hi Everyone, I've done a ton of SEO (not to be confused with SEM, Search Engine Marketing).
SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Much of it is black magic and/or rain dancing.
Black Magic. Sounds like the industry term "black hat", which is a major no-no. Ever heard of cloaking? Just don't go there.
Rain Dancing. Sounds like "gray hat" to me, which is you are purposely tweaking your code to get better rank, like ridiculous amounts keyword density, without corresponding content. Not illegal, but definitely flirting.
The bottom line in SEO, as far as I'm concerned, is that if you have solid content, well-written (spelled right and grammatically correct)
Misspellings are good to put in your keywords meta tag only. To get the most of "organic" seo, follow the published guidelines for the engines you're trying for. I also subscribe to some seo newsletters, which are always full of good advice. You know, have a good title, not "Untitled1.html", which totally makes me crazy when I see it. I'd also say take advantage of the new specs at sitemap.org, as the big three are all using that now.
Sure, some will promise you page ranks and ask you to do questionable things, but others will make good suggestions like using dashes in your URLs rather than underscores, or trying to use keywords in titles.
Do nothing questionable, or risk getting your domain banned. I'm not kidding. Even the experts are arguing amoungst themselves over dashes. For fun, check out this recent GREAT article:
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
ethically questionable nor false promises.
Whoo-boy, you aint kidding. Read the fine print. The best use of external experts is SEM. If you don't know html well, okay, spring for some seo work. Otherwise, do a little reading, save a lot of money, and avoid ANY black magic or rain dancing.
-- Cole _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
