How to Build an SEO Optimized Website

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has quickly become its own niche industry in the world of web development, and SEO experts can rake in big money consulting for websites. But for every one SEO expert who is legitimately helpful, there are two more who offer nothing more than a bag of tricks which may or may not help your site. Luckily, SEO is something that you can do yourself. All you need is a combination of common sense, clean coding and patient marketing. Follow these steps.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Creating Your Site

1. Write valid code. Whether you are writing to HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict or another standard, make sure that it fits that standard by testing your site on the W3C Validator. See the Resources section for a link. All you need to do is visit the site and input your website's URL, and it will provide a list of errors on your site.

2. Include the <title> tag on every one of your pages. The title--and your entire site--should always use the active voice, which means putting the subject front and center. ("Will Smith Interview," for example, is better than "Interview with Will Smith.")

3. Include a meta "description" tag (<meta name="description" content="A short blurb about your site") on your homepage. Most meta tags (especially "keywords") are actually not that helpful because of their over-abundance, but the meta description tag is usually what appears as the description of your site in search engine results.

4. Use HTML tags for their original purpose. For example, don't create headings just by making a paragraph's font bigger; actually use the <h1> or <h2> heading tags. This makes it easier for search engine spiders to understand your site's content.

5. Don't use frames, try to avoid using images for headings, and when you do use images, always include an "alt" tag. Images with alternate text housed in an alt tag are indexed by Google and the rest of the search engines much faster than those without alt tags.

6. Make your URLs search engine-friendly. For example, http://www.yoursite.com/?topic=678&id=4 is a lot worse than http://www.yoursite.com/authors/kurt-vonnegut.
   To separate words, use dashes rather than underscores. Some blogging services, such as WordPress, offer a built-in function to change your URL structure. Otherwise, you may need to edit your website's .htaccess file. See the Resources section for more information.

Maintaining Your Site

7. Update your site regularly. It is the hardest part of the job but also the most important, as it keeps both visitors and search engine spiders coming back often.

8. Write pillar articles. These are articles that target a broad audience, offer important information, and ideally never lose their relevance. "How to Build an SEO Optimized Website" will likely be just as useful next year as it is this year. The same goes for "10 Best '80s Teen Movies" or an article full of time management tips.

9. Link to articles and pages on your own site whenever possible, and when you do, use appropriate anchor text--the text that houses the link. Good anchor text can be invaluable for search engine results. For example, instead of writing "Click here for my article on Alaskan wilderness," you could write "Check out my article on the Alaskan Wilderness"--where "Alaskan Wilderness" is the anchor text.

Promoting Your Site

10. Submit your site to search engines. Web users will find your site anyway, but it might speed up the process. Google is the main search engine that you want to keep happy, so also sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, a free Google service that helps you track which of your pages have been indexed, tells you what search phrases lead people to your site and more. See the Resources section for a link.

11. Submit your site to some web directories, but choose wisely. Many SEO firms will offer to add your site to hundreds, even thousands of web directories, but most of these are too irrelevant to help your site and too inundated with spam for search engines to take seriously. One legitimate directory is the DMOZ Open Directory Project (see Resources), but don't submit your site until it has been established for at least a few months.

12. Create a social networking presence. Sign onto Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and if you have videos, definitely create a YouTube channel. Be warned that the usefulness of social networking tends to get over-estimated. It doesn't necessarily translate into a traffic boost unless you put a lot of time into each of these sites. However, advertising your brand for free never hurts.

13. Link-build in any other way possible. Link-building is still the holy grail of SEO--the more sites link to you, the better your search engine ranking. So contact other sites and create link exchanges, link to other sites (they will often notice and return the favor) comment on other peoples' blogs--but actually add to the discussion--don't just promote your site--and most importantly, create so much good content that people won't be able to ignore you.

Tips & Warnings

• Always use correct grammar on your site, but don't underestimate the value of slipping in the incorrect version of a commonly misspelled word--perhaps as one of your article's tags, if you're writing a blog. When the Huffington Post ran a story on Heath Ledger's death, one of their tags was "Keith Ledger." Everyone who searched for the story but who got Ledger's name wrong were directed to the Huffington Post, and their traffic shot through the roof.
• Aside from being aware of common misspellings, try to avoid any SEO tricks that might seem underhanded--especially link farming and keyword stuffing. Sneaky behavior could get your site banned from search engines, at which point all the work you have done goes down the drain.

Resources

• W3C Validator
• Rewriting URLs with .htaccess
• Google Webmaster Tools
• DMOZ Open Directory Project