SEO Secrets

June 2, 2005, 8:39 pm

Adrian Hanft of “Be a Design Group” writes writes about 5 tips on good Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

1. Don’t Fake Your Content.
The best way to gain recognition from search engines is to create unique and valuable content. Google can only be fooled so much by spam, fake links, and artificial inflation trickery. If you want the prize, you have to deliver the goods. That means you need to fill the site with relevant and valuable information. You need to corner the market on what you know best. Don’t ever let your client think that spam is a good way to generate business.

2. Avoid Flash
I love Flash and it hurts me to say this, but when it comes to content, Flash just can’t compete with HTML. Information in Flash is invisible to search engines. The information that search engines can see in Flash doesn’t benefit from the structure of an HTML document. Don’t abandon Flash completely, just make sure you have an HTML version of your sites that is packed with content. If your site is Flash only, you will have a hard time avoiding invisibility to the search engines. I think Flash is getting better at content management, so I will default to the experts there. You really have to know what you are doing to effectively use flash.

3. Start a Blog
Most organizations have humans working for them. Humans like to talk. Blogs encourage employees to talk, and talking online builds up a database of content. That’s a scary thought to an organization who is paranoid of leaks of top secret information. Customers don’t like comanies that keep secrets from them. A blog at least gives the impression that you are a customer friendly organization. You should be able to convince them that the risk is worth the reward when the following is considered: Blogs are a great way to increase customer service. In the event of a company mistake, it is great for damage control. It gives an otherwise faceless company a voice in the marketplace. The benefit to search engines is that you are building a library of relevant keywords, and hundreds maybe thousands of pages of industry specific content.

4. Search Engine Optimization Isn’t Magic
Don’t fall for the myth that there is a secret to search engines, and the only way to get good search results is too buy your way to the top of the search results. There is no substitute for quality content. You can pay for links and click-throughs, but wouldn’t it be easier to have quality content on your site? Don’t waste your money. Work hard on your site’s content, and search engines will notice. If you build it, they will come.

5. Link Management
I would stop short of recommending that you pay for links, but it is undeniable that having links to your site on other people’s sites is extremely valuable to search rank. This is where having original and valuable content really pays off. Just as search engines love good content, so do other sites. They will link to your site on their own. If you have a blog, you will start to build a good relationship with other blogs, and links will happen naturally. There are other sites that will give you links for free, but make that secondary to creating great content.

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