visitors. And, it may surprise you, so do search engines. If you page is well designed, rich in relevant content, and easy to navigate, then it is more than half way to being the kind of site that will get good search engine placement. Design for people first.

Of course being found in the search engine results means being found by people so, sometimes, we have to make compromises between what works best for people and what works best for SEO. When it comes to that, most times, people should win. I say most times because there are some issues that pretty much require doing them the SEO way, rather than the people way, or you might as well give up on SEO right from the start. Probably the best example of this is those fancy Flash splash pages at the beginning of some websites. When it comes to SEO they are a big NO NO. If you want, and keep, one then you will have a very hard time getting good search engine results for your site home page. 100% Flash pages just don't index very well. The same is true for a page that is one big graphic. It may look pretty but it's just not a good idea. You need content -- and that means text -- on your page so your indexing will result in good placement.

Some out-of-the-box ecommerce packages are not the greatest for SEO and many of the do-it-yourself site-builder website communities are
not the best either. You need to be sure the place you have your website is giving you the most freedom in how you can apply SEO
methods. Having your own domain name and your own indepedently hosted website or landing page is always the best choice. This is not only for SEO, it is best for almost everything about building an online business -- but that's another article.

For regular search engine results a standard HTML page is always good. Now, don't interpret that to mean that dynamic pages (PHP, ASP, etc.) are bad, as I've seen some people say. That couldn't be farther from the truth. As far as search engine spiders are concerned PHP and ASP pages are just standard HTML. It all has to do with the way websites, and web pages, are viewed. Spiders, and people, don't "surf" or "go" to your website, they bring the individual pages to their computers. Perhaps you didn't know that but it is an important thing to consider when understanding search engine spiders. Web pages come to you, and to the spiders. You, and the spiders, don't go to them.

Next time I'll introduce some of the specifics of SEO you can apply to your pages.