Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do you get surfers on your beach?

Ready the site to be found

Search engines basically look for the following:

Web Resource: http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

Head Tag in HTML

<head> Defines information about the document </head>

Metatags

<meta> Defines Meta-data (data that describes other data)...these tags are found inside the head tag, they provide keywords, descriptions, revision dates and content type and are not generally seen by the site visitor.</meta>

Keywords are essential to a website being found by a search engine. Headings can have keywords. Overuse of keywords is not necessarily a good thing. Spiders will correlate meta tags with page content, rejecting the meta tags that don't match the words on the page.

In Dreamweaver add Metatags: Insert > HTML > Head Tags...keywords and descriptions can be found there.

Various Plausible Headtags:

Labels and Alt Tags

There are various html elements that can have names. Images can have names as well as alt attributes. Name and Use the alt attribute on all Images and anywhere available. Use your most needed keywords when possible.

*Tip: View the source code of sites found first in google and check out their metatags!

Definitions

If you type "define:" before a search in google it finds sites with definitions and displays those definitions and the sites that provide them. A glossary or definition page could possibly help with ranking in google and other sites like AskJeeves.

<dfn> definition </dfn>

Define a term or meaning. A definition list <dl> <dt>is just like an unordered list with </dt><dt> definition terms within.</dt></dl>

<q> quote </q>

A short inline quotation.

Additional Techniques

Negatively Offset Absolutely Positioned (AP) CSS

Text can be offset to the left of a webpage by defining AP CSS to divisions in HTML. Absolute Position causes other elements to ignore AP elements, the overlap each other. By assigning a left positioning attribute to a negative value, the text is offset out of the range on the browser. Scrollbars don't allow scrolling into negative values.

.class { position: absolute; left: -999px;}

This technique is often used to provide text for visually impaired accessibility. Accessibility standards make your site more accessible. This is a good thing.

Invisible Text

Make passages of text the same color as the background. Don't bother repeating keywords over and over trying to cheat the system as search engines ignore blatant disregard for use of keywords, content, and descriptions. Just supply useful content for search engines.

Google search “art galiano” then look at the cached link to see the hidden words below the flash file.

This technique works well with flash based sites to help provide content (possibly below the flash content) to allow bots and spiders to view content, without spoiling the look of the overall site.

No end to resources...

Use the search engines to seek aditional information regarding being found on the internet.

Submit the site to search engines

dmoz - Volunteers validate submission entries, not bots or spiders or algorithms.

google - you can submit to google, but it will find you anyway.

AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and more are all good places to look to submit your site to so you may possibly hit higher with your keywords. Though most of these sites also utilize google and dmoz as part of their engine. Most search engines feed off of other search engines. If you're on the web, you can be found. Metatags and Invisible Text may help but good content and time will provide definitive results.

Better quality and less fluffy meta tags ranks higher in search engines.

The longer your site and it's metadata is around the more important it becomes.

Networking

Links

Linking from other sites helps improve rank in search engines. Linking from higher ranked sites gets you higher ranks. It's still who you know...

The best way to get a top spot in Search Engines is to consistently provide top quality content, which gives other people the incentive to link back to your site. Unfortunately after high school, it's still a popularity game, but the cool kids are a whole new crowd... everyday.

Join any sites you can that have to do with photography free advertising is free advertising.

Word of Mouth

Homestarrunner is a perfect example of a site that took off like a virus using nothing but word of mouth. Regular updates keep viewers coming back and strong animation and original material keep it fresh.The makers of Home star Runner never made advertisements anywhere, their success is solely caused by fans of their online work.

Ask friends, associates and anyone you know who can add links their sites to your's..