I wrote my first SEO article way back in 1998. A lot has changed since then, but my approach has stayed pretty much the same and my results, while not 100%, is usually satisfactory and often better than that.
Search engine optimization may be the most abused topic in the history of the web. Much (too much) has been written about search engine optimization over the years, but very little is worth being read. I step up to the plate today to pass on some of the wisdom I have gained in the last eight years of Search Engine Optimization work.
First, let me stress that I don’t believe in tricks, cloaking, doorways, etc., and is not SEO my primary vocation. Any advantage gained by those guys who try and game the search engines are temporary and difficult to maintain. What I do believe in is avoiding common pitfalls, properly marking up my pages, and analyzing my log files. Concentrating on good planning and research combined with good content properly marked up is a winning recipe.
I have achieved significant success by:
1. Define target keywords – posting content that reinforces keywords.
2. Using semantic markup to accurately describe that content.
3. Staying as standards based making content as accessible as possible.
4. Posting quality content – I don’t believe in Splogging.
5. Use linking effectively.
Today I am going to talk about #5: Effective Linking. My type of SEO is all about content and linking. I try to create good content and get good inbound links to that content, thereby increasing that page’s reputation. But internal links are important too; your site’s navigation can help (or more often hurt) your SEO efforts.
Here are 3 bad ideas:
Frames suck.
Frames are anathema to web navigation; search engines do not index framesets very effectively. The problem lies in the fact that pages inside the frameset are not meant to stand on their own, so webmasters usually submit the page that contains the frameset and the content rich pages that the frameset calls are never indexed.
Second, don’t use Flash for Navigation.
Sure those dynamic flash menu dealio’s look good, but they are not doing anything for your SEO efforts. If you have to have flash navigation, please include all the text links somewhere on the page. I would go as far as saying that if your primary menu is image based that you make sure that you include text links on the pages as well to take advantage of the anchor text.
Dynamic URLs And JavaScript Navigation.
If you are developing a database driven site, chances are your URLs look something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/script.php?article=1117758696/. The problem with this is that some bot’s will stop indexing as soon they hit that ? Look into something called mod_rewrite if you are using a Linux box. This is not as much of a problem as it was back in the day, but think about it: do you want a search engine to think you have an address of P?=17 or really_keyword_great_keyword_article.php?
Similarly JavaScript navigation can cause the same sort of problem. Unless you are sure, you know what you are doing, my advice is to stick to using vanilla HTML hyperlinks for navigation.
Thinking Linking.
One of the things that I think really pays off is thinking about each link you create – on any site – that goes back to your site. You can influence the ranking somewhat by naming the text of a link a keyword instead of a description of your internal pages.
For example:
TDB Info – no
Information about This Damn Blog – yes
And you should be creating appropriate inbound links to your site – constantly. Don’t do anything that is not proper netiquette, but past that – get every inbound link you can. If you are getting a link from a site that has a similar theme as yours make sure you name it appropriately. For example, let’s say you have a site about fender telecaster guitars. And band that you know is going to link to your site from theirs:
Dan’s Guitars – no
Dan’s Fender Telecasters – yes
You get the idea. The key is, if you are going to get a nice, quality inbound link – think about the anchor text should be. While you will often want to get your keyword(s) into the link, put a little thought into each link.
Google’s Page Rank
If you don’t already have it installed, download the Google Toolbar so that you can easily see the page rank of every site (and every page in that site) you visit.
There are many arguments among web professionals about Page Rank – how important it is, how to improve it, etc. I think a couple of things are clear:The Google Toolbar’s Page Rank approximates how important Google thinks a site is.
GoogleBot crawls the internal and external links on your site, and if it finds an external link back to you, you get points for a better ranking. In addition, links from important sites give you more points. For example, if you have a directory listing from a highly ranked DMOZ category, it will be worth more than a link from Jacko’s Geocities homepage-o-links.
Google also uses Page Rank as a supplement to its basic search algorithm, which is based on the page title, body text, URL, site theme, etc. For instance, if a number of pages about women’s judo ranked the same on content, then Google would present the one that has the best Page Rank, or more precisely, which one was most important.
So how do you improve Page Rank? Get every link that you can from every site that you can that has a decent PR. You can start by being listed in all of the popular directories. DMOZ is a good choice, as they supply Google with their directory listings. Additionally you will need to secure some inbound links. While this can be difficult to do effectively, make sure you get links from sites that are at least as important to Google as yours are, and make sure you get them from sites that won’t hurt your site’s theme.
Hopefully this article gives you a little window into how I see using linking to your advantage – and maybe it helped push you in a different direction about SEO than you were headed before you read it.
