Rock Classics and SEO

Last week, as my beloved watched a TV special featuring Ron Hawkins amidst rock legends Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, it dawned on me that, just like classic rock tunes, some SEO guidelines never die. Yes, every once in a while Google performs one of its dreaded updates, adding some new rules into what makes sites rank first among thousands of results. However, there are some foundational principles that, though they can be considered “vintage”, should still be followed. Among them we have content, title tags and quality inbound links.

Content

As of late, Google has been improving its Flash-indexing capabilities, but it still encounters some difficulty crawling through Web sites with “special effects”. As far as Google is concerned, text is the best content you could use.  Google encounters no hiccups “reading” through a page’s text when it’s plain HTML. Furthermore, when giving some thought to the copy for a Web page, remember to keep it relevant to what your visitors would expect to see, and you’re already ahead of the pack. Think of what your audience would like to read – what message would transform someone from a mere visitor to loyal customer, and use those words on your pages.

Title Tags

A Web page’s title is determined by the text displayed between the HTML tags <title> and </title> in a page’s source code. When a page is displayed on browsers, the title is rendered on the top part of the active window.

In the same way that humans refer to an article’s title to quickly decipher its topic, so does Google “read” a Web page’s title to judge what it is all about. For that reason, make the title descriptive of the subject of the page. One mistake that is commonly made is inserting only a company’s name as the title (“Acme, Inc.”, as an example), instead of what the page pertains to (for example, “Red Widget Solutions for Sustainable Turtles by Acme Inc”).

When composing a title, consider using the keyword that best describes the subject of that page. It will further help such page to rank better in search engine results (although it’s not as simple as that… otherwise, I’d be out of a job), while also increasing the user-friendliness. One caveat is to not overstuff your title tag with repeated keywords. That’s a no-no. It’s as outdated as one-hit wonders from the 90′s. And it’s not poised for a comeback anytime soon.

Inbound links

Continuing with the music hits analogy, just as a track is made popular largely because of the air-time it receives from large radio stations and MTV (or MuchMusic, here in Canada), so does a Web site’s level of success depend on the number of links that are driven to it from important, influencing sites. This has been the case for years, and that’s why professionals in the industry often talk about performing a link campaign when optimizing a Web site. The “one-hit wonder” counterpart to this would be to delve into shoddy practices just for the sake of securing links for a site – such as participating in “link farms” and getting unreputable domains to refer to yours just because of the link that they’re giving you. This will only do you harm. Don’t. Do. It.

What you’ve just read is merely a very light introduction to what makes a site successful with Google, as there are many other factors that go into play. One thing that you can count on is that “flavour of the month” SEO practices usually do fade away, and if not implemented properly, can cause your site more harm than good. Stick to the classics.

Guacira Naves
eMarketing Strategist
@OnlineStrategy

Tags: Search Engine Optimization, SEO