This document discusses search engine optimization (SEO) and provides tips for improving a site's ranking in search engines. It recommends focusing on user experience over manipulation, following best practices like using semantic HTML and readable URLs, and using tools from Google, Bing and Yahoo to monitor how search engines interact with your site. The key takeaways are to think like a searcher, optimize page titles, use Google Webmaster Tools, and read the Google Webmaster Blog.

2. Search Engines
comScore July 2010 Rankings
Google AOL
65.8% 2.3% Bing Ask
Yahoo
11.0%
3.8%
17.1%

3. Why?

4. “SEO Expert”

5. == “Spammer”

6. “Many of the so-called SEO
professionals are not much more than
modern snake oil salesmen. They
game and manipulate the system for
their own intentions.”
“SEO is not a legitimate form of
marketing. It should not be
undertaken by people with brains or
souls.”

7. “I'm not an SEO expert, but [it]
seems like SEO is something spam
sites do. If you are trying to create a
high quality destination site, just
write good content and let Google
do its job.”
- Sachin Agarwal, CEO Posterous

8. “Let FastCGI do its job”.

9. On average, 40% of
traffic comes from
organic search*

16. “Not my audience!”

17. luigimontanez.com

18. “Experts” Not Needed

19. Professional Practices
• User-Centric Design
• Test-Driven Development
• DRY and Maintainable Code
• Server Performance
• Client-Side Performance
• Search Engine Considerations

20. Six Simple Rules
• Can’t outsmart Google (or Bing or Y!)
• Follow Google’s advice
• Obey conventions and standards
• Stay away from hacks
• Think like a search engine
• Think like a searcher

21. Search Engine Pipeline
• Crawling
• Indexing
• Ranking

22. <crawling>

23. Discovery
• Links to your pages from other sites
• Links to your pages from within your site
• Your sitemap.xml

24. sitemap.xml
• Tell search engines exactly what you
want them to crawl
• sitemaps.org
• Limit: 50,000 URLs, 10MB
• Can specify multiple sitemaps with a
sitemap index

25. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/
schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://example.com/about</loc>
<lastmod>2010-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

26. Generating sitemap.xml
• Write it by hand, stick it in public/
• Build a controller, action, and route
entry to respond to ‘sitemap.xml’. Use
XML Builder to generate the entries.
Cache it.
• Importantly: Strive for 100% coverage.

27. robots.txt
• Exclusion rather than inclusion
• robotstxt.org
User-agent: *
Disallow: /profile

28. Be nice to the crawler
• Be performant. Fast server response.
Fast page load. Compress files. Use if-
modified-since header.
• Non-www vs. www - pick one.
• Ensure unique content. Use <link
rel=”canonical”/> where
approriate.

29. </crawling>

30. <indexing>

31. Don’t sabotage it
• Don’t use a 302 redirect when you
mean a 301 redirect.
• Make sure images, video, Flash,
Silverlight, and AJAX are accessible.
• See the Google Webmaster Central
Blog for details.
• Account for crawlers with region-
specific content.

32. </indexing>

33. <ranking>

34. <title>
• Most important element to search
engines
• Think long and hard about it
• Keywords! Think like a searcher.
• Best format: Page Title | Site Name

38. URLs
• Override to_param for pretty URLs.
• Dashes are word separators,
underscores are not. Use dashes.
• International domains are treated as
such.

39. <meta>
• <meta name=”description”
content=”...” />
• Make it unique for every page. Use
content_for.
• Shown to users, doesn’t affect ranking.
• <meta name=”tags” ... /> is
ignored

40. Headings and Content
• <h> tags should be used appropriately.
• Page content should match what the
<title> and <h> tags refer to.
• Limit use of text-indent:-9999px
and display:none in CSS.

41. Rich Snippets
• Microformats, RDFa, Microdata

42. </ranking>

43. Tools
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo! Site Explorer

56. Four Takeaways
• Think like a searcher
• Optimize your <title>s
• Use Google Webmaster Tools
• Read the Google Webmaster Blog