SEO for Programmers
Part 1
Overview
Automated search is the most complex part of the web browsing experience. When a user enters a search term (called keywords or key phrases) the search engine has a monumental task. In a second or two, the engine needs to take the keywords, compare them to billions of web sites, determine which sites best match the words and return a list of those sites to the user.
To do this, the search engine first catalogs every web site of which it is are aware and places pages from those sites into a database. This is called listing or caching the site. Searches and sites are then matched using a proprietary algorithm.
There is a certain conflict between site owners attempts at SEO and the search engines. Every site owner would want their site to be first in the search engine results. The conflict is that the search engine's customer is the person doing the search and that customer expects the best site to show up first.
To avoid that conflict, the site owner needs to first determine the market needs and build their site to meet that need. To have a high search engine results placement (SERP), the site needs to offer more value than its competitors. The phrase that encapsulates this is "content is king". Build a feature rich, helpful web site and the search engines will want to return it to searchers.
That said, SEO is an important part of the process. Without SEO, your value rich site might look to the search engines as if it is about rocks while you are selling rock and roll memorabilia. You could rank #1 for the base keyword "rock" and it would do little good for anyone.
Keywords and phrases
The basis for successful SEO is determining the right keywords and phrases to use with your site in order to describe it to the search engines. You need to find keywords that are related to your product or service and attract searches.
Use a keyword tool such as the free ones provided by Google or Wordtracker and find what words people use when they are looking for what you have to offer. As a starting point, the more searches a word attracts the better.
Once you identify base keywords you will use them and their longer cousins (called long tail keywords) throughout your site to tell the search engines what your site is about.
Domain names
There is evidence that keywords used in domain names are given weight by the engines in determining the value of the site for that particular keyword. If your product is local, you can often add the locality name to the keyword and have a representative domain name. If your site is not local, use a domain name tool to find available domain names that include the keyword or phrase.
From an SEO standpoint, it is more important to have a keyword rich domain name than the name of your company. If someone is searching for the name of your company, the system is very broken if your site does not appear first for that search. The people that you're trying to reach are the ones not searching specifically for your company.
As an example, presume that people looking for lodging in Mountain Town most ofter search for "Mountain Town motel". You're building a site for The Meadows a motel in Mountain Town. The domain name TheMeadows.com should return the site in first place for people familiar with (and searching for) that particular motel. The domain name MountainTownMotel might return your site higher in the rankings for people that are not already familiar with what you have to offer.
Look for our next installment - On page search engine optimization.