Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy to allow a site to rank in search engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask) for terms. Typically the goal is to rank in the top ten for terms relevant to the main focus of the site and within the top 1-2 pages (10-30 results typically) for secondary focus areas. Since most new sites are found via search engine results this becomes the main source of traffic for smaller sites like blogs and startups. However, even main web staples rely heavily on this referral traffic.

In order to SEO a site a dual strategy is needed.

Internally, a site must have good technical design and well-written content. This makes it more attractive to search engines and helps with “natural indexing” a search engine spider finding a single link to your site and being able to traverse the entire site tree to add it to it’s database.

Externally, a site must rely on strong inbound links in order to build the trust factor associated to its domain by search engines (mainly Google). Means of accomplishing this include using social book marking sites (Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia), social news / technology sites (Digg, Reddit), popular blogs (TechCrunch), and niche link building (inbound links from other sites that rate for the same search terms).

Internal Design

Internal design should focus on semantic web design and well-written content. On the web, it’s said that “content is king.” Well-written content will trump any attempts at “keyword stuffing”, hidden keywords, or any other “black hat” SEO strategies (those frowned upon and/or banned by search engines). While black hat strategies might earn a short term gain inherently the search engines catch onto the strategy resulting in a long term loss either in reducing the site’s trust so they rank lower or simply banning them from the index altogether.

Semantic design is the process of writing HTML code so that content on the page is contained in semantic elements. This movement came about after the fiasco of 1990s web design including “table-itis” using tables and other semantic elements non-semantically in order to display the page the way the designer wanted. With the widespread acceptance of CSS and the (mostly) widespread implementation of it in browsers such as Firefox, Opera and IE 6+ the move to semantic design seriously began and started gaining a foothold in the web standards community.

At it’s heart, semantic design is basically wrapping content in elements that describe it semantically paragraphs in p tags, lists (many times navigation links) in ul (or if ordered ol) tags, tabular data (like graphs or excel documents) in tables, definition lists in dl tags, and headers in h1-6 tags. The use of non-semantic tags divs and spans mostly along with liberal use of classes, ids and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) then allow the designer to have semantic content in semantic tags but still display it in any manner that they wish.

The reason semantic design is important is because it tells search engines what the data means it outlines header hierarchies to allow for keyword sensing and allows it to sense how data is formed and related (paragraphs under a header being a “section” etc). Since search engine spiders can only parse and not actually read the data this allows them to parse the site more intelligently and results in better keyword matching for the site.

The final internal design facet is likely one of the most important the title tag. This is a tag that is only shows at the top of the browser window, above the address bar and is thought in the SEO community to be the most highly weighted element by spiders. Having unique, meaningful, concise, and useful titles on each of your pages is the first step to being indexed for the terms you want.

After the title tag is surmised that the header elements h1-h6 are the next most heavily weighted internal element because they perform a function like a “table of contents” for the page. These should be used intelligently and not abused though as this can be considered “black hat” as well.

External Link Building

Beyond good internal design, a well-executed inbound linking strategy is key to SEO. In the SEO community it is thought that this is actually the most important overall part of the process. Search results tend to sway towards this thinking as many times a site that has poor internal design but strong inbound linking for terms will rank higher (many times much higher) than well designed sites with poor inbound linking.

Google is the largest search engine and likely the one that values this most. Although it’s algorithm is unknown many hypothesizes have been put forth by the SEO community and results seem to provide validation.

The first hypothesis is that search engines (specifically Google) place an amount of “trust” on a domain and page (sometimes confused with PageRank). This trust for search terms shares a one-to-one relationship with how that page and domain rank for those same terms.

In order to build this trust, a site must be thought of as an expert for the terms. Typically this is show by inbound links that meet a combination of criteria. The most important is number of links combined with some sort of freshness multiplier. The more inbound links for a term the more trust. The freshness multiplier comes into effect when, for example, an older site might have more links for a term however has not had any recent links for those terms. A newer site with less overall links but many recent links for those terms might then have more trust. The logic is that data is timely so more new links earn more trust than many old links.

Beyond total number of links is links from other sites that have trust for the terms. So, for example, if a site wishes to rate for “dog breeding” having inbound links from other sites that rank well for “dog breeding” show to spiders than those trusted sites consider the linked to site a peer.

Finally, the terms in and around the anchor text of the referring link assign terms. So a link set with the text “dog breeding” in the previous example would pass on trust for that keyword phrase. This is thought to be the least heavily weighted method.

There are many other hypothesizes, however these seem to be the most prevalent and well trusted.

Inbound links are typically generated though networking in the niche community a site is looking to enter as well as using popular social networking sites (Digg, Reddit, StumpleUpon, Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia) to increase the exposure of the site and, hopefully, gain inbound links from various sources. A campaign of using social networking sites intelligently to garner inbound links is typically referred to as “viral marketing.”

In conclusion, SEO relies on both internal and external methods. The most important is a strong campaign of collecting links from valuable sources preferably in the same niche. The second most important is strong internal design so when a spider reaches the site it has the highest chance of success to index it correctly and rank it for preferred terms.

Random Tidbit: Want to learn more about SEO?  Try reading some of the 15 most popular SEO websites.  If you use Wordpress learn more about improving it’s SEO - I actually use a different plugin called Add Meta Tags. Finally, check my SEO page on Ma.gnolia for more interesting sites and tools I find.

At work we recently instituted social bookmarking and networking at the bottom of our items. Apparently our users - while smart, resourceful, motivated and on a web 2.0 site regularly - were in many cases unaware of the phenomenon. While the values of Reddit and Digg are well known - though in the case of Digg not very useful in my opinion based upon recent stories of gaming, mass exodus (over the HD-DVD key issue) and the simple fact that similar stories always seem to populate the front page - social bookmarking seems to be less widely known, used and understood.

It has many uses and benefits that are worth looking into. I will focus on my personal choice del.icio.us - however other sites such as blinklist and ma.gnolia do almost exactly the same thing (and in some cases better from what I understand).

First, and most important to me, they serve as a central hub for all your bookmarks. Once you become a regular web user and get past the 20 or so range for bookmarks it becomes cumbersome to sync your home, work, laptop, etc. bookmarks. With del.icio.us you can post them in one place and access them from any computer anywhere. And using their tag feature you can sort your bookmarks easily so that you, your friends and even complete strangers can find them. You can add notes - which I need to do more of - to remind yourself why you bookmarked the site. For anyone that is into tech news, web design or blogging having this resource is a must.

Second, they’ve become a social search engine. I saw an interesting article about the new search engine that’s better that Google. Basically, it’s about using tags on del.icio.us to find interesting and relevant sites. There are some issues - recently I’ve noticed spam trickling in - but overall it’s a great way to find cool new sites and articles. Add the fact that you can get feeds from it - giving you SEO or CSS content daily right to your RSS reader/site of choice - and it’s almost a no-brainer. Will it ever replace Google? Probably not. But it’s an awesome substitute especially for cutting edge and web related topics.

Third, they allow you to increase your audience if you’re a blogger or webmaster. Basically, by bookmarking your own pages you are indexing your site the way you want it to be. The loss is so is everyone else, however, for a new or smaller audience blog/site it’s a great way to expand your audience and pick up potential regular visitors. It’s something I’ve always meant to do with my site but never gotten around to. If you use Wordpress, your tags naturally flow with the tags on del.icio.us - so someone should (or likely already has) invent a plug-in to do this automatically.

Finally, they allow you to share your bookmarks. You can build friends on del.icio.us (they call it your network) and when you tag something one of the tags will be “for:<username>.” So if find that awesome new CSS site and want to share it with your designer friend - you can. You can even give links to people not in your network (as a reader of my blog did in the past).

You can also share your bookmarks through tag and link rolls - which is how I built my interests, web design and graphic design pages. They also have released an API I believe to be used in mash-ups.

Random Tidbit: I found an article awhile back about 37 Steps to Perfect Markup. Pretty interesting.

I have been reading a lot about microformats recently to try and get a better understanding of them, their benefits and how they affect web standards. I’ve talked a little about them in the past but I wanted to delve more into detail.

The basic idea of microformats is to design a standard XHTML template for common items - for example a hcalendar for events. That template is then the standard for all items of that type. Since all of those items share common elements - in the hcalendar example a h3 with class = summary would be the event description - they are easily able to be encoded into XML and can be aggregated. So sites or programs could aggregate sites using microformats and parse them into easily understandable and standard (hence web standards) displays.

It opens the doors to easily sharing contact information, events, resumes and people relationships with friends, family or even across the web. There are even, already, some microformat plugins for Wordpress and noted blogger and CSS expert Eric Meyer uses them for both his tags and his blog watch. I definitely need to track down a rel-tag plug-in to start getting indexed in Technorati - any suggestions?

I realized I’ve only scratched the surface here. With that in mind I’m going to forgo my usual random tidbit and list some links to sites I found filled with microformats information. Before I do, note that already there have been concerns about identity theft with things like hCards and hResumes so there are many bugs to yet be worked out. It’s a powerful tool though with lots of possibility.

For more microformats information check out the following or my microformats tag on del.icio.us:

• Microformats: What They Are and How To Use Them | Smashing Magazine
• posh - Microformats
• Add microformats magic to your site
• The Big Picture on Microformats
• Markup as a Craft

I am surprised by how many sites still use tables for layout. This was a practice adopted during the “browser wars” because of the low acceptance of CSS - for complex designs the only method available was to use tables. This is no longer the case. Now with web standards and CSS sites can be designed as they were intended - using markup for the purposes the creators meant for them: h tags for headers, p tags for paragraphs, div/spans for non-semantic elements and, finally, tables solely for tabular data (think spreadsheets like excel). Then you use the CSS for design and layout of the site.

Getting off my “web standards” soapbox for a moment the main reasons you want to avoid using tables for layout is that they bloat your markup. This makes it difficult to change and update your site and it hurts your ratings in search engines. By using the correct tags you naturally tell search engine spiders what your content is - a keyword rich header, a content rich paragraph or a navigation list. This allows them to better match your site to keyword searches and increase your audience. You also don’t have to change multiple pages of markup when you want to redesign your site - you simply edit your CSS and never touch the markup.

There are some instances where you want to, and should, use a table.  When designing the table you still want to keep standards in mind. In the old days you would use inline tags like “align” or “valign” for td’s and “cellpadding” or “cellspacing” for the table itself. Now all of that can be done through the CSS. Simply place a class on the table - or use the containing element of the table and apply the rules that way.

For example if you have a table inside a div with class “mySite” you could vertically align the td’s simply by using the following rule:

.mySite table td { vertical-align: top }

If you had used valign = “top” on all of those elements and then later on you decided you wanted to change them to centered you would have to go back and either do it by hand or via a find and replace. Using CSS and web standards you could simply change that one rule and affect all of the elements. That is the true power of it.

In conclusion, the most important thing to remember is to only use tables for the purpose they were created for - tabular data. When using them for this also remember to use the least markup possible. No presentational elements should be present - only semantic elements like content and semantic images (one that add value like logos or photos rather than are used for display like rounded corner containers). Also, if you find yourself placing tables within tables reevaluate your markup - you’re probably using this to create layout or presentation and could get away with a single table and CSS to style it.

Random Tidbit: Having trouble selling web standards to your boss?  The Web Standards Project can help.  Plus they have probably the best example of a site using web standards in every facet - which makes sense.

Fixed vs. flexible design is one of the main arguments of the modern web design era. Much of the argument derives from the fact that IE (Internet Explorer) did not support the min- and max-width properties until version 7. As of this date version 6 and lower are still in such high usage that you cannot count on these properties to work. So the question “fixed vs. flexible” is asked at many a new design meeting.

Fixed

What is fixed design? Fixed design is essentially defining a width on a page - no matter the size of the browser window. You can find fixed designs at sites like Helium, CNN and Yahoo. A typical fixed layout has containers, text, images and most other elements defined in pixels.

The main benefit to designers in using fixed layouts is that they have total control over the design. Unlike traditional media outlets - like newspapers and magazines - the web can be viewed through a large variety of devices from cell phones to PDAs to computer screens to widescreen HDTVs. With traditional media you always know how your page is going to appear. With the web, the same page viewed on a cellphone and a computer can appear vastly different - or even 2 computers with different screen resolutions. Fixed layouts give a designer more control over how their content is viewed. Finally, because you are defining the layout of the page you have more freedom with background images - if you notice the examples above all but CNN make extensive use of background images for design.

There are 2 main faults of fixed designs. One is that users with large screens and resolutions viewing sites with small widths have lots of wasted space. This is a bad user experience because you are dictating to the user how they should experience your site. The second is that if a user is using a smaller screen or resolution some of your design might flow outside the window - causing the dreaded horizontal scrollbar. This also creates a bad user experience.

Fluid

What is fluid design? Fluid design essentially allows the user to decide the how the page looks based upon the size of their browser window and display settings - the page “flows” (hence fluid) to fill the entire available space. Fluid designs can be found at sites like Google, Wikipedia and Reddit. A typical fluid layout has containers, text, images and most other elements defined in ems or percentages.

The main benefit to designs using fluid layouts is that they can use all of the space available to them. The philosophy is that you can’t predict the user’s setup so you want to make your design as adaptive as possible in order to increase the user experience. A fluid layout puts the control of the design in the user’s hands.

There are 2 main faults with fluid design. One is that if someone has a very large/small screen or resolution your site can appear “wonky” - extremely long/short lines of text and distorted containers. The second is that fluid design makes it extremely hard to use background images because of container distortion. They require vast amounts of testing in order to function properly - if at all. In the examples above none of the sites use background images extensively - which severely limits your design creativity.

Hybrid/Elastic

A new design not mentioned in the title goes by several names and is basically a hybrid of the two. It uses min and max width (using javascript for IE6) to try and get the best of both worlds. Basically it defines a range of values in which the design can flow - so that you still have some control over the design (like fixed) but users with larger screens/resolutions can expand the width somewhat. 456 Berea St and Digg use something along these lines.

The main benefit of hybrid/elastic is that it gets some of the benefits of both fixed and fluid - users and designers split control over the design. It’s main fault is that like any hybrid it doesn’t do either of those things as well as the original.

So which is better?

If you haven’t figured it out by now, there is no right or wrong answer. The correct choice depends on the purpose of your site and your design preferences. The sad fact is that any choice you make is going to alienate some user. The old saying is that “You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

Typically if you have a site with shorter blocks of text and/or you are more Web 2.0 you lean towards a fluid design - utilizing large font sizes to lower the impact of some of it’s faults. If you have a site with long blocks of text - like a news or article/blog based site - then you lean towards a fixed width design.

Random Tidbit: Speaking of design what about Time.com’s 50 coolest websites?