inter:digital strategies

You are a web professional - a designer, a webmaster, developer of web software, or web entrepreneur. You need to have a website that works to the top standards of modern technologies to get ahead. In order to keep this level of excellence, you need to keep yourself aware of these technologies! Within the constantly changing field of web technology, there are certain things which are constants - aren’t there?

Maybe not! There are a lot of aspects to web technology which remain fundamentally unchanged from year to year, but, to quote an old proverb, the devil is in the details. To truly succeed, you not only must keep track of new technologies, but be aware of the changes in them.

Take Google, for example. Google’s PageRank algorithm, which they explain in very basic terms on their site. This is a fundamental description of the PageRank system - and accurate as far as it goes. To the other extreme, you can read Pagerank Explained Correctly with Examples, by Ian Rogers for an extremely detailed view.

Keep in mind that the actual PageRank algorithm is a highly protected trade secret, and all discussions of it are necessarily guesswork! In fact, there are comments in Rogers’ article which appear to no longer be true, as well. The bulk of the article is based on the original paper proposing the Google PageRank algorithm by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page in about 1997. Why should we assume that this remains unchanged?

The essence of the story, I’m afraid, is that it never ends - we always need to keep abreast of the latest changes in order to avoid being injured by the devil in the details.

What makes SEO worthwhile? It’s the need for attention — your website or your job, either way, learning the principles of SEO can give you a boost. A website serves minimal purpose without the attention of potential customers. If you are a website owner, learning the principles of SEO will help you design your site to make it as easy as possible for these potential customers to find you. It will ensure that the right interest groups will locate their needs at your business. If you are a designer, or an employee whose duties include web maintenance or design, these principles will help you increase your value to employers or potential employers.

The heart of SEO principles is a very simple, straightforward concept — high quality content and inbound links. But there are catches! Not all content is created equal — the way your content is created within the page is critical. No matter how well written your marketing text is, if it is not coded to standards, or worse — represented as an image, it may not accomplish your needs.

No matter your personal expertise or business, a firm grip on how to create good web content can be invaluable. And web content is not merely a matter of learning how to write.

Look around our site — see what you can learn about SEO and think!