Bringing web development and SEO together
Ok so this is the first time I’m going to write about SEO and website marketing or any of that stuff. I don’t really like talking about it since I’m not an SEO expert.
A couple of weeks ago I just noticed that after my experience in the SEO team; every time I create or design a website, I always make sure it is “SEO friendly”. It is somewhat important if you want your site to be visible on the Internet. Remember there are millions of websites on the information superhighway.
My previous work (which I left last year) started my awareness regarding SEO. I was a web developer there, but with my inclusion on the SEO team, I started to learn more about the trade.
SEO is important in most websites specially on sites that sell something, either a service or a product. Let me give you a basic example situation, where SEO is best applied.
Example you are looking for a particular product on the Internet, let’s say a bouquet of flowers. But not just an ordinary bunch of flowers, you want tulips that are red. So what do you do to find a place where you can get it from. You search…
You go to a search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN Live), then type in your keywords and keyphrases… flowers bouquet tulips red… and then after you hit search, you see the search engines result pages (SERPs).
You found a couple of links (websites), and visited each one on the first page. And then you found a good website that sells and delivers a bouquet of red tulips. You ordered some at their website and have it delivered. And the owner of the website profited.
You see, websites that appear on the first few pages of SERPs are the ones often visited by web surfers. If you are running a business and want people to find your site, your page should show up at least on the first few pages of SERPs. If you’ve tried doing a search on the Internet, you may notice that most people don’t usually go past the first 3 to 5 pages of the results. They usually end up on websites that appear on the first or second page. So the question is how will your website appear near the top results? Do SEO on your website.
After I left the company where I worked as a web developer I thought I wouldn’t do anymore SEO related stuff. But I found out that it is becoming a part of my web development phase. The last 2 projects that I did, ware websites that are not only XHTML/CSS compliant but also SEO friendly.
I think that web designers and web developers now need to learn a little bit about SEO. It is both an advantage to them and to their clients.
Just recently I practiced the tableless-CSS design, which is the more accepted design now (without the use of excessive tables to align and design sites). It is efficient, easy to manage and update, SEO friendly, symantec friendly, and loads faster.
Now, I’m back to working in another SEO environment. I’m not anymore on the web part of the team, but I’m doing the SEO part. Currently I’m on the legal department, and yes, my boss(es) are lawyers. So web design and development along with SEO and with the writers, revolve only on a single topic which is Legal services (lawyers and law firms). So all-in-all we have lawyers, secretaries, web designers/developers, SEO team, and article/forum writers. It’s actually a small bunch, but since we are only focused on Law, everybody can concentrate on the topic.
I also figured out another formula to earn extra cash. If you are a web developer + create a blog + learn SEO + write good posts + put on some ads = $$$ The same way goes if you are a writer or if you blog for a hobby, and just get a free blog site and put some ads on it, then start doing some SEO.
As a side note, I did a little (means I haven’t done any full) SEO work on both www.eternalmoonlight.net and www.tambayan.ph. But if you noticed I only placed ads on the other site and not here. I could have at least doubled my earnings on ads if I placed one here, but I just don’t want to mess up this site more. Personally I don’t like sites with ads or too much ads, it’s just annoying. But I’m still experimenting on ads placement and visibility on web pages that’s why I placed some on www.tambayan.ph. And as much as possible I don’t want to annoy potential site visitors.
Why don’t you try this one, open up Google (.com or .com.ph) and type in my full name (you can find it on my About page, the link is on the right navigation panel) on the search box. The first result should be this site, the only bad thing about it is that it points to my sitemap and about page. It is because of the keyword density (amount of keywords) on that pages. If you have a website or blog, try looking up your name or the name of your website and see how it is ranked on search engines.
If it is not on the first page or if you want to rank it higher, you have to do a little bit of SEO.
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