5 ms·

What Every Programmer Should Know About SEO

120 points by kateroth 15y ago

benkant 15y ago
s/programmer/web developer And even then it's a stretch.
- Tharkun 15y ago
  Not sure why the author seems to assume that every programmer is even remotely involved in webby stuff.
nhebb 15y ago
"Typical link building [...] can be through deals, partnerships, PR pitches, link exchanges – even paying for links." A few of these techniques - link exchanges and buying links - sound like really bad advice, especially given that she is a former SEOmoz employee. She also omits the most straightforward way for startups to get backlinks => create content on your site worth linking to.
- sopooneo 15y ago
  I've found that people hate to hear that when asking for advice on how to get traffic. It's even less popular than "eat right and exercise" as weight loss advice.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Mainly because unlike eating healthily it's actually a pretty broken concept. Your search ranking is determined by your ability as a writer rather than the quality of your product.
  - dspillett 15y ago
    A lot of people take a more directly cynical view of content creation, rather than the more passive ignorance we have with regard to health. Our health is not something someone else can take generally, content is. It is too easy to look at the rampant copying and dirty tricks used to pull in viewers for ad revenue and think "if you can't beat them, join them" or worse "I might be able to beat them, but joining them seems easier".
- jwdunne 15y ago
  Actually, a lot of those techniques still depends on having great content. From experience, many will be reluctant to link to a site that doesn't look the part, even if they get paid for it. The thing is: who you link to also matters and can harm your website if not done correctly. Linking to a site that is full of scraped content, AdSense and with a poor design is a bad idea, for instance. When you place a link to a site, you become associated with that site. Regardless of your tactic, you still need to put the work in to build a good looking site with great content or you won't get far. In fact, if your prospective target is willing to link to a shoddy site, I would treat this as very suspect. Chances are the link won't be worth anything. As an example the easiest way to get paid links is through directory sites (the cheap ones) and you have to be careful there, a lot will not benefit you at all if not to a detriment. To be honest, just having worthy content is almost cliche. I prefer to think of it as a foundation to build on with a variety of strategies and tactics. For example, you write a great blog post (the foundation) and then go and post it on your twitter, HN and/or reddit (your additional link and traffic building strategies). Without the additional work, it becomes much like a "build it and they will come" mentality and the only time this could actually work is if you were already at the top of your game.
- kateroth 15y ago
  That is a great point - and I definitely wasn't encouraging buying links. I updated the post with your advice.
shadowmint 15y ago
I despise SEO, but oddly enough I actually agree with what the article says. Possibly this is more for web-programmers than others, but these days that's quite a lot of people, and what the article says is succinct and to the point. What you have to realize is that SEO is a logarithmic curve; when you've done none, doing a little bit makes a huge difference. When you've already got a decent site, well... a lot of effort for virtually no gain.
- Maxious 15y ago
  Everything except "Building Links" I would call UX/Accessibility if only to avoid any semblance of the shadier parts of SEO.
joeblau 15y ago
The article is very good. I actually coded a project where my entire goal was to reach number one on google for the search term "male female translation." It took about a month but I eventually made it to the top following most of what was mentioned in the article. I just had to figure it all out via research, trial and error.
- newman314 15y ago
  Honestly, I would expect any experienced web dev to have this knowledge as part of what they bring to the table, especially for a front end dev. The article is not really stating anything new and there is already any number of similar articles out there basically documenting the same thing. In fact, given her past job experience as VP Eng for SEOmoz, I'm a little surprised at how little insight there is in the post. (Honest opinion, not trying to be snarky).
sixQuarks 15y ago
Getting links is still the most important part of SEO. She barely mentions this.
- simonw 15y ago
  It's also the part that is least relevant to the developers who are actually building sites, which is who this article is targeted at.
toumhi 15y ago
Good article, I wanted to write something about it too(web developer with strong interest in SEO here). I'd say in the end it's more an introduction to SEO than it is advice for programmers about SEO. I'll detail 2 things she overlooked in my opinion. For example, web developers have a fantastic opportunity to build links by getting involved in open source communities. These are extremely link-rich environments and by posting tutorials or creating small packages, you can find yourself with a lot of links pointing to your site. They will maybe not be relevant to your target keywords but will still be links from high-authority sources. And I'd say the traditional way of garnering links still applies to web developers: get to know fellow developers, get interviewed on their blogs, exchange resources etc. So hang out where your community lives, whether it's on Reddit, StackOverflow, Hacker News etc. Get to know people, the SEO will follow.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  This only works if your site has something to do with development. Or are you suggesting posting development related topics to a non development related site purely to get those juicy backlinks (and thus good pagerank)?
  - toumhi 15y ago
    No, not only. You can host software packages and tutorials on your product website. For example, patio11 of HN fame has an article about Rails SEO Tips on his product website http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm Even though I'd say that he could have done a better job at integrating it on his website (it looks too much like an isolated page in my opinion - there should be a "Tips for developers" section), it does the job at attracting links and boosting SEO for his main site (also with A/Bingo, a software package he developed: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo). Actually he developed a blueprint of what could be done for startups regarding SEO: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ And here you go, he got three more links for free :-) -
    - 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
yaix 15y ago
Site freshness only matters for certain categories/topics. For other topics you could say the older the static content the better. Some of my best ranking/money making pages have not changed in 8 years and rank better every year, without doing anything. Regarding ranking algos, you did not mention the Trust Rank (there is a patent G filed some years ago). A low Trust Rank is equally bad as a low Page Rank. I don't really know much about it, but afaik it has to do with the trust that G has collected on your site, while Page Rank is based on individual pages. If you link to "bad neigborhoods" (another important term, think casino sites, v*agra, etc.) your TR will go down for example, and its hard to get it back up. If National Geographic links to one of your pages, your site's TR goes way up. And then there is the number of pages on your site. Google will only crwal a limited amount of pages from your site, depending on your Page Rank and distribution of incoming links. So try to keep the number of crawlable pages focused to the relevant pages (ie the ones you'd like to see in G's index). After some time and if you have tons of links, you will see a "deep crawl" with a bunch of Gbots hammerings you server and downloading many more pages a day than usual.
franze 15y ago
PLEASE DO NOT READ THAT ARTICLE - it is bad for you and your business. SEO is a bullshit industry. this means that 80% of everything that is written about SEO actually reduces your knowledge of SEO, that article is in no way different. just pick a few examples: > A web crawler has to crawl your site (and every other site on the web) > Indexes all the pages .. > Organizes the indexed collection and stores ... this one misses on of the most important steps of the google site processing pipe: Discovery is the process of discovering URLs to crawl. It is fueled by the sitemap.xml and crawling. PageRank - is not - "another important part of authority" - pagerank is thoughtcancer. don't ever say that word, don't ever think that word. see my TC article here http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-competition-will-help-you-no-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... >Ensure pages render without JavaScript enabled sadly google parses and to some degree renders JS ... badly. this tip is good, but leads to the false conclusion that google does not parse/render/"see" JS. > you should also pay attention to how you construct links and anchor text to internal pages on your site. internal link anchor text is mostly irrelevant. >your own internal links use relevant keywords in the anchor text. it's also some of the worst things, as the impact in minimal to not measurable. >So if you load a bunch of text dynamically with Ajax, or JavaScript, create a non-JavaScript version that will show the same information. outdated, google now even does onload-triggered POST requests if necessary. js is still bad, but the story above is only half the story. >Put them in the URL (and even better if your domain name has your keywords) oh god, not again. these are the SEO URL rules #### landingpage url rules all URLs on an a webproperty must be according to these rules listed in priority! 1. unique (1 URL == 1 resource, 1 resource == 1 URL) 2. permanent (they do not change, no dependencies) 3. manageable (1 logic per site section, no complicated exceptions) 4. easily scalable logic 5. short 6. with a targeted keyword phrase further down she says something about 404s and it sounds like they are bad. 404 are great. when pages are gone, they are gone - 404 or 410. if the move then 301. but do not redirect gone pages to friendly 200 pages. keep your site simple and your redirects rules as well. >Additionally you want as many links to contain appropriate alt text. links don't have alt text, images have alt text. in an image is linked, that alt text substitutes the anchor text. >But SEO isn’t just about building a great site that is crawlable and has the right content – it is also about converting users. no, that is the job of the product, onpage marketing, conversion optimization. SEO is really just about getting - targeted - visitors. (she has clearly read too much SEOmoz) >the most defensible SEO strategy is links, no, it's not. that is just something that SEO agencies tell you to sell you their services and useless tools. disclaimer: i work as an SEO - i hate SEOs. my biggest success is 62 M visitors a month. i don't read SEO blogs.
programminggeek 15y ago
Ok, you really don't need to know everything about SEO to do a non-terrible job of ranking. Do these things and you can get traffic with SEO. 1. Title tags that get clicks (not kw stuffing or plain exact match) 2. Write content that is unique and semi-frequent. (update once a week or so at least) 3. Acquire links. #1 and #2 are the basics that you need to do to even have a shot to show up for a given query. #3 is what is going to get you on the first page. You can do #3 by having great content and doing social promotion, using email newsletters to blast your content out to people so they can share it, or if you're in a boring industry and nobody likes you, you can buy or build links via the numerous link building services out there that can hit any number of link sources. At the end of the day, natural links are viewed as better, but paid links can get the job done in some cases. Given a certain bar of content quality, the quantity and volume of links is still the most important ranking factor on Google and Bing as far as I can tell.

120 points by kateroth 15y ago

benkant 15y ago

s/programmer/web developer And even then it's a stretch.

Tharkun 15y ago
Not sure why the author seems to assume that every programmer is even remotely involved in webby stuff.

nhebb 15y ago

"Typical link building [...] can be through deals, partnerships, PR pitches, link exchanges – even paying for links." A few of these techniques - link exchanges and buying links - sound like really bad advice, especially given that she is a former SEOmoz employee. She also omits the most straightforward way for startups to get backlinks => create content on your site worth linking to.

sopooneo 15y ago
I've found that people hate to hear that when asking for advice on how to get traffic. It's even less popular than "eat right and exercise" as weight loss advice.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  Mainly because unlike eating healthily it's actually a pretty broken concept. Your search ranking is determined by your ability as a writer rather than the quality of your product.
- dspillett 15y ago
  A lot of people take a more directly cynical view of content creation, rather than the more passive ignorance we have with regard to health. Our health is not something someone else can take generally, content is. It is too easy to look at the rampant copying and dirty tricks used to pull in viewers for ad revenue and think "if you can't beat them, join them" or worse "I might be able to beat them, but joining them seems easier".
jwdunne 15y ago
Actually, a lot of those techniques still depends on having great content. From experience, many will be reluctant to link to a site that doesn't look the part, even if they get paid for it. The thing is: who you link to also matters and can harm your website if not done correctly. Linking to a site that is full of scraped content, AdSense and with a poor design is a bad idea, for instance. When you place a link to a site, you become associated with that site. Regardless of your tactic, you still need to put the work in to build a good looking site with great content or you won't get far. In fact, if your prospective target is willing to link to a shoddy site, I would treat this as very suspect. Chances are the link won't be worth anything. As an example the easiest way to get paid links is through directory sites (the cheap ones) and you have to be careful there, a lot will not benefit you at all if not to a detriment. To be honest, just having worthy content is almost cliche. I prefer to think of it as a foundation to build on with a variety of strategies and tactics. For example, you write a great blog post (the foundation) and then go and post it on your twitter, HN and/or reddit (your additional link and traffic building strategies). Without the additional work, it becomes much like a "build it and they will come" mentality and the only time this could actually work is if you were already at the top of your game.
kateroth 15y ago
That is a great point - and I definitely wasn't encouraging buying links. I updated the post with your advice.

shadowmint 15y ago

I despise SEO, but oddly enough I actually agree with what the article says. Possibly this is more for web-programmers than others, but these days that's quite a lot of people, and what the article says is succinct and to the point. What you have to realize is that SEO is a logarithmic curve; when you've done none, doing a little bit makes a huge difference. When you've already got a decent site, well... a lot of effort for virtually no gain.

Maxious 15y ago
Everything except "Building Links" I would call UX/Accessibility if only to avoid any semblance of the shadier parts of SEO.

joeblau 15y ago

The article is very good. I actually coded a project where my entire goal was to reach number one on google for the search term "male female translation." It took about a month but I eventually made it to the top following most of what was mentioned in the article. I just had to figure it all out via research, trial and error.

newman314 15y ago
Honestly, I would expect any experienced web dev to have this knowledge as part of what they bring to the table, especially for a front end dev. The article is not really stating anything new and there is already any number of similar articles out there basically documenting the same thing. In fact, given her past job experience as VP Eng for SEOmoz, I'm a little surprised at how little insight there is in the post. (Honest opinion, not trying to be snarky).

sixQuarks 15y ago

Getting links is still the most important part of SEO. She barely mentions this.

simonw 15y ago
It's also the part that is least relevant to the developers who are actually building sites, which is who this article is targeted at.

toumhi 15y ago

Good article, I wanted to write something about it too(web developer with strong interest in SEO here). I'd say in the end it's more an introduction to SEO than it is advice for programmers about SEO. I'll detail 2 things she overlooked in my opinion. For example, web developers have a fantastic opportunity to build links by getting involved in open source communities. These are extremely link-rich environments and by posting tutorials or creating small packages, you can find yourself with a lot of links pointing to your site. They will maybe not be relevant to your target keywords but will still be links from high-authority sources. And I'd say the traditional way of garnering links still applies to web developers: get to know fellow developers, get interviewed on their blogs, exchange resources etc. So hang out where your community lives, whether it's on Reddit, StackOverflow, Hacker News etc. Get to know people, the SEO will follow.

jiggy2011 15y ago
This only works if your site has something to do with development. Or are you suggesting posting development related topics to a non development related site purely to get those juicy backlinks (and thus good pagerank)?
- toumhi 15y ago
  No, not only. You can host software packages and tutorials on your product website. For example, patio11 of HN fame has an article about Rails SEO Tips on his product website http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/rails-seo-tips.htm Even though I'd say that he could have done a better job at integrating it on his website (it looks too much like an isolated page in my opinion - there should be a "Tips for developers" section), it does the job at attracting links and boosting SEO for his main site (also with A/Bingo, a software package he developed: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo). Actually he developed a blueprint of what could be done for startups regarding SEO: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/24/startup-seo/ And here you go, he got three more links for free :-) -
  - 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

yaix 15y ago

Site freshness only matters for certain categories/topics. For other topics you could say the older the static content the better. Some of my best ranking/money making pages have not changed in 8 years and rank better every year, without doing anything. Regarding ranking algos, you did not mention the Trust Rank (there is a patent G filed some years ago). A low Trust Rank is equally bad as a low Page Rank. I don't really know much about it, but afaik it has to do with the trust that G has collected on your site, while Page Rank is based on individual pages. If you link to "bad neigborhoods" (another important term, think casino sites, v*agra, etc.) your TR will go down for example, and its hard to get it back up. If National Geographic links to one of your pages, your site's TR goes way up. And then there is the number of pages on your site. Google will only crwal a limited amount of pages from your site, depending on your Page Rank and distribution of incoming links. So try to keep the number of crawlable pages focused to the relevant pages (ie the ones you'd like to see in G's index). After some time and if you have tons of links, you will see a "deep crawl" with a bunch of Gbots hammerings you server and downloading many more pages a day than usual.

franze 15y ago

PLEASE DO NOT READ THAT ARTICLE - it is bad for you and your business. SEO is a bullshit industry. this means that 80% of everything that is written about SEO actually reduces your knowledge of SEO, that article is in no way different. just pick a few examples: > A web crawler has to crawl your site (and every other site on the web) > Indexes all the pages .. > Organizes the indexed collection and stores ... this one misses on of the most important steps of the google site processing pipe: Discovery is the process of discovering URLs to crawl. It is fueled by the sitemap.xml and crawling. PageRank - is not - "another important part of authority" - pagerank is thoughtcancer. don't ever say that word, don't ever think that word. see my TC article here http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-competition-will-help-you-no-really/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/startups-linking-to-your-co... >Ensure pages render without JavaScript enabled sadly google parses and to some degree renders JS ... badly. this tip is good, but leads to the false conclusion that google does not parse/render/"see" JS. > you should also pay attention to how you construct links and anchor text to internal pages on your site. internal link anchor text is mostly irrelevant. >your own internal links use relevant keywords in the anchor text. it's also some of the worst things, as the impact in minimal to not measurable. >So if you load a bunch of text dynamically with Ajax, or JavaScript, create a non-JavaScript version that will show the same information. outdated, google now even does onload-triggered POST requests if necessary. js is still bad, but the story above is only half the story. >Put them in the URL (and even better if your domain name has your keywords) oh god, not again. these are the SEO URL rules #### landingpage url rules all URLs on an a webproperty must be according to these rules listed in priority! 1. unique (1 URL == 1 resource, 1 resource == 1 URL) 2. permanent (they do not change, no dependencies) 3. manageable (1 logic per site section, no complicated exceptions) 4. easily scalable logic 5. short 6. with a targeted keyword phrase further down she says something about 404s and it sounds like they are bad. 404 are great. when pages are gone, they are gone - 404 or 410. if the move then 301. but do not redirect gone pages to friendly 200 pages. keep your site simple and your redirects rules as well. >Additionally you want as many links to contain appropriate alt text. links don't have alt text, images have alt text. in an image is linked, that alt text substitutes the anchor text. >But SEO isn’t just about building a great site that is crawlable and has the right content – it is also about converting users. no, that is the job of the product, onpage marketing, conversion optimization. SEO is really just about getting - targeted - visitors. (she has clearly read too much SEOmoz) >the most defensible SEO strategy is links, no, it's not. that is just something that SEO agencies tell you to sell you their services and useless tools. disclaimer: i work as an SEO - i hate SEOs. my biggest success is 62 M visitors a month. i don't read SEO blogs.

programminggeek 15y ago

Ok, you really don't need to know everything about SEO to do a non-terrible job of ranking. Do these things and you can get traffic with SEO. 1. Title tags that get clicks (not kw stuffing or plain exact match) 2. Write content that is unique and semi-frequent. (update once a week or so at least) 3. Acquire links. #1 and #2 are the basics that you need to do to even have a shot to show up for a given query. #3 is what is going to get you on the first page. You can do #3 by having great content and doing social promotion, using email newsletters to blast your content out to people so they can share it, or if you're in a boring industry and nobody likes you, you can buy or build links via the numerous link building services out there that can hit any number of link sources. At the end of the day, natural links are viewed as better, but paid links can get the job done in some cases. Given a certain bar of content quality, the quantity and volume of links is still the most important ranking factor on Google and Bing as far as I can tell.