The Truth About SEO

A few months back I created a website for a client that was quite small and contained mostly static content. Within the first few weeks of launching the site I received an email asking if anything could be done to make the site appear on the first page of Google results. In all fairness to the person who asked the question, while it may seem silly to a developer, it is a valid question and one that many people who are unfamiliar with the web want to know the answer to.

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that the term SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) has become a buzzword that is often thrown around as some sort of magic bean to web success when the truth could not be more the opposite.

Is there anything we can do to make our website appear on the first page of Google search results?

No.

Unless you are willing to pay for a sponsored link there is absolutely nothing that can be done to guarantee your site appears at the top of Google’s search results within the first few weeks after launch.

I don’t mean to be harsh, but the sooner everyone understands that concept, the better.

The truth is that SEO is one of the few organic processes inside of the web. There is no single right answer and there is no guarantee of success, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try.

What can be done to improve the SEO of our site?

That’s more like it.

SEO is not snake-oil. It is a legitimate facet to any successful website but it is only part of a larger whole. Focusing all of your energy on the first page of Google results is not the approach you should be taking. Instead, you should focus on how SEO can benefit your website in the long-term. Below I have outlined the most commonly overlooked SEO considerations that I see on a regular basis.

Content is King

It cannot be said enough. Creating content that other web users find valuable is the holy grail of SEO. The truth is, no matter what you do to make your site search engine friendly, having good, recent and regularly updated content is the best way to find yourself in search results and the single main focus you should have when it comes to creating a formidable web-presence. Every time you post new information on your site search bots are more likely to re-index it and reader’s are more likely to return. By posting good content your readers are also more likely to link back to your site which increases the perceived value of your site to a search engine. If you start with good content, everything else will fall in line. Without good content, everything else SEO related will only get you so far.

The difficulty with the statement above is that good content doesn’t happen overnight. As I said before, SEO is a very organic process.

Use Semantically Correct Markup that Validates

Success in this area falls squarely on the shoulders of the developer, but as a site owner or stakeholder that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to help make sure your site meets these guidelines.

The idea of ‘semantically correct markup’ focuses on the idea that the HTML markup used to generate your site should describe the content within it. Now I’m not going to get into HTML 101 here, but I will tell you that HTML is a series of tags used to define the structure of a website. The tags that HTML provides represent different types of information to search bots. Essentially the markup you use tells the search bot the kind of information your content tells a human.

For example, HTML provides a series of heading tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) where each heading describes the importance of the content within it. If you were to look at the markup used on this very page, you would see that the title of this article is contained inside of an h1 tag. On this particular page, the most important piece of information I have to offer to both a user and a search bot is the title. By using the h1 tag, a search bot sees this as the most important heading and uses that when indexing the page. If everything on the page was considered to be an average paragraph, the meaning of the content would be lost to the search robot.

Semantically correct markup doesn’t stop there and in fact it extends throughout every page of your entire site. The most common issue I see with markup semantics is the use of table based layouts. You may not even realize that your site (which functions exactly as you want it to) is virtually impossible for a search bot to read because of a messy, out-dated, table-based structure.

In addition to the semantics of markup, it is also important to consider the validity of markup. The validity of HTML is determined by a website’s adherence to the W3C standard for it. The W3C standard is very much like building codes used in construction. Without them, a building might not fall down, but it is lacking the best practices that have been established through years of experience. Similarly, by creating valid markup you are abiding by the best practices that are accepted within the web development industry. As a result, your site will be more crawler friendly and more accessible to the wide range of users that exist on the web.

So how do you know if a site is valid? Visit the W3C Markup Validator and enter the address of your site. For example you can see the validator’s results for this page and notice that this article is written correctly according the their standards.

Use Permalinks and a Consistent URL structure

In the old days (yes I mean early 2000′s) of the web, it was quite common for each page on a website to have a URL similar to the following: http://www.example.com?section=blog&category=seo-truth. While a URL structure such as that will work without issue, it can cause trouble when a search bot comes to your site as everything after the question mark is variable. With modern technology it has become commonplace for URLs to be formatted as: http://www.example.com/blog/seo-truth/. The result is you have a single URL with no variables in it that a search bot can reference time and time again while always receiving the exact same content.

In addition to permalinks, you should also ensure that your website’s URL structure is consistent to avoid a penalty for duplicate content. Even if you have the best intentions, you may not realize that search bots are penalizing you. For example, if you were to visit http://www.example.com and http://example.com a search bot could look at the two URL’s as unique, even though they point to the same content on your server. To avoid this problem you should decide on a URL (say www.example.com) and put a redirect in place so if someone types in example.com they are automatically redirected to the www version of the URL. This process ensures that only one URL links to any page on your site.

Don’t Hide your Content

We know that a good Flash animation looks really cool, but what may come as a surprise to some people is that by using Flash you are hiding your content in a format that until recently was completely unreadable. The debate over how well search crawler’s are able to read Flash files still rages on, but the important thing to remember is this – while Flash has many effective uses, as far as SEO is concerned it’s a black box on your page.

Not only can Flash act as a barrier to content, but images can as well. For example, if you look at this site, you’ll notice that I use a lot of headings with orange stars on either side of them. Each of these headings is in fact an image that I have used (to better accomplish a desired look). If implemented improperly, none of these headings would have any meaning to a search bot. I won’t get into the nitty gritty, but the common technique of image replacement is used to make sure I get the added SEO benefit of plain text headings, without suffering from abysmal styling.

The key message here is that search bots rely on text. They read your site and if there are no words for them to interpret, there’s no information for them to store.

In Closing

The goal of this article was not to give a crash course on how to be an SEO king and it is most definitely not an exhaustive list of SEO techniques. Instead what I have tried to illustrate are some of the common shortcomings I see when assessing other websites. Not only are these shortcomings easily avoidable, they are for the most part considered to be best practices when it comes to website development.

As developers it is our job to make sure that we adhere to all of the best practices that are applicable to any given scenario, but as clients and stakeholders you don’t have to remain in the dark about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to SEO.

I hope you have found the above information useful, albeit rather technical, and that it can help with your next project no matter what your role.

I also know that there are various camps with differing feelings on SEO and that my perspective is definitely that of a developer’s. I welcome any questions, comments or retorts in the comments section below.

This article was inspired by Search Engine Optimization 101.

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