The practice of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), simply put, means using proper and descriptive coding when designing a website. While it is generally recommended to design websites for humans and not for search engines, I argue that one must design their website both for human and for search engine usefulness.
The reason to use proper coding techniques (e.g., through implementing descriptive title tags and useful meta tags) is to make indexing easier for the search engines. You want to build an association between “what” your content is about and the manner it is presented to the world.
Once properly indexed, human beings will use a search engine to find your site. So you see, it is impossible to place an emphasis on SEO in terms of “coding alone” or in terms of “human usefulness” alone. A two-fold approach must be used to achieve maximum benefit.
What is SEO
According to Wikipedia:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site.
Submitting your site
Using SEO (for search engines) in a successful manner means that the search engines can find your site in order to index its content. Adding your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, Live Webmaster Center, and to Yahoo! Site Explorer for the purpose of “telling” the search engines where to find information on a website is imperative if human are to find your site through the search engines!
While it can be argued that the search engines will “eventually” find and index sites in a natural manner, submitting your sitemap to the above mentioned sites will help bring those search engine spiders sooner.
Designing your Site
Using SEO (for humans) means employing a color scheme designed to elicit a psychological response from the viewer (see: color symbolism). It also means designing the layout of a site in such a way that reduces or eliminates confusion, and guides the user to relevant pieces of information that they wish to find.
Construction of a website from either point of emphasis — a human emphasis or a search engine emphasis — should lead to the same place. Designing for humans means that coding is in place that facilitates ease of site navigation; designing for search engines means that site indexing happens in a manner that reflects a valid presentation of a site’s content. In other words, design sites for the search engines in order to bring about human interaction.
SEO and Traffic
Increasing traffic from real human beings is the ultimate goal of any SEO effort. Having people visit our sites in order to click on our link, purchase from our affiliate relationships, or to contribute to our communities is what doing SEO is all about. The presence or absence of traffic influences the earning potential of a website.
Traffic and Adsense
In one study, internet traffic resulting from organic search listings tended to result in higher Google adsense revenue according to a comparison between Digg Traffic and Google Traffic. In addition, the webmaster at GHacks did his own Google Adsense Revenue and Traffic Comparison … complete with a nice graph.
There is a direct relationship between the amount of quality search engine traffic a particular website receives and the amount of earnings from Adsense that the particular website receives. Therefore, one motivational component to doing SEO — for both the search engines and for humans — is the increased likelihood of website earnings.
However, in order to for a website to earn money from adsense, or from any other source for that matter, it must be designed with human usage in mind. To this end, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines has provided some useful information: “Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.” Furthermore, Google has published a Search Engine Optimization Guide to help webmasters code their website in a manner that will make their content more palatable for the search engines. All of this information feeds into the notion of creating a Google-Friendly Website.
Other Factors in SEO
Qualitatively speaking, website speed factors into SEO more in terms of the likelihood of human interaction rather than in terms of search engine (robot) interaction. Put another way, the average person visits a new website for 8 seconds before deciding if further browsing of the site is warranted (The Need for Speed II, Zona Research, 2001). To this end, the web browser FireFox uses YSlow (developed by Yahoo!) to measure the “speed” of a website and offers comments regarding coding improvement and coding optimization.
One last note: we’ve all heard the phrase, “content is king.” This phrase has its roots in generating human interaction with a website because the information being sought has been indexed by the search engines. In other words, creating content that people are looking for manipulates and positions the search engines to drive traffic to a particular website. To this end, a good general rule of thumb is to create content that hovers around 400 words (Debunking Conventional Wisdom about SEO, Tip #4).
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