Search Engine Optimization Guide

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always a questionable subject because Search Engines purposefully do not disclose how they determine content ranking. There are however a number a rules that can be followed to improve page ranking and most of these purposefully follow graphic design best practices.

This guide focuses on the primary white-hat SEO formatting standards.

SEO Bold, Italic, and Underline

There is much debate concerning the significance of the Bold <b>, Strong <strong>, Italic <i>, and Underline <u> tags. In general these tags have little to no effect on page ranking and should be used sparingly to highlight words of importance such as terms, titles, or quoted text.  Repeatedly marking all keyword with the bold tag has very little effect on ranking. It is much better to use keywords in heading tags.

SEO Heading Format and Style

All text based content should be clearly visually structured to help the reader quickly find the information they are looking for. This is also true for Search Engines. The best way to accomplish this is using the HTML Heading Tags: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4> etc.

SEO Page Links

Inline content linking can have a beneficial impact on Search Engine Ranking but only if used properly. The most common pitfalls include "using click" here or "read more..." links. Using full URLs for internal site links is also problematic. XHTML Strict also plays a role because of the removal of the target attribute.

Add your comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. If you have a Gravatar account associated with the e-mail address you provide, it will be used to display your avatar.
  .d9E89b.       d8M55   5SESE989SM  5SESE989SM   .dS8S8b.  
d98P YE@b d9P9H8 dH@P dH@P dEMP YHEb
95M d5P HMS dMSP dMSP 9HS
.dS5P d9P SS9 dSHP dSHP 5S5dSE5b.
.odE@@P" d@S 858 @HHMM5M@ @HHMM5M@ MHEP "YM5b
d@EP" HHS@@@M99S dHHP dHHP @@H 8S@
EHM" 598 dS9P dS9P Y@9b dHSP
SMMEMHHMH HSE d9SP d9SP "YEEM@P"