This is meant to be an SEO blog – I used to have a tagline in the header that said something lame like “Life, SEO and Everything” and I still have my “Adwords Qualified Individual!” logo, as if anyone cares. Looking back through my posts I haven’t written about SEO since, oh, 2008. I do SEO all day though and there’s quite a lot of stuff I could write about. Unfortunately it’s all client-specific and therefore Top Secret.
I promised myself yesterday that the next post I wrote would be about SEO so here it is. I’m going to share some really basic, but hopefully useful, SEO tips to use on your site.
SEO Tip One – Build Your Site Using Tables
I know what you’re thinking – tables are SO 2005! With the advent of Web 2.0 and “design standards”, no-one uses tables any more. They use fancy semantic markup so their code is all clean and shiny. Think about the signal this is sending to Google – websites using DIVs, CSS etc are new, but as we all know, new websites are less trusted than old ones.
If you build your website using tables, Google will think that your website is really old, and therefore trusted and authoritative. Old, trusted websites rank really well, so if you build your site using tables you’re more likely to get rankings!
SEO Tip Two – Use Frames Wherever Possible
Google have been hinting that page load speed is important, and increasingly this seems like another big ranking factor. Think about all the stuff that your webpage has to load – all that content! Your server can only handle so many requests at a time, so your site is at risk of being really slow.
Speed up your website by loading the textual content in an iFrame, hosted on a subdomain (e.g. content.yourwebsite.com). This increases threading so Google sees your site load super-fast and boosts your rankings!
SEO Tip Three – Use Lots Of Parameters In Your URLs
Google loves big websites – if you want an example take a look at Wikipedia. The more pages a site has, the more authoritative it is, and if pages are added regularly Google sees the site as fresh and relevant.
You can generate loads of relevant pages on your site by using parameters in your URLs. That way, you only have to write a little bit of content, but you get potentially hundreds of pages out of it!
For example, say you have ten pages about “ponies”. If someone searches your site for articles on “ponies” they get all those results on the URL yourwebsite.com/search.php?po=123. If someone else searches for “tiny ponies” they get the exact same results, but on the URL yourwebsite.com/search.php?po=123+ti=456. Google sees these as two separate pages = you have a really big site = you get rankings!
Okay, so I’ve only written three tips, but this is my first SEO post for ages so I hope you’ll forgive me. These are the three most important anyway, but if you’ve got any to add just leave a comment!
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You’ve brought us all closer to cracking the Google Algo. Thank you!
Eh?! Seriously! This is why I think SEO is actually VOODOO magic! They are pretty much all things I would specifically try and avoid when building a website! Crazy times!
Interesting points being made. Although your points are logical, there are many SEOs who would argue against your suggestions. I always like hearing alternate arguments and so I’ve provided some for the purpose of discussion
Tip 1 suggests using tables and while this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, there are benefits in using CSS such as page load times. This kind of external page formatting and styling allows for the easy implementation of technologies such as microformatting and new site designs. I also believe that Google is much more likely to evaluate a website’s age based upon it’s URL registry and the originality of its content.
iFrames are another subject for debate by SEOs and many believe implementing them to be a bad practise. Google is said to not index content content found within an iFrame and so for SEO this would badly impact long tail traffic.
Tip 3 suggests using parameters and whilst this is a logical argument, there are many problems with this solution. Firstly, having static URLs has been known to improve rankings (this is why session IDs are discouraged by SEOs). Secondly, this solution also creates lots of duplicate content – presuming that these pages are set to be indexed in the robots.txt – Google is liable to rank only one of these pages in each SERP.
Please do not think I am trying to “piss on your parade” so-to-speak – one of the great things about SEO is the community debate and research behind our industry as we all second guess Google. Please feel free to reply with your own thoughts Re: my comments
I love the blog and can totally relate to the whole “used to have a tagline in the header that said something lame like Life, SEO and Everything” – I havent blogged about SEO for ages but prominently feature “SEO” all over my site!
Tom
@Piggynap. Maybe your ‘taking the piss’ post has lead your readers into thinking you were being serious. Good to see an SEOer with a sense of humor. Looking forward to your next ‘Top tips for lame SEOers’ post
@Anthony Main @Tom Nash You are of course correct!
But April 1st was sooo long ago… *hangs head*
*sigh I’ll climb back in my box, I thought it was a fools day joke but checked the date wasnt the 1st, oh well – suitable embarrased now!
To be honest i cant say i disagree to the first 2 suggestions.
Sometimes the craziest things we do for fun turn up interesting results.