Swatting up on SEO: 3 Useful Articles to Help Your Understanding of Organic Search

Search Engine Optimization is such a rich subject. I am by no means an SEO expert, though I strive towards this close-to-impossible goal!

Over the past few weeks, I've been trawling through a lot of good (and not so good) articles on organic search. To help save you time, I'd like to share three choice picks with you.

SEO Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow's classical hierarchy of needs has been pulled into the 21st Century and applied to SEO. The framework lays out the building blocks a website needs in order to secure a good search engine rank - a journey which begins with Keywords and Content (the most basic need) all the way through to Link Development (the point of self- or rather website-actualization).

What is key throughout this journey is ensuring effective Analytics and Web Intelligence in order to understand your site and measure your level of success.

Read the Full Article: SEO Hierarchy of Needs


SEO Guide for Web Designers
Damn these web designers with their Flash Splash Pages and Click Here anchor text! I was absolutely mortified to read that:

• 1 in 10 web designers don't think SEO is mandatory
• 24% of web designers don't even know what SEO is

This article provides basic, but essential, "don'ts" for web designers. I guarantee that you will come across something on the "don't" list that is happening on your site right now. Make sure you print this one out and glue a copy to every monitor belonging to a web developer.

Read the full article: SEO Guide for Web Designers


17 Ways Search Engines Judge the Value of a Link
This one comes courtesy of those smart people at SEOmoz, who do a great job explaining the most important factors that search engines consider when judging the value of a link. It certainly helped to answer a lot of questions I had when it comes to link value.

Most interesting take-aways included:

• The concept of TrustRank (you want to be linked as close to a trusted site as possible)
• Getting inbound links from diverse sources is more powerful than lots of links from the same source
• Link value differs with page location. For example, a link included within your page content is more valuable than a link within the top navigation, which is more valuable than a link in the side bar, or in the footer
• Earning links from a particular region will help you perform better in searches made within that region

Read the Full Article: 17 Ways Search Engines Judge the Value of a Link


If you have come across any interesting articles on SEO, please feel free to share.