As far as SEO. It probably merits a phone conversation. But SEO can entail a number of different things both factual and fictional. We started to talk about it the other day on the phone with meta tags and domain redirects.

The most important thing we can do as a web dev company, as far as SEO, is to make sure you have a properly structured and valid site. Which it is. This makes the site completely crawl-able by any search engine.

Now beyond that, SEO becomes a little mystical . . .

First, and foremost, none of the major search engines provide information on the algorithms they use to determine search relevance. They don’t want anyone to game the system. Obviously, a user uses a search engine, like Google, because search results are relevant to the users search terms. If you searched and found a lot of ads and junk you wouldn’t use Google. This makes SEO speculative.

For instance,…
There is a debate about which is more SEO friendly, dashes (-) or underscores ( _ ) in urls. So for instance, is “everything-about-you” better than “everything_about_you”. The debate started from the idea that (-) are understood as a space and ( _ ) are understood as a character. So the logic is that search engines understand the phrase “everything_about_you” as “everything about you” more readily. Where as “everything_about_you” could be seen as “ever thin g_ab out_ you”. Okay makes sense. But, if you do a search “dashes vs underscores” you will find in the top four listings on the subject, two listings with a dashed url and two with underscore url …hmmm. And the debate rages on and on. There are a lot of SEO tips that fall into the same category. Bottom line, is no one really knows and is only speculating at best. Results achieved by SEO people beyond fixes for structural flaws in web sites are probably more “Westinghouse Effect” then anything else.

Personally, I think your time and money are best spent elsewhere rather then chasing the ghost in the machine.

If you are willing to put in the time there are some things you can do that can make a difference but take time and commitment. These truly do increase your relevance in the eyes of search engines.

• Build links to your site. Find others that will add your link to their site as part of their blogroll or as part of content within their site. Don’t pay or get involved with linking schemes because your site could be blacklisted.
• Blog, blog, blog. Honest, useful, & good content creates interest. For your field, things like how to’s and lists are highly sought after by users. You can also submit content to services like Digg, Reddit etc… for more exposure.
• Start a Conversation. Visit other blogs and provide relevant comments and thoughts to posts. Most of these allow you to provide your web site address in which they make your site url linkable from your name. Don’t be overly self promoting with gratuitous linking. You will end up making users mad. Be a good community member.
• Create more content. Places like Ehow, Squidoo, YouTube etc… give advice on subjects within your expertise.
  Participate in groups and forums where your expertise is needed such as Linked In groups, MySpace, or Yahoo.
• Build a following. Keep up with people on Twitter, respond back when users leave comments to your posts etc…
• Give it time.

Bottom line, is there is no magic bullet.

BG