Web Design and SEO Go Hand in Hand
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I’m often asked how Search Engine Optimization works and without being an expert on the subject, what I can tell you is that SEO is about more than just adding a few keywords, as a small article on the British Computer Society website points out the optimization of your website for organic traffic starts with the design. While I was ‘across the pond’ I also came across a strange article by Nick Sommerlad on SEO spam. What I found odd about it wasn’t the article (OK that was strange too) but the comments, take a look and you’ll see what I mean … those Brit’s seem to get pretty passionate about bashing things. Search Engine Land had a feature this morning called Are You an SEO Hybrid?. The article pretty much covers my life with questions like:
- “I didn’t hire you to redesign my site. I hired you to get my site #1 on Google.”
One article that really caught my attention today was over at addicottweb.com and it focussed on how to fix some of the problems WordPress has with SEO. I’ll admit that WordPress isn’t well optimized out of the box but I’m going to have to disagree on the solution. The two plugins he recommends (All-in-One SEO plugin & SEO Title Tag plugin) are acceptable if you have no programming skills but a much better solution is to take care of the problem yourself in the code. Here’s my three simple recommendations for people who are legitimately concerned with WordPress SEO:
This allows you to do something that neither plugin will do, control your blog. Remember that major search engines don’t care who (or how) you optimized your blog poorly, so take ownership of it and do it right or you might be making the worst mistakes you can.
Jonathan Aston wrote an interesting piece on SEO and made the point that country specific domain names are a great idea. I also wanted to point out that Dave Bascom has the funniest license plate I’ve seen in weeks and that the economy may be tanking but jobs for people in the SEO field? On the rise …
