4 Organic SEO Steps to Outrank “Big Media” — Step 2: Write Good Code
This article is the second installment in a four-part series of beginners’ tutorials about ethical, organic search engine optimization. These tips are based on the steps I took to get a recent blog post ranked higher than an ABC News story covering the same subject.
In this post I’ll cover how lightweight, meaningful code can help your pages rank higher in search engines. You may also be interested in the other articles in the series:
- How to choose a topic that will attract attention.
- How to write good code for your website, so that search engines can tell what’s important. (see below)
- How to write good copy, using keywords appropriately.
- How to get links, the non-spammy way.
Step #2: Good Code
This step gets a little complicated, but stick with me—this is an important aspect of search engine optimization. I’m going to skip most of the technical details, but be sure you show this information to a professional Web developer who can help with this optimization technique. If you are a Web developer and aren’t already creating sites with Web standards, it’s time to get on the stick.
The Least You Need to Know About Coding a Website
Web pages are written using a computer language called HTML (or its identical cousin XHTML). These are descriptive markup languages, which means they describe the contents of the page in a way that computers can interpret. Many websites use these languages inefficiently, which interferes with a search engine’s ability to index a page.
I’ll spare you the boring history of how these markup languages came to be misused, and get right to the part that improves your search rank: your page’s markup should, as much as possible, be completely free of anything that describes how the page looks or behaves. Those aspects of a site should be confined to separate files1. That way, search engines only have to read and interpret your page’s markup and content when they index it.
Google and other search engines don’t “see” your site2 or even use it in the way a human would. They don’t care what your web pages look like, and won’t enjoy your fancy animations. The only thing important to Google is what your pages mean.
To quickly communicate your page’s subject and contents, you’ll need to make good use of at least two very important (X)HTML elements—page titles and headings:
- Titles are enclosed within the
<title>tag of your document. They’re strongly weighted by search engines, and appear in the title bar at the top of the Web browser window. - Headings allow you to break down an article into sections based on the topics you’re covering. They’re ranked by importance, from level one headings (
<h1>) to level six (<h6>). Always use your headings to describe topics in order—from highest to lowest importance.
When you use your chosen keywords (see part 3) in your page title and headings, you’re telling search engines what’s most important about your page. This gives you an edge over other sites that may cover similar topics, but don’t use markup that’s high in quality and rich in meaning.
Additional Resources
If you’d like more technical details on this aspect of search engine optimization, here’s some reading material that might be useful:
- WebProNews has an article on why you should care about Web standards. Reason number one: SEO.
- Denis Defreyne has written an article about the value and application of semantic (meaningful) markup.
- D. Kieth Robinson has some advice on the importance of title tags.
- HTML Dog is a good place to start learning about coding websites.
- Westciv’s Complete CSS Guide is a great resource. CSS is the computer language that dictates the appearance of a website.
- Joe Dolson discusses why making a site “search engine friendly” with good code is just one part of a larger marketing strategy.
More to Come
Stay tuned for parts three and four of this series. I’ll be covering copywriting and keywords, link generation, and how to avoid making Google mad.
Footnotes
1 For an illustration of how this works, see Natalie Jost’s “Web Standards in a Nutshell.” Her illustration is in PDF format, so you’ll need Adobe Reader.
2 Because Google is blind. If you don’t believe me, go get some Google religion from “reverend” Robert Nyman.