Matt Cutts answers Google questions: - Does Sitemaps depend on pageviews? - What are the top things to do in SEO? - How does Google decide to use a DMOZ snippet versus the description from a meta tag? - Should I use bold or strong tags?

on edit - with the new version of WordPress, the plugin I was using for embedding videos went kaput. It’s not my top priority now, but I’ll be upgrading it soon…

The best search engine optimization is no search engine optimization at all.

Well, not exactly. But everything you do should be aimed at making your site friendly to human visitors - that means clean code, logical structure, accessibility, and lots of content. It just so happens that these things will please not only your users, but also the search engine bots.

Forget SEO tricks and forget Google (yes, I really did say that). Just concentrate on making your site the best it can be!

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AdSense:
AdSense delivers text and image ads that are targeted to your site content. You can customize the size of the ad block, the number of ads, and the format of the ads via an easy interface.

AdSense benefits everyone - the advertiser who is able to precisely target his audience, the user who sees the highly relevant ads, and the webmaster, who can earn a stream of income from his content-driven site with very little extra effort.

Analytics
Google Analytics shows you how people find your site, and what they do once they get there - which links they click, how long they stay, etc. Google Analytics is a valuable tool for any eCommerce or business site. By tracking your users’ behavior, you can improve your website ROI, increase conversions, and increase income.

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Search engine optimization and web site development are not two exclusive entities - they go hand in hand, and SEO should be the first thing you consider (if you haven’t already read the previous article, Optimization First - Organize Your Content, do so now, and write your site outline.)

You’ve created your site outline and written your unique, keyword-rich titles and descriptions for each page. You’ve written your content. Now you need a place to put it!

I almost always code in XHTML 1.1. It is the latest standard from the World Wide Web Consortium, who set the standards for markup languages. You will find the various DOCTYPE declarations listed here. For the Thingamabobs and Dingalings, Inc. site, we will use XHTML 1.1.

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Content is king - that phrase has become a cliche, but it’s still true. Before you write the first line of code, before you hire the designer, you need content.

Search engine optimization should come into play from the very beginning, and the first step is to organize your content.

Remember doing chapter outlines in high school? Think of your site as a book, and sit down and write out an outline of your site. It might look something like this, the site outline of a fictional site for a company we’ll call Thingamabobs & Dingalings, Inc.

1. Home
2. About Thingamabobs
3. Products
   1. Thingamabobs
      1. Round
      2. Square
      3. Heart-shaped
   2. Dingalings
      1. Round
      2. Square
      3. Heart-shaped
4. Resources
5. Contact Us

When you do finish writing and start building your site, you will show the search engines the heirarchy of your site and place heading tags using your outline as a guide (the Roman numerals being <h1>, the numbers <h2> and the lower case alpha as <h3>, in this example)

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