SEO Basics Part I – MIT Technical, Boston

A search engine “sees” your site by sending out bots (Google calls theirs Googlebot) to index and make note of the HTML pages composing the totality of the public internet. Google indexes billions and billions of pages. For every page that Google indexes, Bill Gates has about a dollar. That should give you some idea as to the enormity of the task poor little Googlebot has to carry out.

Because this is indeed such an enormous task, you want to make it as easy as possible for the ‘bots to index you effectively. There are many ways to do this, but I want to start by explaining something that many of my clients do not initially realize. After engaging the services of a Flash designer, they often groan when I explain that.

What is important to the ‘bots and search engine systems:

• Content (HTML code)
  • Meta Tags
  • Text
  • Copy (different from plain old text because copy implies an intent to convey a message via text-based authoring)
  • Filenames
  • Links (inbound and internal, so anchor your content!)
  • ALT text (what the user will see when they place their cursor over an image)
• Inbound hits
• Site accessibility and compliance (a problem for many CMS and MOSS-like systems)
• Grammar, spelling, and structure
• A few other things, many of which are part of their secret algorythmn.

Just as importantly, they do not see:

• Logos (Other than that there is a graphic image there)
• Pictures (If your content is in a .jpg, it cannot be read)
• Flash (sorry, but there are ways to address this. Have no fear.)
• Movies
• Multimedia
• Good intentions

A well-optimized site will take advantage of search engine optimization techniques and keep these factors in mind. While a gorgeous Flash introduction might “wow” your customers (does it really?), search engines will not even notice and in many cases will just turn around, assuming there is nothing there for them to index.

In SEO and SEM, you must be aware of the limitations you face and the peculiar environment you are working within. You have to cater to the one who makes the decisions and calls the shots. Anyone who has had a boss they consider less than perfectly astute will understand this.

Hopefully there is some viable compromise between your ideal presentation and a presentation that will work for the search engine systems. SEO and search engine optimization may involve writing your copy a bit differently than you would if you had free creative license and were writing purely for the sake of conveying your message or talking to your customers. With optimized content, you will use keywords and carefully selected language, filenames, links to images and other files – thereby crafting a site that a search engine spider or bot will understand and appreciate. You do not have to be punctilious in your word selection, but you should at least be cognizant of the environment and do what is not painful to do.

For a demonstration on what a search engine bot view is similar to, you can download Lynx (a text-only browser) or use any one of the many Lynx emulators available online. One such emulator is at: http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html – it may be suprising to you how little of your 10 second, $3000 Flash intro is being indexed. But again, I do not discourage the use of Flash. I only suggest that if people use Flash they also adhere to good SEO practice (and Web Standards) by implmenting a technique I will describe later. Although Flash does a heck of a job at conveying a message to a person, it does a really cruddy job at communicating with search engine spiders.

Sure, Flash may look fantastic and impress customers, but how are customers supposed to find your site if they do not become aware of it? Flash has its place, but many webmasters are satisfied with the visual impact of Flash and do not consider that it may be crippling their site. You can avoid the pitfalls of Flash with careful planning and an informed approach to development. Search Engine Optimization is mandatory if you are to be competitive, and it should be considered when a site is being planned instead of tacked on after the site it built. This is one of the golden rules of development, and sadly, SEO is sold as an add-on. It shouldn’t be. It has as much place in the initial Requirements Document and Design/Planning phase as anything else.

Part II of this article has already been written, and see SEO Tips for Developers for a checklist of things you can do right NOW.

Josh Milane

MIT Technical, Boston