HTML SEO For Dummies

HTML SEO

Library Example

THE IDEA: A website is like a book. A Search Engine is like a card catalog at the library.

When you think of a book in the library you can think of 2 things...
1) The book itself in terms of the art work (if any) and the content inside.
2) the tags all over it that the library has placed on them for organizational purposes.

Why A Website is Like a Book:
a) The book contains an INDEX which is really the navigational menu of the book just like your index file that SHOULD be used for navigation in to the many sections (chapters) of your site. Why do you think they call it the index anyway?

b) A Website is more like a book because art and illustrations enhance the users experience while viewing the content. You may not be able to tell a book by it's cover but I'm sure you can sell it if done right.

c) last but not least a book is broken down in to chapters and sectionalized. Every chapter has been normally well thought out. Every chapter in the index from the first to the last tells a story and if a chapter is missing from the book, the reader misses out. Just like a corporate website for example missing an "our services" page.

Why a Search Engine is Like a Card Catalog:
a) When you see a book in the library you realize that the book has been labeled a few different ways. The tags have been added to the book and actually just slapped right on the outside of it. This is similar (or was similar) to < meta > tags which used to describe the details of the page it was representing.

Meta keywords are no longer really being used due to the ability to advancements in the calculation of keyword density by the search engines and because many web masters either lie or leave out the keywords. Meta description COULD be replaced one day however every page deserves a unique summarization and this is the place to do so. meta description will not be going anywhere soon but please understand you're trying to sell your web page to your customer here, not manipulate the engine.

b) Search Engines are similar to the card catalog the libraries use because original HTML used to not be so flashy and focused on layout design. Original HTML pages were formatted like they came out of a database following an *optimization* pattern of:
< TITLE >Main Topic, Sub Topic< /TITLE >
< H1 >Main Topic< /H1 >
< H2 >Sub Topic< /H2 >
< P >Describing Sub Topic< /P >
< IMG src="" alt="Sub Topic" >

Now if you clicked on the h1 tag you'd be brought to a page or < DIV > that listed all the sub topics because everything was formatted for quick indexing and quick retreval, not eye candy.

NOTE: THE FIRST WEB BROWSER PROBABLY ONLY SHOWED PLAIN TEXT ANYWAY

So now with that being said LET's THINK about Search Engines today and HTML. Yes, images are now being indexed (use those alt tags.) Yes, table based layouts exploited the < TABLE > structure and have left tons of TD TR scrap all over our code. So what do we do? We just keep it simple like the old days. Tip: I'd even avoid an image logo and use < H1 >logo< /H1 > like in the Bextra Adsense Experiment I made.

First off... USE CSS. STOP THE TABLE BASED LAYOUT SH*T FOR GOD SAKES. Tables ruin the flow of the so simple HTML you should be using. Tables are for tabular data not so you can murder a background image and then dump a bunch of stuff on top of it. Some of my sites use tables because I created them when I should have been reading the manual instead. From this point on no more tables unless I have tabular data to show you.

The point is... keep your HTML simple and to the point. Understand the cataloging process and how every WEB PAGE itself gets cataloged. TREAT YOUR SITES INNER PAGES LIKE GOLD THEY ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR INDEX Understand how the meta description will help sell your web pages when someone searches and has to decide between your page or your competitors pages. Understand that your site should follow a top down pattern similar to old HTML pages with no images and just text (if possible).

I can go on forever but maybe I am just wasting my time. Let me know.