There are several steps you will need to take when preparing, planning and executing your site that will make—or break—the success of your rankings in Google and other search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should not be an afterthought when redesigning your website. It’s not something that you can just hook on like a trailer and expect to tow along behind you. For effective SEO, begin at the beginning.

How does it all work?
In order to optimize your site successfully, you need to understand how search engines work and how individuals use search engines. A search engine analyzes accessible content on the Internet in order to display the most relevant results to the user. The goal is to be high up on that results list.

Guidelines to SEO success for your website
As you design and build your site, SEO should stay top of mind.

Your site needs a clear, well-organized and consistent hierarchical structure. Every page of your site should be interlinked. Cross-linking pages aids your SEO rankings and also the user experience. Providing relevant, related information delivers a richer experience for the user and prevents dead-end pages.

The “content-is-king” thing. Unnecessary wording distracts, slows and confuses readers and search engines. The contents of a page should be topic-focused without irrelevant media or information. Content that’s too long can also have a negative SEO-effect, because keyword density thins out over a longer article. As the keyword ratio falls, search engines value it less.

Keeping it fresh. It’s a common myth that refreshing the content already published on your site will rank you higher. And by refresh we mean update content that already exists. This isn’t necessarily true. If the changes made to your page improve its optimization, then yes, it will likely rank you higher. But the opposite is true as well. If the changes you made reduce the page’s optimization then it could result in hurting your rankings. So don’t update copy simply to have “fresh content.” Make updates based on SEO best practices to optimize the page as best you can. Search engines do like “fresh content”—that is, new pages. Adding new pages and even sections to your site show the search engine that you are continuing to deliver substantive content and are growing your site. “Recency” matters.

Links, links and more links. It has been said that if content is king for SEO, then links are undoubtedly queen. Internal links will certainly aid search engines for indexing within your own site, but it’s the external links that search engines value the most. Think of inbound links as other, respected sites validating the content you are providing to the search engine. They are virtually vouching for you.

Point users and bots in the right direction. A clear map of your site’s structure offers users and bots a quick overview of what information your site has to offer and where to find it. Providing search engines with both a “robots.txt” as well as a “sitemap.xml” file will give search engine bots a road map of your site structure.

Don’t ignore your page title. The title of your page, usually displayed at the top of the browser window, is also highly valued by search engines. The page title should clearly reflect the contents of the page as well as the name of the site.

Example: Your Site’s Name | News Article Title

Don’t hide important information within an image. Search bots can’t “read” images, and for SEO, you need to speak “bot.” Don’t neglect imagery (that will arrest your reader) but strike a balance between image and text in order to arrest the bots. Information-rich images should be explained in text. For important information such as page titles, names, content or links, displaying text rather than an image is a best practice. There are other alternatives as well: use Flash to display headers in a non-web-safe typeface through SEO-friendly solutions like sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) or use “alt” attribute to describe text embedded in the image.

Metadata. Though meta keywords and descriptions are no longer valued as highly by search engines as they were in the past, they are still referenced for the result summaries. The meta description should be used to describe the content of your page honestly and concisely and be one to three sentences at most.

Tag and title everything! Adding “alt” and “title” tags to everything you can will help the supportive information be more relevant. It will also allow visually impaired users (who use a special reader to view sites) to gain a richer experience. As we’ve learned, because search engines can’t “read” an image or define the precise relevancy of a link, they rely on these additional tags to rank this information’s importance.

What’s so friendly about a URL? Some URLs are easier to search and index than others. Most modern content management systems give the user the ability to customize their URLs and will often provide suggestions which are more in line with what the crawlers are looking for. Web addresses that are easy for people to read are also loved by search engines. Human-readable URLs should match the content of your site structure and page and ideally contain relevant keywords.

Example: http://yoursite.com/news/news-article-title/

Flash and AJAX. A persistent misconception among SEO consultants is that search engines ignore Flash and AJAX. These technologies are inherently visual and experience-driven, giving search engines a headache. Though Flash and AJAX do, in fact, make it a challenge for search engines to index the content, the challenge is not an impossible feat. Search engines are slowly improving their ability to play friendly with these technologies. Nonetheless, when SEO is a high priority, use Flash and AJAX in moderation as part of an SEO-friendly plan.

Code matters. Because search engines are fluent only in website code, it’s important for your developers to write code that is as clean, structured and compliant as possible. Some code is more appealing to bots than others. HTML/XHTML content tags offer much more than styling the content on the page. Content tags such as <H#> (header tags) are a higher priority than others. Try to take full advantage of these tags when applicable:

• Headers (1,2,3+)
• Paragraph
• Lists (ordered, unordered, definition)
• Address
• Acronym
• Blockquote.

Use an SEO-friendly content management system (CMS). Know how well your CMS (or the CMS you intend to buy) allows your information to be indexed by search engines. Contemporary CMSs enable those who lack coding skills to have control over these basic SEO guidelines. Some features to look for are:

• Customizable friendly URLs
• Custom page titles
• Page-level meta content
• HTML/XHTML based text editing
• Alt and title tag control for media and links.

Avoid the black hat
“Illegal” optimization methods can leave a negative mark on your website or even get your site banned from search engines like Google and Yahoo! This is tantamount to suicide. Avoid these techniques. Some of the top black hat SEO practices to avoid are:

Hidden content. Hidden content has been misused in the past to add content to a page with the intent to increase keyword density. Search engines have grown clever enough to recognize content that is being pushed, but hidden from the end user. The tactic could easily get your site flagged for review.

Meta keyword stuffing. Meta keywords and description tags have also been exploited to increase keyword density. Remember to keep your meta content relevant, unrepetitive and brief.

Doorway or gateway pages. Some site developers will create hidden pages, designed for search engines only. Once upon a time, this wasn’t bad. Today, search engines are starting to recognize these pages as padding and ignore them. Tread carefully with this tactic; it has utility, but may become a black hat practice before long.

Link farming. Link farms are sites created with no other purpose than to link to a list of unrelated websites. Linking to these types of link repositories can create the appearance of a large number of sites being connected to yours, but it won’t generate any real traffic and can run you the risk of having your site banned for participating. Fewer—but relevant and legitimate links—serve you far better.

Why hire an SEO expert?
Following today’s best practices may not take you into tomorrow. We really do not know exactly how search engine algorithms work. Nor do we know how they will change. Staying on top of your search engine rankings requires full-time commitment and dedication. To keep us on the cutting edge, we work with full-time SEO experts.

Your SEO results equal your keyword rankings. That’s it. If rankings improve, your results have improved.

A dedicated SEO consultant keeps up-to-date with the most effective optimization practices. By researching your website code, structure, content, traffic, rankings and competitive analysis, they can create a strategy to improve your rankings. Regular reports monitor your ranking and alert you to changing traffic patterns.

The bottom line
Unlike online media (banner/display ads and paid search ads), SEO is free; that is, your sweat equity can deliver results without having to pay a nickel to anyone else. If you’ve got the time, Google has the results.

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