Lately, many have been asking about SEO. With the economy in a little slump of sorts, I am assuming people are for one feeling the pinch and realizing the selling value of the internet. The end of the age of bad flash sites and complex tables is in sight! For many years, big companies have been playing the pragmatic SEO game, but now the average joe is finally jumping on the bandwagon and willing to invest in SEO and SEM. In my opinion this is big, because small businesses are willing to give up valuable revenue to the relatively uncertain territory of SEO and SEM.To accompany my recent observation of those with small businesses I have compiled a brief list of essential SEO tips:

1. If you use Flash, please give alternate content. Sure Google can “spider flash” now, but do you really trust the outcome? And how is any search ever going to get high quality content from this?
2. Keep your markup clean.
3. Use heading tags well. So don’t overuse/abuse h1’s and h2’s - I usually use each once on a page.
4. Use markup tags for their intended purpose.
5. Make sure page titles are used and content rich.
6. Use keywords and descriptions when you have something important to say about that page. Just like your momma told you, if don’t have anything good to say don’t say it all.
7. Use URL rewriting. If you are an SEO, in my opinion, URL rewriting should be your best friend. In strong accordance, be familiar with HTTP/1.1 status codes and know how to use them.
8. Use and be familiar with robots.txt, the X-Robots-Tag, the “rel” attribute, and sitemap.xml files.
9. Use webmaster tools from one or all of the major players (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft).
10. Use Google Analytics at the very least. For the most accurate metrics, combine Google Analytics with server analytics like AWStats, and other tools.

For the more advanced readers, please feel free to add to or suggest alternatives. And for the rest, this list is not meant to be a be all and end all, but - just like one’s wedding day - a mere beginning on a long journey.Now for the shameless plug…If you need some assistance implementing an SEO plan, drop Vovéo or myself a line, we will be glad to help

Tags: SEM, SEO, Tips
Posted in SEO | 1 Response » | View blog reactions

UPDATE: I’ve since rethought the implications of this post and I wanted to add that using h1 as the company name is the right choice is certain scenarios. I simply wished to provide an alternate method.

First it has been a very long time since my last post. My excuse is that I moved…and I’ve been a bit lazy. I felt the need to address a topic that seems to have been brought up to me several times over past couple weeks: CSS site navigation.

When structuring and styling menus, a definition list (dl) should be used for the site title and navigation.

The first roadblock some have with this method is that they feel the h1 tag must be used for the site title. However, using the h1 for the site title (or company name in many cases) is redundant. Your h1 (although many web builders view it improperly as a semantic whore and over use it), has great value in SEO. Because the h1 is suppossedly the most important content on a specific page, why would one waste it something like Widgets, Inc. when it could be used for maybe a content rich headline: Widgets Inc Provides Solutions for All Widgets Manufacturers. I thought the following experience was very valuable

As I observed a blind web user navigate through a few pages, he reported that hearing the h1 content on top of the page was boring and redundant for him. Because his screen reader read the content of the title element first, the title element served as the actual title of the document for him, and the h1—which merely repeated the content of the title element—was useless.

ALA - October 09, 2006 - Working with Others: Accessibility and User Research”

If a blind human and his screen reading software sees the h1 used as the site title as redundant, I wonder how it impacts how a search engines screen reader views your site’s content. Clearly, using the dt instead of the h1 for the site title is not a bad thing whatsoever.

Secondly, if you look at the meaning of a definition list you will see that it fits perfectly with the notion that you are defining your site and there direct relationship between the items (navigation). And to reiterate the advantage of not using h1 for your site name, the site navigation is now minimized along with the site name - since both are redundant and not content rich.

Lastly, stlyling your header is now a breeze. And your html structure won’t give you indigestion due to enclosing your site name, navigation, and possibly one other element (perhaps search) in a wrapping div.

Here is the markup for your reference (or view a mockup page). Using this method, you can easily create dropdown menus by nesting another unordered list (ul) inside of the list item (after the anchor tag).

<dl class="sitedefinition">
	<dt><a href="/">Company Name, LLC</a></dt>
	<dd>
		<ul>
			<li><a href="/company/">Company</a></li>
			<li><a href="/solutions/">Solutions</a></li>
			<li><a href="/strategy/">Strategy</a></li>
			<li><a href="/clients/">Clients</a></li>
			<li><a href="/partners/">Partners</a></li>
			<li><a href="/contact/">Contact</a></li>
			<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
		</ul>
	</dd>
</dl>

Tags: CSS, CSS Walkthrough, Experimental, h1, SEO
Posted in CSS, SEO | 1 Response » | View blog reactions