One of the biggest buzzwords in web development is SEO… Search Engine Optimization.   Everyone wants SEO for their site, so that their website shows up more frequently, or closer to the top of search engines.

Back in the day there were many dubious tips.  You could alter your META Keywords, or put hidden text on the page, and totally manipulate the search engines to list your sites.   Today, search engines are incredibly more complex.  Millions of dollars and thousands of developers work to make their algorithm as smart as possible, to try to show searches the most relevant information possible.   So the tricks of days past, no longer work… and in many cases can actually hurt you.

Today, content is king. Really and truly, if you don’t have any decent content at your site, you most likely will not rank well for anything.  You content can be up to 40% of the SEO equation, so the old programming expression “garbage in = garbage out” has never been more true.  First and foremost, before you do anything, come up with some decent, well written content which provides value in some form to someone.

In my next piece, we’ll explore keyword selection and how that relates not only to your content, but the rest of the SEO equation.

>> Joshua Pettit is Lead Developer and Project Manager at Sunrise Marketing.  http://www.sunrise-marketing.com/