When providing SEO advice on the topic of website design, we often warn against placing important content into images. This is because search engines can't read images like a person can. To them, an image with text is just an image. So we rely on ALT attributes to convey proper meaning. ALT text is an important aspect of both usability and SEO. Here's how to do them properly.
There are often cases where a business will choose to develop a custom content management system (CMS) rather than buying something off the shelf. The key to a developing a good CMS is to first understand the purpose of your website (requirements) and secondly to design the framework (database, business logic, GUI) to support it. There are also some fundamental SEO related guidelines you should build into your proprietary CMS if you hope to rank well in the search engines....
So, you are the marketing manager of your firm, and you've finally decided to pull the trigger and hire the search engine optimization company that you've been talking to for months. The budget has been cleared, the SEO firm is ready to start, and it should be just a matter of time before you start seeing a huge uptick in business. Right?
Yesterday I discussed code bloat by looking at how we can move style sheets and JavaScripts off the page in order to clean the coding up quite a bit. I this third post about cleaning up bloated code I wanted to address Tables and other typical causes of bloated HTML.
Sage gives credit to Skitzzo of SEO Refugee, who writes "An Open Letter to SEO Bloggers: Back up Your Statements!" In the letter, Skitzzo expresses his frustration with SEO bloggers for stating theories and opinions as facts without any supporting evidence....
I started a conversation about how code bloat can effect your site's performance with the search engines. This post maps some specific types of code bloat and very briefly--and non-technically--show you how you can eliminate the bloat to improve your pages performance for both visitors and search engines.
Here is another round of questions submitted to me during a Website Architecture webinar I gave a couple months back. I wasn't able to answer most of these questions before or during the presentation so I've been answering them in this Q&A series. This post covers questions regarding session IDs, repetitive vs. duplicate content, robots.txt files, navigation text, and maintaining link juice after a site re-design. Let's get to it....
Google is planning on offering a free webinar on July 8th covering 3 of its most useful products: Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer and Google Webmaster Tools. This trio of tools is key to the success of any business. Analytics, Landing Page & A/B testing and website configuration for organic insight are an absolute must even if you don't use Google products....
There are a lot of little things that can junk up your code, but, for the most part, the search engines don't really care. It doesn't matter to them if your HTML validates or if you keep your code "clean" or not. When it comes to analyzing your pages for search engine rankings, none of that really matters a whole lot. But when it does matter, it matters a whole lot.
Moving your site to a new domain is remarkably similar to moving to a new physical address. In some cases it's much easier, you don't have to pack up, or load or unload a U-Haul truck, but there are other considerations that you have to take into account to make sure your visitors continue to find you after an online move. One of the primary areas of concern is making sure the search engines not only continue to deliver traffic to your new location, but you don't lose all your search engine rankings in the process.
I'm continuing to work my way through questions submitted during a webinar I gave on Website Architecture. This post covers questions on URLs, breadcrumb navigation, CMS, Database driven sites, 301 and 302 redirects, navigation, heading tags, broken links and HTML theft.
Site navigation can come in many different flavors. There isn't just ONE way to do it correctly. If there were then every site would have navigation that looked exactly the same. So while navigation can vary greatly between sites and industries, there are certain navigational elements that should be implemented to ensure solid usability and effective website architecture.
In-site link implementation can make a considerable difference in how effective your optimization campaign is. Or isn't. While your site's primary and secondary navigation is extremely important, you shouldn't make that the only way for visitors to get around your website. Here are some inter-site linking strategies that will help your visitors while also assist with your search engine optimization efforts.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using both absolute and relative links. Here I will explore the differences between the two, outline some pros and cons and also provide some additional information on how you can create hyperlinks in your site that will ensure that all links to your content remain in tact and properly functioning.
This is a continuation of the questions I was asked during a webinar presentation on website architecture. Before and during he presentation I was submitted over 70 question and each week I've been answering a handful of them. This article covers questions about Wordpress, password protected pages, iframes, multiple paths to content, and filenames.
One of the elements of site development and SEO that often gets overlooked is internal linking. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone, and improve both search rankings and usability.
Yesterday I posted some thoughts on When, Why and How to Construct a Meta Description Tag. While it's relevance in terms of rankings is rather limited, there is still some intrinsic value to implementing a good description that will appear in the search results.
Joost de Valk of Yoast.com makes an indelible mark in the WordPress and SEO worlds with his article "WordPress SEO: The Definitive Guide To High Rankings For Your Blog." This all-encompassing resource talks about everything from basic technical optimization methods like Permalinks, title optimization and image optimization to advanced technical optimization techniques like disabling unnecessary archives, pagination and nofollowing unnecessary links....
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