Here, I digress from Server and Client related issues and discuss for a while about another important prospect related to websites : Marketing via Search Engine optimisation
I found that there is lot of discussion on internet about the Search Engine Optimisation but there is very little relevant data on What you should do and more importantly What you should not do to make your websites relevant for Search Engines.
I am, herein, going to share some of my views and experiences on SEO, and hope every one can make use out of it...
More so, I would be focussing on the thinking patterns involved while optimizing your websites for SEO rather than the complete details which can take ages... and books...
The optimising strategies you should chose depend upon the following factors :
1) Size of the site : The strategy to use for your website depends upon the size of the website i.e. the number of pages that are present in your website..
If your site contains only few pages ( less than 10 ) and those pages are static, optimising the site should be very easy.
On the other hand, if the website contains more than 10 pages, and the pages are generated dynamically, it calls for more focussed and creative ways of optimisation.
2) Nature of the website : What is the nature and intent of the website ?
Is it a social networking site? Is it a blog kind of website ? Does the website sell ? Is the website a repository of downloadable data?
3) Targeted user base and nature of users : It may sound a fallacy ( considering that SEO means targeting as many users as possible ) but for a lot of sites it may make a lot of sense. Some sites may be regional and target users only from a certain region. Other sites may have a certain specific usage..for e.g sites selling something may expect only consumers who are interested in buying something where other sites may be for plain gossipping. The strategy chosen for SEO should be in line with expected user base.
Alright,
Assuming that you have identified by now that which categories you website belongs to, I hereby, mention the steps you should follow :
1) Submit your site and the site map manually : All major search engines have a "Add URL" page where you can go and submit your website so that Search Engines start keeping a watch on your website and start crawling them.
You should also submit the site map (in format prescribed by Search Engines) to tell the search engines the way links flow in your website.
2) Think from the crawler's perspective : All search Engines have crawlers (Crawlers are programs which come to a website page, read the page, find all the links which are present in the page, and then go to all those linked pages, read all those pages, find all the links present on those pages, and then read ........).
So crawlers are the most important thing which you should have in your mind.
The link for the website you added as a first step is like the starting page for the crawler. The crawler will read the page and then go to all the links present on the page and read them too...
3) Page reachability : All the links should be reachable from any link on your website.
For static websites, where there are limited pages, it should be easy. Just put a link for all possible pages in all the pages as a part of menu and also submit a proper sitemap.
For dynamic pages, the fun begins..:D
For website which are like blogs ( e.g. Loud Letters ) where new users can register themselves continuously and write posts (Letters, in case of Loud Letters) the challenge is in giving visibility to all new entries (new letters and users) so that they are crawled by Search Engines continuously.
The crawler monitors all the websites on a regular basis. So, if the pages on your website couldn't make to the crawler the first time, they will get another chance soon.(approx in around 7-8 days, depending upon the search engine).
There are multiple things you can do:
A) Put links for all the recent pages on the starting page.
For e.g. The section Recent Letters on Loud Letters has been made to give all recent letters visibility to search engines
B) Link all the content from all the possible pages.
For e.g if you read the letter Lady gaga on Loud Letters, you will see a section called Similar Letters where all the related letters (Shweta Salve, Pamela Anderson, etc) have been intelligently put so that when the crawler comes on the Lady gaga page, it automatically crawls the similar letters also.
Similarly you can see, that a link for writer's profile is also present on all the letters which enables the crawler to crawl the profiles of as many users as possible.
4) Nature of links:
The way you form links is extremely important
e.g if the link is of the type www.loudletters.com/rest/letters?letterid=154 the crawler will tend to remove all the parameters and fire the link (www.loudletters.com/rest/letters in this case), which can result in No Page Found error (404 in this case). Such kind of links are called "Broken Links" and if the crawler finds few of them on your website, it can tend to believe that your site doesn't exist or it is full of gaps and exit form your website (extremely unwanted situation but very likely), a disaster.
So, the links should be of the form where the site doesn't return No return found error even if no parameters are provided with the link. Infact, it may be better to make parameters a part of the link.
For e.g. www.loudletters.com/rest/letters/154 is a good link as the letter ID has been made a part of the link.
5) Meta Tags: Meta tags are not much considered these days as users can write any thing in the meta tags and fool the Search Engine.(Google has officially announced that it doesn't consider meta tags while ranking the pages it crawled) However, some search engines still consider meta tags. So, you should provie relevant keywords in the meta tags. You can also use some automated tools and APIs (e.g. Alchemy API) which will give you relevant tags for the content and you can use those tags.
6) Starting points for the crawler: You can give multiple starting points for the crawler by posting your links on relevant pages. For e.g. you can associate a blog with your website and add all new entries for your website on that blog
For e.g (Loud Letters Blog is associated with Loud Letters and all entries made on Loud Letters are regularly posted on that blog) Blogger.com is a good place to start as it is associated with Google and Google regularly monitors all links posted on the Blogger blogs. You can also share your pages extensively on other major services like Twitter, Digg, Facebook etc. Some of them provide APIs which you can use for automated posting of links for new pages on your website as soon as they are created. AddThis.com provides a very neat and concise button which you can put on your website and allow users to share the page themselves.
7) Content: If you want your pages to be highly regarded by Search Engines, they should have good quality content. Search Engines have their own ways of extracting data and entities form your pages and the amount of visibility your page gets in comparison to other pages depends upon the validity and effectiveness of your data. Say away from copying data as you will get caught way early than you expect and your website may face everlasting damnation.
8) Client content: Things like javascript content and css interfere with crawler. So they should be put into separate js and css files.
9) Title: the title of all your pages should be very relevant to content and the queries you expect to be fired in Search.
10) Ad campaign : In case you want to use an ad campaign, chose it based on the size of user base you are targeting, which we already discussed.
11) Use standard services: Their are lot of standard services (many of which are free) which will tell you about the errors in your website which you should immediately rectify for enabling proper crawling. I recommend Google Webmaster. And yes, you can use Google Analytics to find how many users are visiting your website (i.e. how successful your SEO strategies are.!!).
Lastly, chose a relevant domain name..
There is a lot more to be said on SEO, but they may make enough meat for me to write a separate post.. Just know, one thing SEO is an ongoing process, not a set of steps...just like our lives :D. Live it, enjoy it,and work hard...
Your site will surely gain the recognition it deserves.
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