SEO – its just basic common sense ?

I have never really gone for SEO jobs, because its all pretty much just common sense isn’t it? Oddly enough though, developers are never told about this stuff and an increasing number seem to have been brought up with Web 2.0 and dynamic tools almost without the experience in bog standard HTML. So with people utilising Flash, AJAX and other tools, no one ever seems to take that step back and say “hows this going to look to a search engine”

I am often shocked at how often people pay thousands for “site optimisation” before they have done the basics – and this is my list!

• Make sure your URL is what you want to be found for (company name, or subject matter)
• Titles – ensure they are descriptive and are “keyword rich”
• Links – all links within the site are viewable without javascript and don’t use ‘click here’
• Content is still king – make sure the terms people will search on will feature sufficiently in the page …

Thats it in the onsite stuff, Flash, Ajax and JavaScript are all largely ignored by search engines.

Off site, links are how you will be discovered, and will heavily influence your rank – however its hard to try and get links, most of the time they will come organically over time if you have some real quality.

Finally, PPC – its great to get people to your site, it is relatively cheap and it is an effective way