An SEO & web best practice guide: part 2

December 8, 2009 in All posts

If you missed part 1 of this guide, it’s here.

Having looked at the first three things on the list, here’re the next three:

• Imagery (relevancy, contrasts, copy-as-images, alt tags)
• Flash (why/why not, navigation)
• Technical (301 redirects, non-www domains, keywords in domain names, mod-rewrite for search friendly pages, meta content)

Read on!

Imagery

Relevancy

It sounds obvious, but if you’re going to use imagery, make it relevant to whatever it is the site is about. For example, if you’re selling mens shoes, don’t include weird pictures of women sitting around in The Matrix.

Contrasts

It’s quite common to overlay text on an image. If you’re going to do this, make double-sure that the image background colour is contrasting enough with the text that’s going to go over the top of it. Use a contrast checker like HP’s Colour Check Tool.

Copy as images

It might be tempting to be lazy and drop copy into an image, just so you can use that fancy font you’ve had lying around for ages. If you can help it, don’t. Use either SIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), an accessible font-replacement technique, or – if you REALLY REALLY must use an image…

Use ALT tags

That’s right: use good descriptive ALT tags for your images. Something that describes what the image is, and perhaps an indicator of what section it’s sitting in – like “Image of a man’s shoe – Mens Shoes section”.

Flash

Why would you use it?

A often controversial subject, I’m going to give both pros and cons of using Flash. In a nutshell, using Flash allows you to create a much richer user experience, with smooth animations and embedded sound and graphics. It can also interface (relatively) happily with databases/MySQL to provide membership/e-commerce capabilities. It’s flexible, and fairly frugal in terms of using system resources.

Why would you not use it?

Because it’s largely inaccessible (in terms of screenreaders and search engines), and has a tendency to be overused by idiots who put form over function.

I’m going to put my stake in the sand and say “Don’t use it.” I know there’re some fantastic Flash sites out there, but I can’t see why you’d want to make an entire site out of it – particularly an e-commerce site. You want people to find your content? Don’t make it in Flash.

Navigation

Some sites like to put only the navigation in Flash elements. It’s possible to make this work, but done incorrectly it can lead to Google being blind to your site’s deeper content. I generally wouldn’t bother.

Technical

301 redirects

301 redirects are useful for two reasons:

1. They send your users to wherever you need to them to be;
2. They send search engines to wherever you need them to be.

Useful for managing a domain that perhaps has built up search equity in a certain page – but that page now needs to be moved, or has been replaced by better content elsewhere in the site. The solution? 301 redirect to the new page.

Non-www domains

Bear in mind that, unless you’ve set up a domain to redirect properly, you can inadvertently build up equity in the non-www version (e.g what happened with http://schuh.co.uk v.s http://www.schuh.co.uk). Ensure it’s set to redirect to your desired domain.

Keywords in domain names

There’s strong evidence to suggest that ensuring you have exact-match keywords (e.g the words you want to rank in search engines for) in your domain name will result in higher natural rankings. Do it. Need help finding a domain that’s got the words you want? Try a search on pool.com for expired or expiring domain names.

Mod-rewrite for search-friendly pages

Quite often, a CMS or blog platform will default to publishing content in unreadable URL structures (like /configure/MB991B/A?mco=MTM3NDgxMzg). This can be problematic for your search results. Try using mod-rewrite to ensure your content is readable by both search engines and people alike.

Meta content

There are a bunch of <meta name/ content=> headings you can use in HTML to tell people and search engines what your site is about: Use them. Don’t bother stuffing the ‘keywords’ tag with billions of keywords, though – search engines are wise to it, and Google openly admits to ignoring that particular tag completely.

That’s it! Hope you enjoyed it.

Tags: best practice, seo, usability