SEO Design and Development Best Practices

When developing a Web site from scratch, you can apply multiple SEO best practices related to design and development. You don't necessarily have to follow every measure to a T to obtain a search-engine-friendly Web site. Plus, you'll inevitably be forced to compromise on some factors. Integrating as many best practices as possible will serve you well in future SEO endeavors.

There are some important SEO factors that are influenced by the way a site is built, such as information architecture (IA), wireframes, design, and development practices. This isn't an exhaustive list; rather, it focuses some key tried-and-true practices. Consider the following:

Use keywords in the URL. This can be accomplished by ensuring your file-naming conventions make good use of your keywords.

Include targeted content on a page. Ideally, each page should contain two to three paragraphs of descriptive, keyword-rich body text.

Place keywords closer to the beginning of the file code. CSS (define) can be used to visually position the text wherever you want it, while making it appear higher up in the code for search engines.

Use header tags instead of < div > tags or images. If a page heading or title contains a keyword, it should ideally be text. If possible, use the important keyword in an < h1 > tag, a secondary keyword in the < h2 > tag, and so on.

Limit HTML file size. Keep a lid on the number and size of images and unnecessary code.

Add alt text for images. Be descriptive. This is another opportunity to tell search engines what the page is all about. All images should have alt tags, including logos, headings, and so on.

Use internal text links instead of image links. Search engines use the content contained within a link to determine what that page being linked to is all about. It needs to be text so they can read it.

Deploy search-friendly DHTML. Avoid JavaScript DHTML (define), if possible. Use CSS for cover effects. However, if your site has a menu built this way, be sure to include a secondary text-based navigation.

Avoid frames-based Web design. Frames and inline frames (iframes) generally make it difficult for search engines to crawl Web sites.

Ensure correct application of the robots.txt file. This enables you to restrict or allow access to your site by search engines. Employ it carefully and properly.

Follow proper site redirect architecture. Avoid 302 (temporary) redirects and employ 301(permanent) redirects to ensure the search engines index your content appropriately.

Avoid hidden text and other potentially deceptive practices. Any tactics that are considered black hat SEO will probably get you penalized. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday.

Steer clear of splash pages. Most splash pages are very graphic-heavy and text-light. They offer little value to users or search engines.

Avoid query strings in URLs where possible. I strongly recommend keywords be placed in the URL instead of query strings. URL aliasing can be used for ugly URLs.

Create clean, valid code. Search engines appear to prefer code that is lighter, cleaner, simpler, more semantically defined, and in line with W3C standards. CSS can help you achieve this.

Use tables appropriately. Tables distort the flow of the HTML code and may push more important elements like the body copy further down in the code than is desirable. A CSS layout enables you to influence where in the code elements appear.

Avoid duplicate content. You should never have the same content on multiple domains or within the same site. If you have various versions of your URL, choose one main one and redirect all the others to that.

By Julie Batten
Source : http://www.clickz.com/3627559

SEO for Brand Reputation Management

Do a Google search for "walmart" and you'll notice the top results include a few sites that aren't exactly favorable to the Wal-Mart brand. In today's au Natural column, SEO for Brand Reputation Management," Mark Jackson discusses some things that Wal-Mart is doing right and some things that they may want to do better to fix their online reputation.

Source : SEW Experts: SEO for Brand Reputation Management

Mercado Announces New Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Features

Mercado Software, the leading provider of eCommerce search and merchandising solutions, today announced that online retailers can now take advantage of Mercado’s new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) module and service offering, greatly increasing the accuracy of product searches conducted by Web shoppers, and improving overall search rankings for online retailers.

By using the Mercado SEO module, online retailers of all sizes can now expose the hidden jewels of their product catalog to major search engines while decreasing dependency on costly SEM programs to drive valuable buyer traffic.

New Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Features for Online Product Catalogs

Video SEO Search Engine Optimization Tips and Techniques

How to optimize video hosted on your website

• HTML surrounding video.
  When you publish a video on a website, you will want to make certain that it is surrounded with HTML content. This way the search engines can get additional information from the surrounding page as the information contained within a video file can be limited.
• Filename, title, description.
  These elements are not be enough to allow your video to rank well on its own but it is a necessary step and without this information, your video will definitively NOT rank well.
• Video Files Metadata Optimization
  Make sure to encode the keywords into your video’s meta data. Tag videos with specific keywords, even if it means tagging each scene.
• Keyword “video”.
  Eric Papczun pointed out at the Search Engine Strategies conference in NY this past April, that a lot of people add the word “video” to their search query keyword phrase. As a result, make sure that you add the word “video” to your title, description, meta data, etc.
• Links and Backlinks.
  Just as with SEO for regular webpages, you will want to get as many backlins as possible with the relevant keywords and phrases as the anchor text for these links. Whether this is your own page, or merely a page on a video sharing site that you want to have rank, you will need backlinks. In addition, it is a good idea to crosslink to videos using keywords in anchor text.
• Video sitemaps / MRSS / RSS.
  In order for crawlers to easily find all of your online video content, you will want to create a sitemap, RSS, or media RSS (MRSS) file to help engines identify where to locate and index your videos.
• One Video Directory.
  Keeping your video content at one place off the root directory helps in providing easy access to search engine crawlers. Move all of your videos into one folder and make sure to upload all your future videos to this same folder
• No to Flash Video Players.
  Search engines have a hard time crawling video content inside flash players so stay away from them if you are hosting videos on your own site.
• Optimize your URLs.
  In the same way that you do this for other web pages, you will want to optimize your URLs so that they to contain information about the video. Also, make sure you only have one video per URL.
• Submissions
  • Upload Optimization - These type of video search engines required that your upload your video search files.
  • RSS Optimization - Submit your video to search engines that accept either RSS and/or MRSS.
  • Social Media Optimization - Add a social flair by getting your “friends” to submit or vote for you on the social media sites

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How to optimize video hosted on video search engines and video sharing sites:

• Filename, title, description.
  Same as above
• Video Files Metadata
  Same as above
• Keyword “video”
  Same as above
• Links and Backlinks
  Same as above
• Make good thumbnails, first and the last frames.
  A video thumbnail is what users view when they are deciding between which videos to watch. Different video search engines will grab thumbnails differently. Some will use the first frame while others will take a frame from somewhere in the middle. You will need to experiment with each site to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. Take a look at the following examples and consider, which one would you rather click on?
• Branding
  The first and the last frames are perfect for branding. Place your logo there, as well as your URL and any other information you think is applicable.
• Uniqueness
  More than anything, make sure as well that your video is creative and unique. This is the best way to attract backlinks from people who want to share your video.

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Additional Optimization Techniques:

• Use social bookmarking sites and tools to assist in the visibility of your videos, add backlinks to your videos, and create traffic.
• Train editors to think like video searchers

Optimization in the Future:
As search engines are working to better determine the content and relevance of multimedia content, the methods that we use to optimize websites and in particular, videos, images, and audio in the future may be quite different. Currently optimization still relies upon including Meta data and keyword information in or surrounding the current content.

With search engines like Blinkx.com, who claim to rely more and more so on OCR (optical character recognition), voice/speech recognition, and image recognition, optimization of video content will likely be much more so about the quality of the video itself. For example, if Blinkx.com relies upon voice recognition as an example, it would be important to make certain that you are speaking clearly in the video so as to make the job of voice recognition easier for the search engines.

However, take a look at this interesting post from Danny S. on Search Engine Land. Danny explains that Blinkx and other still rely heavily on meta data for searching. Danny also reviews some tests that he conducted with video searches.

Source : http://reelseo.com/video-seo-optimization-techniques