Comments on: Search Engine Optimization Basics

By: Miguel Linares

Miguel Linares — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:54:42 +0000

Absolutely right. Great overview

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:54:59 +0000

Search Engine Optimization is a never ending process and requires frequent attention to maintain or improve your ranking. If you’re not putting effort into SEO, your competition is and all your online marketing or lack of will be for naught.

By: Eric Johnson

Eric Johnson — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:22:01 +0000

the most informative thing in this article is Link Tactics i found it really very nice piece of information regarding seo

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:45:22 +0000

Thanks so much for this very informative article!
looks like I’ve gotten into some “bad habits” in my designing, and this article set me straight!

I realize this post is almost a year old, but I was wondering if you had any specific tips regarding forwarded domains. My company runs a budget web design business where we sell design and .com, but all the content is hosted on a single server, with forwarded, masked domains (ie: the client’s .com is forwarded to ourserver.com/clientsite/index.html)

-is this a no-no?
Will google still crawl our sites? and if so, will it understand them as separate entities?

-When we create a site map, should we do so for each .com, or for our entire network of sites on our server?

thanks again.

By: Nixan @ eBrandz

Nixan @ eBrandz — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:15:38 +0000

Great stuff for beginners and small business. Although Adobe is providing optimized Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and extract information that is currently not discoverable by search engines, it’s better website owners keep out of full flash sites. If it constitutes a small part of a website, it should not be a problem. People need that to make the website little appealing.

By: SEO Inc

SEO Inc — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:39:51 +0000

Really solid info here Lee. Here is some info on getting around FLASH sites.

Write the Flash object onto the page using JavaScript and replicate all the links and content that appear in the Flash version using regular HTML within the noscript tag! As long as the user has JavaScript enabled, they will see the Flash version of the site, and the search engines will be able to crawl through all the content and links found in the noscript tag. And there you have it — SEO friendly Flash!

To see how to embed Flash objects using JavaScript please refer to example B in this “Making Flash Accessible” document published by the W3C.

By: Bill McIntosh

Bill McIntosh — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:21:06 +0000

Nice move, going back to the basics. That’s what’s really important. My favorite point: “Keyword research – generate a glossary of keyword phrases that addresses both prospect needs and the content you’re publishing.” I don’t think enough people do keyword research and it can be very key.

By: Tips on Content Centered Link Building | Online Marketing Blog

Tips on Content Centered Link Building | Online Marketing Blog — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:47:02 +0000

[...] course many of the basics of SEO still apply, such as keyword research, on-page optimization of existing content and solving [...]

By: William SEO

William SEO — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:44:18 +0000

You provide the basic information in pretty decent way. This information is very impressive for both professionals and freshers.

By: Search Engine Optimization Journal

Search Engine Optimization Journal — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:10:24 +0000

This is a great article to begin with. Flash seems to be useless unless it’s extremely minimal! Either way, definitely an article worth sending around to the newbies and others looking for some alternative ideas.

By: salesanimals

salesanimals — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:34:11 +0000

Flash is for people and text is for people AND search engines. It’s always hard to strike a baance. The best promotion of any site is one that attracts and retains qualified people. If you can also attract search engines with your strategy – then awesome! Double Whammy. Our site used to have a lot more flash on it, and we toned it down and went more minimal – using text wherever possible, and addng lots of fresh content. That helped alot.

By: Lee Odden

Lee Odden — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:17:15 +0000

Hey Gary, now that I read it, I see the recommendation on Flash and Ajax can be misunderstood from it’s intended meaning.

What it says is to avoid sites that are “all Flash” as in sites that are made only with Flash and nothing else. It’s not supposed to mean avoid Flash entirely. Hijax is a good recommendation as is using Flash elements within a HTML site.

By: Gary Ware

Gary Ware — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:13:16 +0000

Hey Lee, nice post. You included a lot of useful info. I have to disagree with you on the comment regarding avoiding all flash and AJAX. I agree with saikat with regards to SEO flash elements are better then a full flash website. If your design calls for flash or AJAX there are ways to get around it by using the . Or you can use Hijax http://domscripting.com/presentations/xtech2006/

If you use the tag make sure the content in the tag matches the content of the flash/AJAX element.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 12:15:58 +0000

Thanks for that post. One point we’re missing.
The Use of an ALT and TITLE Tag with images is for SEO very important. But more important is to use the right image naming and the right use of stop characters. Let me explain:
1.) image-stuttgart-aktiv.jpg
2.) image_stuttgart_aktiv.jpg
What is the difference ? Only in 2) we use the right stop character _ which can be crawled by google.
Thurthermore in the ALT Tag it is important to use the right stop character.
The only stop character that works is | .
So an ALT Tag has to be written like:
[img src="image_stuttgart_aktiv.jpg" alt="Stuttgart Aktiv | Stuttgart Ausgehen | ... | Stuttgart Veranstaltungen" ]
This stop charakter can also be used in the TITLE tag.
Using the right stop characters can improve key word relevance and keyword density of a site successfully.

By: Miguel

Miguel — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:23:27 +0000

I enjoyed your post. AdAge just published a story related to SEO and Social Meda optimization. Matt Creamer, one of their editors, writes about his experience being “optimized” by SEO and SMM. You might enjoy the article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=122344

By: Joe Beccalori

Joe Beccalori — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 04:24:01 +0000

Agreed. Hyphens are better. I have tested this in isolation and they work.

By: g1smd

g1smd — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:32:50 +0000

Google has NOT announced that “hyphens and underscores are treated the same”.

Someone mentioned at a conference back in the Summer that they were starting to look into it.

Matt Cutts has posted several times since then, that you are still better off with the hyphen.

Always avoid spaces in filenames and URLs.

By: Deb Harrison

Deb Harrison — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:16:05 +0000

Well done Lee. I particularly agree with the first paragraph: “web site owners will appreciate the SEO services they’re getting much more if they educated themselves on the fundamentals.” It certainly would and make our job much easier.

However, note that BOTW and business.com require payment for inclusion.

By: Saikat

Saikat — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:31:25 +0000

Many have advised me to avoid Flash! But I have always preferred small-Flash elements on websites. It's good to see the phrase "Avoid all Flash" in your article. It's exactly what I wrote in my SiteProNews article too. I have mentioned few Flash website optimization ideas there. You can read it at.

By: Kaja Mohideen

Kaja Mohideen — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:53:12 +0000

Nice post. I got a main point at the end. Its better to outsource SEO than doing it by 100%. I’ll consider that to be the best one, as I’m a beginner to web developing. Thanks Lee.