Code

The ‘learn to code’ fallacy

by Barry September 18, 2012

A persistent theme that recurs every now and then in the online tech world is that ‘everyone should learn to code’. There are a slew of blog posts claiming that to be a great SEO you need to know how to code, and a recent Venturebeat article once again proclaimed programming the most vital skill [...]

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Google’s Job / SEO and SOSTAC®

by Barry June 27, 2011

In light of Google’s recent announcement to support the Schema.org semantic framework, I wrote a rant about how the big G is getting webmasters to do the hard work: State of Search: We’re doing Google’s job for them Google, as a search engine, exists to find all the information on the web (crawling), make sense [...]

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The Business of SEO / Source Attribution

by Barry November 24, 2010

For State of Search I wrote a blog post in which I explore the different ways in which SEOs can quantify and report on what they do. This is becoming increasingly difficult for our profession and we need to find solid, widely accepted methods for measuring the success of an SEO project. State of Search: [...]

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The Importance Of Sitemaps

by Barry July 5, 2010

(This article was originally published on the Visual Script blog.) Sitemaps are a crucial aspect of a successful website. First, let’s make it clear what we mean with a sitemap. There are two types of sitemaps: one meant for visitors of your website, and one for search engine spiders. Sitemaps for Visitors The first type [...]

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Presentation: SEO for Web Developers

by Barry June 18, 2010

On the most recent edition of the Barcamp Belfast conference I did a 20-minute talk about the mistakes some web developers make when building search engine friendly websites. Much of the content in that talk came from a blog post I did for State of Search about the same topic – SEO for Web Developers. [...]

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SEO Factors for Multilingual Websites

by Barry March 19, 2010

Earlier this week Google’s Webmaster Central blog wrote about how to effectively geotarget your website. In that article they promised to discuss multilingual websites as well. And now they have. In a new Webmaster Central blog post published today they discussed the best practices for multilingual websites. Some key take-aways are: One page, one language [...]

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SEO Factors for Geotargeting Your Website

by Barry March 15, 2010

One of the most important issues European SEOs struggle with is optimising websites that target different countries. There are all sorts of challenges when dealing with international SEO, such as what domain extension to use, how to structure multiple target countries on a single domain, dealing with country selection without losing link value, how to [...]

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W3C compliance – is it a requirement?

by Barry March 11, 2010

A term often busied by web developers and also SEO agencies is W3C compliance. I’ve written about the benefits of W3C compliant code before, but my perspective has changed a bit over time and I feel it’s important to point out that full W3C compliance is not a definitive requirement for an effective website. W3C [...]

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Microformats and RDF / Google’s Self-Image

by Barry March 4, 2010

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of research on microformats and other approaches to structured data. This inspired a post for State of Search where I wonder if the time has come for web developers and search engine optimisers to embrace structured data, or whether we’re better off waiting for a firmer standard to emerge. [...]

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SEO Concerns When Migrating Your Website

by Barry May 21, 2009

Often when you do a site-wide update of your design, your content and/or your site structure, it can affect your website’s rankings in search engines negatively. Facing a huge site update project myself, I recently spent some time doing research on how to prepare for a big site update and ensure your high rankings stay [...]

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Using Widgets on Your Website

by Barry March 10, 2009

Web widgets – little pieces of code, often JavaScipt – can add a lot of fun features to your website. Widgets come in all sizes and shapes; sports widgets showing the latest scores and standings, weather widgets with accurate forecasts, widgets that connect to social networks like Facebook, the list goes on. You can find [...]

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Write Good Titles For Your Web Pages

by Barry October 29, 2008

The title of a page, included in your web page’s HTML code between the <title> and </title> tags, is an important yet often overlooked part of your website. The title isn’t an obvious and clearly visible part of a page, so it’s easy to think it’s not something you need to put a lot of [...]

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