Paid search is a whole other post…or three.

An important thing I think you missed here, however, was on the importance of links in the body of your web site. That is one of the major ways (of course, not the only), that Google indexes pages, i.e. the number of other sites you link to and that link back to you as well. Sprinkling a lot links to other relevant sites is critical.

The other thing that caught my eye was what you said about the title. It should be mentioned that the title is what’s used when someone bookmarks a page. A title such as, “sustainable green flatware” won’t have as much meaning for someone when they see that bookmark two weeks after bookmarking it. So a title like, Brad’s Oganic Stuff — sustainable green flatware” is more clear. Longer yes, but people can and often do shorten the title in their bookmarks. But the keyword is still there for search spiders.

Two other related SEO tricks is to 1) always include relevant alt text for images, AND 2) name images appropriately. Keys terms used in the alt text help spiders find and index pages, and now Google has instituted some new algorithm for searching images on the web. So instead of CEO.jpg or boardroomBK.png, something like CEO_Park_Howell.jpg might get indexed faster and higher up the ladder. It’s a little more work, but these are indexing tricks that absolutely free.

Speaking of which, your articles doesn’t mention paid placement. It can be worth it in some instances and there’s quite a few affordable schemes out there for the small sites.

Overall, this was a great article with a lot of very good advice.

Thanks!

P.S.: My own site is all Flash and is about as unsearchable as one can make site. I know this, but for me that’s okay. Since it’s basically just an online portfolio site, I’ve always intended it to be one someone finds by reference and not by chance.

Eco Friendly Page Titles – I think the most important thing to emphasize here is that, along with using words that reflect the enviro-conscious nature of the products, the titles for the pages are relevant to the page content. The title tags should also always be unique for each page and shouldn’t be longer than 10 words or so. The emphasis shoudn’t be on volume, but on the uniqueness and relevance of the terms. This goes for descriptions as well.

Environmentally Sensitive Keywords – The importance of good keyword research and selection can’t be overstated, however the goal should be to use them judiciously and in conjunction with relevant content geared toward users and not search engine spiders.

Green Product Descriptions – Great point.

Sustainable Product Page Content – Again, great point about being descriptive if the products call for it.

Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose Keywords – I’d like to stress again that although keyword use is important, it’s not going to gain a website rank simply by volume. Continually reusing keywords as an attempt to raise rankings might actually prove detrimental to a website. We should encourage people to create unique, useful, user oriented content that contains keywords and phrases used in context and not overwhelmingly. We should actually discourage reuse and overuse of keywords, as it can create a negative user experience.

I get most of my education on things like this straight from Google. They have an area dedicated to education on SEO:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/

Thanks, Josh.