Three Things You Should Understand about SEO
by Castwide on 12-3-2008 • Tags: seo, snake oil • 0 commentsWeb site owners can spend fortunes on search engine optimization. As someone said in The Cavern of COBOL, "You can't spell 'snake oil' without 'SEO'." Three common problems I see in SEO consultation:
SEO is not an exact science. Good SEO practices on one site might not be feasible on another. Business rules, application requirements, and contextual relevance should be taken into consideration before you start making changes for SEO purposes.
SEO consultants know the rules, but do not always understand the implementation. One common rule in SEO is that you should avoid referring to a resource with a query string, e.g., instead of http://domain.com/index.php?page=news, your URL should be http://domain.com/news.php. This is a good rule in most cases; but this does not mean that you should avoid query strings at all costs. If you pass values in session variables instead of query strings, for example, you're defeating the purpose. In fact, session variables are even less visible to search engines than query strings.
I've also seen a consultant insist on applying SEO rules to a resource that can only be accessed via POST. That guy knew the tune, but he didn't know how to play the instrument.
SEO is not always the most important goal. This is particularly true in web applications with heavy client-side functionality. Content is a good condidate for SEO. Functionality is not. Consider what you're trying to accomplish before mandating SEO rules that might do more harm than good.