So, I've been at my new job for almost two weeks now. For those of you who don't know what I do, I'm an SEO Programmer (Search engine optimisation programmer). Basically my job is to evaluate, keep track of and program new clients websites with search engine optimisation techniques developed in-house. I can't go into detail on these techniques as they are a trade secret, and I can lose my job and/or be sued for publishing any of them. Needless to say, it's a very interesting job.

When I first began I didn't know a lot about SEO. To me it was adding meta tags and using meaningful names for filenames, etc. I didn't know how in depth it all was until I started. I got a lot of information from an SEO book, which I made 9 pages of A4 notes on and I am referring to at work regularly to remind me of certain things. While the book doesn't give you even half of what is involved in SEO, it's more than enough to get lots more traffic to your website. My advice to anyone interested is to go on Amazon or other shopping site and buy a book on SEO. The one I used was 1 hour a day SEO. I don't remember the author, but if anyone wants to know I can find out. Even so most books are pretty much the same on this subject.

You're probably asking yourself, what have I done so far and what the hell do you optimise on a website? Well, quite a lot Some of the main factors of SEO, are so basic you probably do them if you're a good programmer anyway. Things such as ensuring your websites are validated on w3.org's validator, and using header tags properly. Even adding alt tags to your images is something you probably do without even realising how much impact it has on your site. Obviously I can't go into that much detail, but I will be implementing a fair amount of SEO onto BA in the coming months. Those of you with a keen eye will already have spotted some of it. Others may not. You will continue to spot changes throughout the months too, as not all of it is transparent.

One of the things that has caused an issue for some users, is Canonicalisation. Basically, a search engine will see your website as two separate websites if your site doesn't re-direct to www. So for example, BetaArchive has several domains, of which both www.domain.co.uk and domain.co.uk work for the site. As a result, Google sees n*2 versions of BetaArchive! To resolve this, you have to use either a URL Re-write rule/HTTP Redirect, or a redirect done on your scripting language of choice. I opted for a mixture of both at the moment, since IIS and re-writing rules are a swine to get working properly. I will eventually be changing as it's causing a lot of problems for existing URL's on the forum posted without www. in them.

Now, what about the people I work with? They're an odd bunch... Kinda like me I guess! We're all geeks in our own way, and there is never a dull moment. My team leader Dan has to be one of the strangest and funniest people in the room, but it's all worth it And before you think it's just a room full of guys, 3 girls are on the 12-member team as well They're all great people and very welcoming, and I couldn't have asked for better colleagues.

So what about my working hours and pay? Well this post wouldn't be complete without those. I work 9-5 Monday to Friday (with 1 hour lunch), and I am on £14,000/year. That's about £7.69/hr and £1166 before taxes each month. Having not been there a month yet I don't know what I get after taxes yet, but I hope it's a lot Despite having that money, I did my expenses and found by the time I paid everything that needs paying now I'm employed (Rent, car insurance/tax, fuel, etc etc), I'm left with around £200. So, this doesn't mean stop donating. I still need your help paying for the BA server. Remember its your site as much as it is mine

Anyway, I hope I have covered anything people were wanting to ask. If not, please do ask! If I can answer it, I will. If not, then, I won't But even if I can't I'll try to hint towards it.

9-17h with whole lunch hour is nice deal

Yeah but we don't get paid for the hour lunch Being honest I'd rather have 1/2 hour lunch and go home at 4.30pm!

be happy you don't do overtime + weekends with no benefits for it

good for you Andy, glad to see you back on your feet again and it sounds like things are going to work out for you in the end, its nice to have colleagues that you like and get along with and i am glad that you really like the job, seeing as you didnt really understand it that much in the beginning, i know how much of a boost in your confidence having a job means and i wish you the best mate!

peas
cityboy

Hrm, What's going on with the homepage now? it looks like [censored].

EDIT: Nevermind, it's fixed now, but for reference about what I was talking about:

Good to see you learnt stuff and now can optimise BA with it as well as use it in your job. Its great to see how everythings coming right for you.

Homepage font is too large. Please make it smaller

People with the large font, you're seeing a cached version of the CSS file while I was modifying it. Do a full refresh and it will be fine. I wouldn't leave it large on purpose you know

There's an error on the front page at the bottom section under the "Chicago/Memphis" section.


No space.

And also, under the "Other Codenames" section...


There's no question mark.

I meant to talk to you about it on MSN but I've just never seemed to get round to it. I know I'm being picky, but... Yeah.

Hey Andy, IMO the tabs on the bottom should be in another page of the forum, maybe some wiki stub?

Are you looking into a phpBB SEO mod?

No since that would be impossible. SEO is unique to every website. You can't just "stick a mod in" to do SEO. Why do you think companies like the one I work for exist?

Space corrected.

It wasn't a question, more of a statement, so no question mark needed.

That sounds like a very good job for you. Good luck in the future

SEO is a pain if you ask me, but since i been working with it since 2005 now every time i make a site i add a lot of things and we’ll all the sites i have are top on Google, Yahoo and others MSN /Bing is the one that never wants to do it right…
“Had to be Microsoft” anyways, what I find really hard to do without cheating is the f**kin ranking…
It just won’t do it for me…
Congrats to you , finding good co-workers that won’t say that you are too young to be there is hard at least for me)

Just a question for those who do SEO, do mispellings help with rankings?

Sometimes it can yes, it depends entirely on the search term.

If I read correctly, your company is using IIS. Do you prefer IIS over Apache?

Our company uses a combination of Apache, IIS and IBM HTTP servers. I prefer IIS personally, but Apache has features I wish IIS had (htaccess for one).

It does have htaccess... It's just formatted differently and called web.config.

It works completely differently so its not the same in any shape or form. If it did them my life would be Much easier.