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Search Engine Optimization is not the devil

As you might be able to tell, we’ve redesigned LessEverything.com. We’ve moved from static pages and a Mephisto blogging engine to HarmonyApp. We also started working with inboundable to help make our site more findable in search engines. You’re probably like, “Wait, Allan. What the hell did you just say? Did you just say you’re working with an SEO company?” Why, yes. Yes, I did.

I’m all about doing things people like talking about. “Yeah, man. Fuck SEO. SEO is terrible. It’s all about UI, writing clean, amazing code, blah blah.” That’s me, as well. Don’t throw me under the bus yet. Hear me out.

SEO used to be terrible.

In years past, to get ranked in search engines you had to scam the ranking. SEO “wizards” used to add loads of additional text and buy into link directories. They focused less on the core product you were providing, and instead, focused on scamming the system.

Things have changed.

SEO is not about scamming the system any longer it’s about best practices. It’s about helping your site’s visitors find what they want by building relevant content using semantic best practices. It’s also about engaging the web community in order to attract positive notoriety (mentions, links, etc.) just as you would offline. Finally, it’s about getting users to like, trust and hopefully interact more with your site.

You want traffic just like I do, stop rolling your eyes.

Here’s what I’ve figured out in the first week working with Donnie.

What I’ve learned so far (we’re still going)…

• Keep an Updated Sitemap.xml file

  • http://www.sitemaps.org
  • So far, we like this tool
  • Building a sitemap with Harmony: http://tinyurl.com/7uab2dn

• URL Tips & Tailing Slashes

  • Basically, the further a search engine goes down in sub-directories, the less important the section is perceived to be, and therefore, the less link juice that follows.
  • Avoid trailing slashes if you can. if you must use them, only use them for sub-directories, not individual documents (pages).
  • Page 9, SEO Starter Guide… “Avoid having deep nesting of sub-directories…”

• Image Folders

  • We’re hoping Harmony changes this, but they’re not currently following this practice.
  • Google’s SEO starter Guide (page 18)
  • Here’s a video from Matt Cutts
  • Google Webmaster Help Section

• 301 Redirects

  • When to use them

• Sub-domains vs Sub-directories

  • “Sub-domains DO NOT always inherit all of the positive metrics and ranking ability of other sub-domains on a given root domain.”

• Meta Tags are for making your site look nice in the result page.

  • Title – Google’s SEO starter Guide (page 4)
  • Meta Description – Google’s SEO starter Guide (page 6)
  • PS. the meta keywords tag isn’t used anymore.
  • Use this tool to see what you’re snippet will look like.

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