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.
  .d98H8b.    .dHSMMb.    .d9H@9b.   @8SSH@MHM   @S@MH9@@HM 
d@MP YH8b dSEP Y8Eb d85P Y@Sb @S@ dE9P
H@9 @MS S98 .d9HP H8@ d@EP
895dH5Eb. Y99b. dEHM H5EH" 98@S889b. d9MP
8@@P "YH@b "YE@HPS9@ "YMb. "YE5b EH@SSE8@
588 HE5 5EH 8EE MHE SM5 d85P
Y5Eb d9SP YM5b d8HP YMHb dM@P Y98b d95P dHMP
"YS8HHP" "Y@8SHP" "Y858HP" "Y8E@HP" dESP