Design and SEO

[Howdy_McGee]

I overheard somebody talking about making sure their website design was "SEO'd" before he started coding it. What exactly does that mean? I thought SEO was all about coding it in a certain way. Meta tags and google analytics.

[jeffman]

There is no short answer to this question. Google it and read as much as you can. Pay special attention to the most recent sites, since SE's change their priorities quickly and without warning. People make entire careers out of this process. Don't expect a short course to tell you all you need to know.

[chibineku]

A few factors involved in SEO that I think are fairly concrete:

1. Use markup semantically - proper structure with as few unnecessary elements as possible, elements used correctly, and a logical flow of headings, etc. will be better ranked
2. Don't repeat content to a ridiculous degree - use your important keywords in complete sentences
3. Validate your code
4. Properly redirect using 301s to retain link equity
5. Handle error pages in a custom fashion so that a server 404 or 500 never appears
6. Try to get incoming links from relevant websites - not just affiliate schemes where you'll get links from irrelevant sites
7. Not a SE ranking issue, but pretty, properly rewritten URLs that make sense are far more appealing to the average user. Compare domain.com/index.php?mode=product&id=3 with domain.com/products/psoriasis/psoriasis-cream/3. A user looking for psoriasis treatments will definitely think the latter is what they want

[music_lp90]

A few factors involved in SEO that I think are fairly concrete:

1. Not a SE ranking issue, but pretty, properly rewritten URLs that make sense are far more appealing to the average user. Compare domain.com/index.php?mode=product&id=3 with domain.com/products/psoriasis/psoriasis-cream/3. A user looking for psoriasis treatments will definitely think the latter is what they want

Search engines do take into account keywords in the URL like your second one. I don't believe it's a huge factor, but helps.