Search engine optimisation is a bit of a black box to most web developers.
It is a tough balance between conventional website design with brief, informative information; versus SEO driven text, keywords and search phrases.
Competition sites often will employ SEO specialists who receive their money once the site has hit the top results of google.
The real secret is building content rich websites, with specific and relevant information.
This is a lot harder to do in practice, but there are some website seo tips that make a bit difference.
One thing I try and do is constantly research techniques, and analyse other websites code.
How did I end up getting on this site? The information is/isn’t relevant – what did they do?
Often I will watch fast rising websites to see how long they stay high in the results; if I notice sudden drops, then I dismiss the technique.
One seo technique that has me bemused at the moment is the new style link farming.
Here is how it works:
You buy a website which caters as some kind of service, say, seo-solutions.com.au.
You then setup LOTS of sub-domains; melbourne.seo-solutions.com.au, collingwood.seo-solutions.com.au, easy.seo-solutions.com.au
You then setup webpages on each of these subdomains, addressing specifically what is in the title.
SEO companies are doing this very cheaply – they buy one domain, then sell hundreds of sub-domains (which cost them nothing) to unwitting service men and women.
How long will it last? I don’t know. At the moment it has really messed up the Google search results in some industries.
This leads into my concern about this kind of link farming. Apart from being terrible for the integrity of search results, I am also concerned about the impact this kind of web marketing would have on brand value, and dilution.
If a customer can’t search for anything except you, then after a while, they will hate your brand.
I want Tech guys to flash back to the early days of experts-exchange. SO annoying. (although now its “free”, so so handy)
One article I was reading to help consul myself was the link dilution: links and pages on Google Answers.
The poster slawek-ga made an amazing reply (where did he find the time???) Nice.