SEO Tips & Tricks

Optimizing your website and your life

Actual excerpt from my Job Interview:

THEM:  So you know what SEO is right?
ME:        (heavy breathing)
THEM:  Because it’s pretty central to this job.
ME:        (no breathing at all)
THEM:  It’s Search Engine Optimizatio…
ME:        Searchengineoptimization! Yep, I was gonna say…  Very important!

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When I entered Fpweb.net, a few things got placed on my to-do list:  Fill out some tax forms, learn how to use the coffee machine, program my laptop, set up a Twitter account ( holla! ) etc.  After establishing that I can read and write, the next step was to gently usher me into the magical world of Search Engine Optimization.

Trading Links – Yes, I did just recommend “Trading Links” – but with provisions.

First and foremost it should be mentioned that this was one of the biggest problems of link building spam…and it was (and still is) a problem.  If you’re a Webmaster, chances are in just  the past week that you’ve received an automated “Link Exchange Request” from random Gmail account or a 3-way linking scheme.  Waste of your time.  If they did not reach your SPAM box first, hit the “Delete” button.

Trading links is not inherently bad.  In fact, it’s natural in the sense of relationships (human or computer) that you’ll link to your friends, partners, and organizations that are relevant and make sense for you to link to for whatever reason.  And, in turn, they may want to return the favor.

Press Releases – Press releases are a tried-tested-and-true way to distribute news and information on the Web.  There are many PR distribution sites, but in my opinion, nothing beats PRWeb.com.  You’ll send a little cash but within a day you can have your news blasted out to the biggest news aggregation and news sites like Google News & Yahoo News.

When it comes to building links, it’s best to live like it’s 1995 in a 21^st century Internet.

By this I don’t mean you’re listening to Ace of Bass on your iPod and wearing neon hi-tops.  I mean that linking ruled the Internet long before Search was ever conceived.  In a primitive Internet void of Ecommerce but full of directories, research papers, a few little-known ISPs, and college student HTML experiments, there were only a few ways to build links.  Some of these “old fashioned” ways may sound familiar to some – browse directories, scroll pages for the typical “Email the Webmaster” links, join Usenet groups, and start making friends with other Webmasters.

Much changed about what a “link” meant when Search stepped into play.  Search flipped the script and links became “votes” for your Website that increased its authority.  Search grew massively popular – and massively profitable.  When the world began to realize 

I’ve found a lot of stuff on URL canonicalization with Apache since Google’s Matt Cutts brought it up over 2 years ago, but it seems that very few discuss Canonizing URLs within an IIS7 environment.

Let’s first be sure we all know what “URL Canonicalization” is.  “Canonical” URLs are the authoritative URL for a specific page.  For instance, a homepage can be found a number of ways:

• http://domain.com
• http://www.domain.com
• http://www.domain.com/index.htm
• http://www.domain.com/default.htm
• http://www.domain.com/main.htm

…and so forth.  Although they all may look the same, we don’t want the search engines to find them all – we want them to find the one, the only, the official…. Canonical URL.

So, you’re running a Website.  Your little piece of the World Wide Web is peaceful and harmonious.  You awaken; the sun is shining, the birds are chirping.  You rub the sleepy crusts from your eyes, stumble to your computer, take a sip of your morning coffee and log into Google Webmaster tools.  And then you spot the gruesome, big ugly Google warning.

So you’ve got an awesome Website going, you’re hungry for traffic, but no time or know-how to do Search Engine Optimization.  Be wary of the Snake Oil – so-called Internet “marketers” touting SEO services and software to climb to top Search rankings.  Unfortunately, most of what exists won’t do much to help – and could even hurt you.