Real-Life Search Engine Optimization

An acquaintance of mine was launching a web site for his business and wanted some advice on how to publicize it. Ah, the classic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) problem. I have always wanted to formate a proof that this was an NP-Complete, as results can be a polynomial in time and effort.

This is a huge question for all sorts of people, as it affects every web site on the internet in one way or another. The reality of the problem only hits you when you stop to consider the position of the search engine, whose sole purpose (forget about selling ad space for a minute) is to completely categorize and index the world wide web to allow people to find the information they need with minimal effort. This is a hopelessly impossible situation the search engines are in, so they are forced to take short cuts, cheat off each other, make assumptions, and, in the end, usually provide sub-optimal results.

The best advice I have: think like a search engine. This may be easier for programmers like myself, but probably not. I would venture a guess that very few people in Google would be able to tell you how to best present a site to the Google god for processing.

The next best advice: know your target audience. Try to imagine someone looking for your web site, or more appropriately, the information on your web site. What search term(s) would they use? Make sure those terms are on your web site, and draw as much attention to them as possible. It's no small irony that the tech community has it easy here. Programmers often search for specific terms (strings) that aren't even real dictionary words that can often only mean one specific thing. If I am looking for documentation on a certain ColdFusion tag, maybe <cfinvokeargument>, I can simply enter "cfinvokeargument" into any search engine and find what I need. If I were to type in "orange", however, the search engine wouldn't know if I was looking for the proper RGB values of the color orange, what varieties of oranges are grown in Texas, or the location of the county courthouse in Orange county, CA.

Enough with the abstract advice. Here are a few suggestions that I have used in real-life situations, in no particular order.

Domain Name is a Key
Get a good domain name, like AcmeRocketSales.com or something closely related to your company or web site name. This may seem like a no-brainer, but search engines will see this as a mark of legitimacy and permanency, just like a human would. Darn, those computers are smart.

The Power of the People
Get your site listed on the Open Directory Project. This is a project with the goal of indexing the entire web - with a twist that it doesn't rely on robot/spider software to "crawl" the web to find and categorize web sites. Instead volunteer human editors must review and approve every submission. This results in a very accurate listing of legitimate sites. As a result, normal search engines, like Google and Yahoo, pay very close attention to web sites added to the ODP. Getting listed here will go a long way to getting your site more value in the eye of a search engine.

Meta Tags do no Harm
Use the <meta> tags for keywords and descriptions in the HTML code of your web site. Make them the same on every page of your site. These tags used to be the primary thing that search engines used to automatically index web pages, but they were abused so much by people that the search engines started to just ignore them. So then people quit using them. Rumor is they are on the rebound though. Whatever the case may be, they can't hurt.

Self-Linking is like Self-Promotion
Make sure every page on your web site has links to the home page and the top level sections of your web site. This is pretty standard nowadays with site layouts where every page has a common navigation area.

Embrace the Power of the Web
Get other web sites to link to your site. Every web site the links to yours increases the importance of your site in the eyes of a search engine. If any of your employees have a blog, facebook, myspace, etc., have them add a link someplace. You could approach some of your customers and ask if they would consider putting a link as a recommendation (business cards with your URL help a lot here). By the way, Google happens to run a small blogging site. You think it scans those blogs more frequently or more efficiently? I bet so...

Geocode Yourself
Your physical location is one of the most unique attributes you have, so you had better use it. Make sure your address is displayed, in full, on your web site. The more often, the better, so consider sticking it in the footer or somewhere. Register with Google local; provide as much information as you can.

Feed the Beast, and the Beast May Not Eat You
You can always throw in the towel and advertise with search engines themselves, like Google. I'm not real sure how this works, but I think you can set something up so your ad shows up if someone searches for certain search terms. I would consider this a last resort. It's a sure-fire solution, but it's not free.