Search Engine Optimization

This is the first post in a series on search engine optimization (SEO). I will be looking at key SEO factors identified by the SEOmoz.org consulting group and pitting them against Magnolia CMS, a Web content management system.

This series should be interesting to online marketers, people employing web communications, and anyone looking to increase their site rank. Download all posts in a single PDF.

What is SEO?

The purpose of SEO is to enhance the volume and quality of traffic directed to a website via search engine results. Search engines aim to provide users with the most relevant results, while webmasters attempt to tweak their sites in order to move it up in the rankings and attract profitable, organic traffic. SEO began in the early 1990s, and quickly degenerated into a tug of war between search engines and webmasters. For each new weighting factor introduced by the engines, crafty webmasters invented means to circumvent it. As a result, many undeserving sites achieved high rank at the expense of great sites providing valuable information. The Web became cluttered with content designed to satisfy the engines as opposed to users.

Today, SEO is practiced in a more cooperative environment in which search engines provide advice to webmasters. The engines will probably never fully disclose the algorithms that drive their crawlers, but the fundamentals of SEO are firmly established.

Google is the dominant player, with more than 80% of the search market, followed by Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask, according to the findings of statowl.com:



Coming up next

In subsequent posts I will cover the following SEO best practices:

Popular posts from this blog

Vanity URLs with Magnolia CMS

Image
Vanity URLs are short, easy to remember Web addresses used for campaigns, microsites and landing pages. They are a key Internet marketing tool. In this post I whip out my vanity cane, clip on my grill and show you how to get vain with Magnolia CMS. A vanity URL typically contains a word or phrase that describes a specific target such as a campaign slogan. When a user visits the vanity URL they are redirected to the actual target site. The URL can be constructed using a: trailing path: www.shell.com/ eco-marathon domain prefix: experience .virgin-atlantic.com domain suffix: www.amazon. de entirely unique domain name: mynavyfuture.com The URL is often reproduced in print ads, hoping that the short and snappy look makes it easier to remember. Magnolia CMS provides two approaches to creating vanity URLs: 1) Virtual URI mapping is used to create path-based vanity URLs. In this mechanism a trailing path is mapped to an actual page. In the configuration example below, www.example.com/winter
Read more

Keyboard shortcuts that look like keys

Image
I spotted this CSS class being used in Chrome keyboard shortcut help. I applied the style to our  keyboard shortcut documentation  at Magnolia. Now the shortcuts look like actual keys. That was a quick way to add a bit of polish. .kbd { background-color: #f7f7f7; border: 1px solid #ccc; color: #333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4; text-shadow: 0 1px 0 #fff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; display: inline-block; padding: 0.1em 0.6em; margin: 0 0.1em; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 1px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 0 0 2px #ffffff inset; -moz-box-shadow: 0 1px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 0 0 2px #ffffff inset; box-shadow: 0 1px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2), 0 0 0 2px #ffffff inset; -webkit-border-radius: 3px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; border-radius: 3px; } Here's the result:
Read more

Keywords in page titles and meta elements

Image
This post belongs to a series about  search engine optimization  (SEO) with Magnolia CMS. Today we look at inserting keywords in page titles and meta elements. Page titles are an extremely important SEO factor. Search engines give titles considerable algorithmic weight and use them as headings on search results. Titles should include keywords and, where appropriate, your company name for branding purposes: <title>Magnolia - Finance, Insurance & Banking</title> Description meta elements on the other hand do not add much to page relevance, but should not be neglected: <meta name="description" content="Magnolia's largest group of Enterprise Edition customers is from the..."> Their content often appears below the title in search results: The relevance of keywords stipulated in the keyword tag once had great impact, but this is no longer true. Actual page content is now far more relevant. Still, a keyword tag should be included:
Read more