BusinessWeek recently published an article on search engine optimization called How to Make SEO Work for You. I have already discussed many of the points in the article but I thought I would share some of the highlights – sometimes it’s good to hear things from a different perspective.

On what is SEO?:

“Search engine optimization (SEO) just means your site is as accessible as possible to the search engines to improve the chances that they will serve it up when your potential customers type in specific search terms. The more easily search engines find your site, the higher up it appears on their results pages.”

On the importance of your website structure:

“Structure your site properly, code it cleanly, and use necessary keywords. Sites that have the proper architecture in place, and are not slapped together, have a better chance of getting picked up by the major search engines.”

On selecting the right keywords to optimize for:

“Try to think from a user’s perspective. You may sell hats, but your customers may call them caps, lids, or fedoras. If you’re not sure, ask your clients how they got to your site. The most effective page titles are about 75 characters long and include the most important keywords at the beginning. On each page, keywords and phrases should represent 2% to 3% of the total content. If a search engine’s algorithms interpret your site as a keyword hog, it will pass it by.”

On getting links for your site:

“You’ll want to link your site to other sites, which will both increase traffic overall to your site and boost your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank you higher accordingly. So do things like listing your site with online business directories, even if you think no one will find you through them. Those links may not produce any direct leads, but they could bump you up in the search engine rankings, especially if they are popular or highly visited sources.”

On submitting your site to search engines:

“Research shows that older audiences still like AOL and professional audiences tend to like MSN and Google, while younger audiences often like Yahoo. Only about one-third of users use one search engine consistently. Knowing your audience will help you decide which search engines to optimize for. Go to their home pages and search “how do I submit my site?” to get easy instructions.”

On Flash versus text websites:

“Use plenty of text on your site, even in your drop-down menus, your headers, and your footers on each page. Text is what the search engine crawlers are looking for. Text within Flash-based components won’t help, however. This text is not accessible to the search engine site crawlers, and will not get picked up. Flash looks great, but it won’t help boost your search rankings.”

On the importance of SEO:

“Consumers trust user-generated search engine rankings more than paid advertisement rankings by a wide margin, as much as 70%. And optimizing your site gives you a huge competitive advantage. Even now, only 25% of the Fortune 100 businesses have completely optimized their sites in this way. If you act now, you’ll have an edge over competitors who haven’t optimized their sites.”

Evan Carmichael