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What every Web Developer should know about SEO

polemicdigital.com

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Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#41

Post by conphill »

josefresco wrote: post #6

Some additional info... 1. Don't let the new HTML5 tags distract or confuse you. Google knows how to deal with traditional DIVs so only use the new tags (example: SECTION, ASIDE) if you know how to properly implement. 2. Maintainability is a big one for page speed optimizations. You can easily get 95% there but that remaining 5% often comes at the expense of maintenance, and the ability to see/make changes easily. 3.…

I would say it is safe to say that having a mobile optimized site is something that you might want to be added to your list since it is now included into their ranking algorithm and as mobile devices become more common than desktops, this will only become more important.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#42

Post by toothbrush »

mootothemax wrote: post #5

For JavaScript-heavy sites, I still recommend following Google's AJAX-crawling guidelines, and supporting the pre-rendered view request variable _escaped_fragment_ https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/... You can do a good enough job by sending such requests to a PhantomJS instance, waiting for the page to load, outputting the PhantomJS-rendered HTML to the browser, and saving the HTML to a cac…

This sounds like something really cool to use along with NoScript! I often find myself allowing piles of scripts to run, simply because the page's content (often images, but sometimes even text) is loaded via JS instead of The Right Way.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#43

Post by leishulang »

roneesh wrote: post #31
alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

If you're in the app/startup world, it can seem that way. However I'm a web developer on Sears's e-commerce team. We focus a lot on SEO still, as the other options is paying money for search placement and traffic, and those payments are no joke. We have major business goals around minimizing the amounts we pay for traffic, so optimizing SEO is big for us.

cool. Now please kindly tell me when is the next sears warehouse sale for the sorel shoes?

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#44

Post by [deleted] »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #32
deanclatworthy wrote: post #4

This is all basic stuff, but won't affect your rankings that much. Yes, everyone should have it in place, but doesn't represent the state of SEO. What you should know about SEO, is that it's all about getting organic links to your content, and having content that has a semantic connection to the keywords being searched for.

but then where will the "SEO expert" scumbags make money?

[deleted]

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#45

Post by lucisferre »

Where is the evidence presented that supports any of these claims? I realize most of the seem like common sense but as far as I know many are in fact false. In particular, the argument about semantic markup seems pretty dubious. Currently, I'm not aware of any search engine that cares about new HTML5 semantic tags.

On that note, is there even even one example of assistive technology that uses semantic markup? As I understand it ARIA tags are needed for this, semantic markup is irrelevant since most (all?) assistive technology is outdated as far as browser technology goes.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#46

Post by blacksmith_tb »

bhhaskin wrote: post #24

I have never seen additional semantic attributes done in json before. Json-ld seems kinda neat.

One handy use of it is inviting Googlebot to find your site search, like so: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/richsnippets/siteli...

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#48

Post by snowwrestler »

alphadevx wrote: post #19
ssharp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with you, but I certainly would like to know your reasoning behind this. Most people are going to use a search engine if all they get are paid ads. People go to Google for the organic results and sometimes the paid ads are useful for those people. It's still in Google's best interest to provide the most relevant organic results as possible. Most businesses I've worked with still get more revenue from organ…

> Most people are going to use a search engine if all they get are paid ads. Most people will just click on the first few "results", even if they are in fact ads. They can hardly tell the difference. That's why businesses are paying so much to be on top of certain lucrative search key terms: if they we not getting a return on their advertising spend, then they would not be spending it. My main point is, even if your…

You can always buy traffic, but it cuts into your profit margins and/or reach.

Remember that SEO is optimization. It can't replace ads, but the more traffic you can get organically, the more profit you can make, and then you'll have more to spend on ads. It's a virtuous cycle.

And success is relative. If you're not doing any SEO, and your competitor does it half-assed, well, then their average visitor cost is going to be less than yours--and that's a competitive advantage.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#49

Post by thejosh »

Polemicist wrote: post #38
thejosh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SEO" is starting to lose it's term. People should be focusing on building sites right, not relying on dirty hacks to get their sites indexed of using Javascript etc. You can actually rank quite well and get respectable clicks if you just build your site well and create a good action plan to actually optimise your site over a set period of time. Or you know, go to BlackHatWorld and fall for one of their scams to prom…

> You can actually rank quite well and get respectable clicks if you just build your site well and create a good action plan to actually optimise your site over a set period of time. So, in other words, by doing SEO right. If you think SEO is 'dirty hacks', then you obviously don't know SEO.

No, I think that building your site wrong, then relying on using dirty hacks is wrong.

Re: What every Web Developer should know about SEO

#50

Post by b1twise »

roneesh wrote: post #31
alphadevx wrote: post #9

I'm coming to the conclusion that SEO does not matter anymore, at least not this basic stuff as everyone is doing this, including your rivals, so it is really not going to get you to stand out from the crowd. Search engines make their money from advertising your site, _not_ from sending you free traffic via SEO. So fire up your credit card and buy some Adwords in key search terms for your business, that's want they w…

If you're in the app/startup world, it can seem that way. However I'm a web developer on Sears's e-commerce team. We focus a lot on SEO still, as the other options is paying money for search placement and traffic, and those payments are no joke. We have major business goals around minimizing the amounts we pay for traffic, so optimizing SEO is big for us.

This is o true. We get a lot more sales from organic Google search results than paid advertising. It's no joke when you start spending thousands of dollars a day on adwords and still get nowhere near the organic results.
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