Designed to be Found – Part 2

Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation, more commonly known as SEO, is the practice of presenting web content in a manner that is beyond merely accessible to the robotic, automated user-agents that search engines use to crawl and index web documents. SEO uses knowledge of how search works in order to add some appeal and preference.

While SEO in full is a subset of marketing, not mere design, just as with many other aspects of marketing, design has a strong place and stake in the performance.

In this guide, you will learn some of the most powerful elements of design that help any content you create be found more easily by search. Additionally, you’ll learn how to present your design and content in a way that will enhance its appeal to search engines, and help it to be better placed in relevant searches.

The Big Picture
SEO isn’t about ‘tricking the engines’ – that doesn’t work for long. Any search result that was competitive enough to need ‘tricks’ would be precisely too competitive to get away with them. Any of the myriad of competitors would happily report your site to Google for its ‘tricks’, and open the site to a penalty, or even an outright ban.

Real SEO is about helping the search engines. Search engines are in business too, and search users are their customers. Search engines want to satisfy the searcher with good results, give a positive customer experience, and ensure that customer uses them again.

SEO is about helping to align the search engines’ objectives with your own site’s, even to the extent of seeking to get less traffic on terms of poor relevance.

Look out for part 3 next week…