Thread: Some thoughts on SEO Basics

There appears to confusion over the value of links among "SEO experts." At one extreme there is the opinion that all incoming links are weighted the same regardless of type to the other extreme that the importance of links is quickly diminishing. Logic would suggest that one-way relevant links are more likely natural and therefore more valuable. From a usability perspective I would agree. In my experience, when confusion exists among the "experts" it is prudent to take a middle road. Therefore my suggestion for linking is to have a mix. Let's say 40% reciprocal related, 30% one-way related, 30% local links. The figures are not scientific, they just look good to me. What do you think?

Originally Posted by frobn

4. Linking: Linking is an important aspect to any optimization program, but instead of linking for the sake of linking think of linking as something that will be of value to your visitors. Whether or not search engines rate you equally on relevant and non-relevant links there is no user value to a link that is not relevant to web pages and your content. Link to pages that make sense and request links from web pages that have relevancy. In the long term only relevant links will prove to be valuable to a visitor including the search engine spider.
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Your posts and especially the one above should be read by anyone starting in the seo field. There is nothing more important than building a strong establishment from the ground up. Some of the useless links may work now but long term speaking ... look at it like this, when the algos change, you will move up since those who wanted quick fixes, will lose their rankings. And you will stay up there.
Treat a search engine almost like a visitor. make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.
IMO Google spiders follow and find related content almost magnetically and even linking to someone can help your own rankings, getting a BL or not.

I say: if you don't have what your visitors want, link to someone who does.
Better to be another click away than not finding it at all.

Imitate Google and Google will love you.

Just my 3rd penny

Originally Posted by Mike

I say: if you don't have what your visitors want, link to someone who does.
Better to be another click away than not finding it at all.

Imitate Google and Google will love you.

Just my 3rd penny

Mike,

Thank you for your comments. I have a long way to go and feedback like yours will keep me on the right track. I visit many sites belonging to "SEO experts" and hate to say what I find, many don't seem to understand the basic premise that a web site is for the visitor. Their web sites might have high page ranks but I wonder how many sales they close.

Frobn, that was a very nice post. If you dont mind I wil stick that one. As for your comments I agree 100%. This is one problem with real estate sites. People build them for the search engines and forget about the consumers. However I would also like to say that most consumers only want to see pictures of the city and pictures and listings of homes.

Things like buyers and sellers tips hardly ever get looked at. Also and I hate to say it but sites do not IMHO need to include every piece of information you could think to offer a consumers. Your next question is why? Consumers looking at real estate now are starting to believe they can do it better than a real estate agent can. Also some feel if they dont use a Realtor they can get something knocked off the price of the home, which we all know isnt going to happen, plus that seller has representation so the buyer better as well. You need to leave something to the imagination to entice that consumer to give you a call or contact you.

I do agree with you though that sites should be created with the consumer in mind and not the SEs. Knowledge is power and power preceived is power acheived...I heard that somewhere ..lol

Well, I guess (unfortunately) I've certainly tried to create my sites for my surfers first & now am just learning about SEO. I was surprised to hear that one of my listing clients actually read through my seller's info page. She even made mention of some of the links & stuff. So you never know!

That's why I'd like to include as much info as possible. I especially think first-time buyers do like to read a tutorial or get as much information as possible.

Also, doesn't offering a lot of relevant content go hand-in-hand with SEO? There's only going to be so many listings I can put up at one time. My only problem is trying to create my own unique content.

And now that we're on the subject, I have to say that some of the streamlined real estate sites I've seen, IMHO, don't look welcoming to those I would consider the average home buyer or seller. Some look way too technical and uninviting & if I were out there surfing I'd try to find a "friendlier" site with easy navigation.

Originally Posted by Las Vegas Homes

Frobn, that was a very nice post. If you dont mind I wil stick that one. As for your comments I agree 100%. This is one problem with real estate sites. People build them for the search engines and forget about the consumers. However I would also like to say that most consumers only want to see pictures of the city and pictures and listings of homes.

Please do. I am flattered that you think enough of the post.

I agree that the images and listings are the content that visitors want the most and that is why it is important to have IDX integrated into your website. When done well with user friendly urls each and every listing will be crawled by the search engines.

You've each contributed great input and summarized it in plain english. For that I thank you!

There are certain things that work for a certain time frame and others will work for good. The time limited strategies normally get you up fast and you can then go down even faster. Like link buying was THE thing to do a year or 2 ago.
Now I would always establish a strong foundation like Frank said.
Never put all eggs into the same basket .... there is always a lot to learn.
That's why communities like these are great where people keep each others posted.
Thank you everyone for your contributions.


Mike

Originally Posted by frobn

It has always been my belief that if you want to be successful in anything you must first learn the basics. After several weeks of activity with SEO basics I have come to a preliminary hypothesis that SEO and usability share many aspects. Since usability is my area I have to be careful with my conclusions. However, if one were to begin with the premise that the search engine is just another user who whats to be able to quickly find information relevant to his or her search then such a premilitary hypothesis has surface validity.

Here are some of my thoughts on basic SEO. Please feel free to improve on or add to them.

1. Design architecture. - Build on a strong foundation. When building a house you build on a strong foundation, certainly it's the same principal with building web sites. The strongest foundation you can build on is xhtml and css (Cascading Stylesheets). (see http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/HTML...ction-to-XHTML/ for an introduction to xhtml. With xhtml/css you can separate content from layout. This has many advantages among them: search engine and user friendliness; easy to edit and maintain; and future compatibility with web devices. Ironically, web site architecture is often ignored by "SEO experts."

2. Meta Tags: Title and Meta tags. In SEO there is agreement on the importance of title tags and meta tags for the description. While other meta tags may play a role in SEO Title and description are the two that demand the most attention. Use individualized title tags and descriptions for each page of your site that you want to optimize.

3. Content: After design architecture, content is the most important aspect of your optimization because it is the reason why a user will visit your site. Assuming your content is relevant, your pages need to be easily accessible to your visitor. Remember I started with the premise that the search engine is a visitor. I suggested above that you use CSS for layout, now here is what css can do for your content: CSS-driven web pages download faster than table-driven pages; Web pages laid out with CSS have better accessibility and cross browser compatiblity making your pages usable on a broad variety of web devices; CSS-driven web pages have higher search engine ranking because they contain a far greater content to code ratio than table-driven ones making it easier for search engine spiders to access page content.

4. Linking: Linking is an important aspect to any optimization program, but instead of linking for the sake of linking think of linking as something that will be of value to your visitors. Whether or not search engines rate you equally on relevant and non-relevant links there is no user value to a link that is not relevant to web pages and your content. Link to pages that make sense and request links from web pages that have relevancy. In the long term only relevant links will prove to be valuable to a visitor including the search engine spider.
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frobn...once again a lot of valuable information Thanks for sharing!