Keeping things simple, is it possible?

After reading the Google PDF on search image optimization, I too was also amazed at the level of seo activity taking place today. Once again, the “KISS” (keep it simple stupid) principle applies to the situation but there's also a fine art in trying to keep things simple and also interesting and organized. As the Google pdf stated it's important to add the appropriate information to the metadata (not generic information and also make sure you don't use too much.)

One thing I find particularly interesting is that many of us are likely headed into the world of multimedia and that we will likely be posting videos, photo and audio onto our sites. The use of adding these elements, I believe will be very beneficial and can possibly add more viewers to
your site if done correctly. One site I found helpful was http://www.antezeta.com/blog/video-seo-top-tips. The blog talked about “8 Ways to Optimize Video for Search Engine Visibility” and stated that “While Google might be the choice for comprehensive web search, Google’s video search is limited to Google Video and YouTube – probably not what most Internet users have in mind. For a true video search engine, a better place to start is Yahoo Video Search, which does try to catalog the entire world’s video information.” Many folks are posting videos on YouTube but there area number of other video hosting sites that many folks believe better quality (Vimeo is one example) and from the information, I read on the Antezeta site, your video may even be searched/viewed if it's not posted on the correct site.

Another item in the article I thought was interesting was their suggestion to “Offer a textual transcript of audio and video content. This is a usability and accessibility requirement as well as a search engine optimization tip.” Transcribing an entire video/audio/or detailing everything about photos can be a pretty imposing task but II believe if you posted the correct metadata and also use social networking you will eventually find additional traffic to your site. I believe many people are interested to see a place or activity before going there and if have the right information and a quality product, people will visit your website.

Another site I found interesting was http://lightroom.theturninggate.net/tag/search-engine-optimization/. One comment on this site stated , “Being a web photo gallery engine, it’s the images above all else that are important. Search engines first look at an image’s filename, much as we, as people, first look at a person’s face when meeting them. In most cases, the camera’s default filenames will be insufficient for our purposes; DO NOT post images to your gallery named _MG_0001.jpg. You may as well shoot yourself in the foot.” The site also says “In applying SEO to photographic websites, it is important to first understand that search engines rummage through text, not images. Google’s image search does not search images, but searches the text associated with images. Therefore, in the world of search engines, your images are only as good as the words you attach to them, and the words you surround them with.”

As we continue down the path learning more about web design, I can see how organization is extremely important and having simple file names helps locate things. I am also bewildered at how much information a good website needs to keep up with the competition and current trends.

SEO- link link link

There’s a whole world to coding specifically designed for promoting yourself. I had no idea! After reading the PDF I realized how much control the designer has in their web page’s “searchability.” Our options as designers are to add short, descriptive description tags that anticipate what user’s might type in the search bar and make sure clickables are text. What’s most important for the future... I think… is creating “alt” text for images. Not only will image descriptions show up in search engine lists, but with the ubiquitous use of Iphones, blackberries etc people are going to be encountering Web page where they can’t see the images. The alt text gives these iphone-users an idea about what the image would be if they could see it.

            One of the easiest ways to promote your site, post HTML- production, is through your use and optimization of links. Lately I’ve noticed that many sites have their own blogs. At first I thought this was a little weird but I appreciated it because it gave a personality to the could-be static page. But lo and behold, the blog is simply self-promotion. The more the links to your site, the more credibility the site has to a search engine. I find in-links (links on your page to other pages on your web site) not only very easy to incorporate into your site, but very important. SO I looked into them on various help blogs. I found a blog devoted to SEO tips, which had many posts on link potential.

            One post commented on the changing search engine world, which apparently pushes pages to the top of the organic search list depending on the amount of links.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-secret-to-ranking-at-the-search-engines-thats-really-no-secret-at-all. “The search engines got smarter, mapping the link patterns of the web and giving higher ranks to those sites & pages with more inbound links… All of this algorithmic evolution means that sites wishing to rank at the top of the engines must have high quality, naturally given, topically relevant links.” So that use of a blog is clever. It allows Web site managers to post about new additions, updates and content of their site in their Blogging, linking to the pages and boosting their visibility.

            Another blog gave tips on promotion post HTML phase. Basically his tip is to be like a door-to door salesman, aggressively sell your site to other site-owners or bloggers. http://selfpromotion.com/ says to visit other relevant sites that you want to link to. Once you link to them, say in your blog, let them know! “Tell him that you have linked to his site, and that regardless of what he decides, you will continue to do so, because you think his site is useful. The cute thing here is that by explicitly saying this, he'll give your request extra consideration. Isn't it great how being virtuous can be so evil?” So...link, link, link and make your blog USER& SEARCH-ENGINE FRIENDLY with descriptions and tags!

 

 

SEO: Your Presesence on the Web

As I was reading through the pdf posted on Blackboard, I felt that this exercise not only complemented but also completed, all that we have been learning for the past weeks in class. SEO implementation, has today become one of the most basic requirements for websites. The reason is quite simple: there is no point in having a great website which is invisible. And a website which does not show up with a high ranking on a SERP(Search Engine Results Page), may as well be non-existent in the present scenario.

In the pdf, there were several references to tweaking title tags, headings and content. In relation to that, I came across an interesting article (http://searchenginewatch.com/3635670)on SearchEngineWatch.com which cautioned against 'over-tweaking'. The author, Eric Enge, made an observation that while SEO was important, it was just as important to focus on 'link building, PR, and social media reference building'. He mentioned in the article that it was easy for amateur webmasters to get obsessed with Search Engine Optimization and lose out on other marketing opportunities that are available.

SEO

Who knew Search Engine Optimization was so complicated? Up until now, I have been on the finding the side of search engines results not on designing side. Knowing what designers go through to get you to their website is pretty impressive. Now I suppose I am going to have to be more in tune to the tricks. The Google article, while long and infused with perhaps too much information, was helpful and eye-opening. The section on meta tags was useful because I didn’t know what those were when I would look at the page source of different websites.

When googling (or searching for results on other search engines that aren’t google, yahooing? binging?) I found it astonishing that a company’s main page wasn’t the first link when that was the exact thing you typed in because they didn’t take the right steps to make sure their site was number 1. For example, when I just searched “SEO” the first site the popped up was the Search Engine Optimization Wikipedia page. http://www.seo.com was the third link.

I was also interested in the problem with Flash because I have friends who love using Flash in their websites and they probably don’t realize that they are negatively impacting their search engine results. I forwarded my friends the article so that they could improve their website search engine results.

I am planning on making myself a website this winter break with the fun new skills I have learned in class and knowing this kind of information is really important because now I will be able to do everything I can to make my site more apparent and as a result more important on the web.

SEO

When I first learned of this assignment, I was extremely interested to read the PDF on SEO provided for us (Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide), and to further exhaust the topic through subsequent blogs about SEO, and other articles.

This past summer, I began establishing myself as a freelance wedding and portrait photographer, and created both a website and a blog (with a new blog being released this week). That was my first introduction to the importance of SEO. But until I read the material required for this assignment, I had no idea just how much went into it, and how much more I could be doing to promote both of my sites.

How have I gone about SEO so far? Well, for starters, I have definitely dealt with "description" meta tags. (In all honesty, my fiancé and business partner is the brains in that department, so I left most SEO stuff up to him.) Ways in which I have felt comfortable promoting my sites have been through social networking sites. Myriads of such sites exist for wedding photographers. (Imagine a Facebook strictly for photographers.) I also utilize Facebook itself, through a fan page for my work.

I also utilize Google Analytics for my main website, and check it every day. It has been very helpful to see how people are coming across my site (how much traffic is the result of direct searches, how much is the result of referral sites, etc.). I can then determine which meta tags I should keep/change to get the most traffic.

However, like I said, I have learned so much new stuff about SEO because of Google's SEO Starter Guide. For example, concepts of HTML/XML sitemaps and "breadcrumb navigation" are all new to me. This is not to say I fully understand everything about these topics now that I've been introduced to them. But I definitely intend to reread this guide to further promote my site and my business.

In searching the term "Search Engine Optimization" I came across two different interesting sites. One, titled "95 SEO Tips and Tricks for Powerful Search Engine Optimization" outlines which SEO tricks should be a high priority. This is very helpful for me. Some examples of these tricks include writing unique content, and writing it often (something I try to do at least a couple of times per week to increase my SEO). I would definitely encourage those of you reading this to check out this helpful site, as it breaks down very nicely what you should make a first priority. As a matter of fact, I am bookmarking this site to refer to as I continue trying to increase my SEO.

Finally, I also found a blog with a post called "Search Engine Optimization Basics". This site was particularly encouraging because it points out that while SEO is time-consuming, it is not hard. It can be done.. The right way. Successfully. The article (like the PDF) also harps on the importance of "linking" tactics. This is something I think I do, but perhaps not enough of. One tactic that has seemed to work is actually following other photographer's blogs and commenting on their posts. This increases the likelihood that other commenters will click on my username, which will take them to my site.

All in all, this assignment has encouraged me that what I have done so far has been useful, but that there is always room for improvement, especially in terms of "keywords," "anchors," and the like. And as I said, I look forward to learning more about SEO through rereading these helpful resources.

The Little Things

So what I've learned about SEO is that it's the little things, the details that you pay attention to are what help drive people to your website. According to Google's SEO manual first and foremost you want to thing about your audience when designing your site, and if you can do that well, then you've already got a good thing going as far as making your site appealing and search-able. But there are still some additional little things to pay attention to. Designer Jay Goldman on his blog recommends simple, organized URLs, using sitemaps, and repeating search terms throughout the page, especially towards the top.

This website, top10SEOtips, pretty much recommends the same things. Use important keywords, have an awesome domain name, use META tags, etc.

Personally it's a little overwhelming to be reading about all these little things I need to worry about now in addition to trying to remember how to code something. But I guess if you're spending a ton of time designing an awesome website, you might as well spend the time to get people to come to it.

The importance of SEO

It is very crucial to make sure that your website can be easily accessible by everyone. From what I've been reading and learning about in other classes, if a website wants to generate business, they need to make their page available.

And, in order to do that, they have to make good use of keywords, for one. If their site is about basketball, but a specific kind of basketball (i.e. streetball, AND1) then, on their site, they need to make sure that they have words like basketball and streetball somewhere on their page in order for it to be accessible. Meta-tags are crucial as well. The more meta-tags the page has, the greater chances are that the search engines will recognize it, bringing more hit counts.

But, from one article I read http://thefuturebuzz.com/2009/11/13/social-media-seo/ about how people need to be well equipped in SEO before they use social networks to market their businesses. In our case, we have to consider what social networking sites we're going to use for our website. The article says "good content makes your website and the search engines more valuable". That's why the content on your page has to be strong enough to generate a powerful search. "Searches may not be sexy, but they bring traffic" as the article says.

In another blog post http://www.ronmedlin.com/traffic-generation/seo-google-marketing/the-best-search-engine-optimization-results-are-through-thoughtful-selection/, it gives advice on making the most of SEO's. And, it reiterates what the previous article mentioned. It emphasizes the use of good keywords. "By knowing how to select the best keywords, insert them into valuable content, and submit your material appropriately you can maximize your search engine optimization efforts."This is what needs to be in consideration. I've never paid too much attention to search engines. But, since they're going to be an important part of our project, I need to .

For my site, I'm re-inventing www.msfocus.org. For the SEO, I'm going to try and use keywords like "MS Focus Group". I want to use "Multiple Sclerosis" but that's too broad and there are hundreds of sites already that pertain to it. So, decisions, decisions. As far as social networks/media, I want to use Facebook and Twitter. But, understanding how I need to work with SEOs will determine how I'm going to market my page on the web.