I continue to stand by all I said in a previous post on the field of “Search Engine Optimization” and I have a few posts to link to that back up what I said:
Chris Coyier’s Thoughts on SEO podcast
This rambles on for 40 minutes and much of it will only be relevant to web designers who understand what he’s talking about. And the links below are from his post but with some comments from me.
Common-Sense SEO Checklist
Also from Chris, an older post but quite relevant
Derek Powazek on Spammers, Evildoers and Opportunists
[pullquote]Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.[/pullquote]
This is a real rant and may offend some (with language and/or anti-SEO arguments) but I agree with all of it. Most of all, I agree with his “one true way” to get good web traffic: “Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.” That really is the key. People are looking for quality content. Deliver it and they will come to you and tell other people to go to you. Also worth reading (but perhaps more rant-like) are his follow-ups: here and here
There are some simple “best practices” for web designers to do to help the search engines rank a web site but the bottom line is that on the web, the three most important things are: CONTENT, CONTENT, and CONTENT.