SEO: An Overview
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Developer Shed CEO Jonathan Caputo recently gave a presentation at iDate, a social networking conference in Miami. He covered introductory search engine optimization for an audience composed of people who own and work for online dating and social networking sites. If you know someone who needs a good introduction to basic SEO tactics, you’ll find that this article, based on that presentation, is a good start.
In many respects search engine optimization is considered to be a black art. So you should keep in mind that, while we at Developer Shed have implemented these concepts and achieved top rankings in Google, we can’t guarantee that what worked for us will be as effective for you. Also remember that many of the concepts we discuss will focus on optimizing for Google, because that search engine owns such a large share of the search market. I’d like to make one final point before we dive in: effective SEO is truly an organic concept; it must be pursued on a continual basis because search engines quite frequently update their algorithms.
With those points out of the way, here are the topics we will be covering:
• Server Response Codes (301s, 404s, etc.).
• Content Topics
• URLs
• Sitemaps
• Link Optimization
• Redundancy
Let’s start with server response codes. A server response code is an identifier that your web server sends out in response to each request it receives. Most of the time requests are processed just fine, and web surfers won’t see the codes, but there are two particular codes you may need to set up at certain times for specific SEO-related situations. These are the 301 and 404 response codes.
A 301 response code tells the requester that the web page he’s looking for has permanently moved to a new location or URL. It’s helpful for you to set this up because it lets search engines know that content no longer exists at the old location, but has now moved to a new home. You should use a 301 redirect any time you need to reorganize you content or change its URL in any way. This will also prevent the search engines from penalizing your for what they might perceive as duplicate content (we’ll be returning to the theme of duplicate content many times).
A 404 response code tells the requester that the content for which he is looking can’t be found. This is the code you use when you delete content from your web page and want to delete it from the search engines as well. Many web sites will take 404s and redirect them to a search page; it’s not a good idea because it could fool the search engines into thinking that the page is still valid. It also may incur penalties.
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