How it's done.

Your personal brand. It's hard to think of oneself as a brand. However, your actions and how you present yourself can say volumes about who you are. This "who you are" is your brand. Ready to define it?

• Live your passion. What's the one thing you'd do for free. Seems like a simple question yet, it can truly be hard to figure out. No worries, once you find it, you'll know it. Remember, you can have more than one so don't fret if you can't narrow it down.
• Be authentic. This should come naturally if you love what you're doing. And, don't pretend you know everything... because you won't. If you don't know something, admit it, learn about it and move on. Character and humility go a long way. In that same vein, be consistent with your voice and actions. As I said previously, these should come easily if you’re being your true self.
• Transparency. I have to preface this by saying your privacy comfort level should always come first. Remember, you decide what you want to share. Some things are obvious such as your SS#. Showing pics of your kids? That's your call. Do what feels right to you.
  Having said that, there is something liberating about being who you are and letting it all hang out. No matter what, there will always be detractors and haters who'll try to bring you down. Don't let that stop you from staying true to yourself. It comes with the territory.
• CARE. In CRUSH IT! (affiliate link) by Gary Vaynerchuk, there's a chapter about this subject. There's only one word in it. CARE. That's it... just care.
• Find your voice. Blog? Video? Podcast? Writing was a great way for me to start although I'm still learning to write. I'm a bit shy in front of the camera and don't have that "it" presence... yet. A few people have said I have a good voice... do I see podcasting in my future?
• Comment on a blog. Too overwhelmed to start a blog or video blog or whatever? Start by making comments on other people's content that you like. Ok, I know this is a hard step for some (including me at first). To start, just say "Thanks for a great post. I really enjoyed reading it." Once you feel comfortable, start writing something of substance. If you were truly moved by the content, say so.
  Note: I've read a lot of blog posts and not everything strikes a chord with me (not even from my fav bloggers at times). If a post doesn't speak to me, then I won't comment or tweet it. You don't have to comment on everything.
• Work your ass off. Simple in theory, hard to do. Just keep one thing in mind... if you love what you do, you'll have all the energy in the world. Now put that Red Bull down and go to work!

Put all these things together and you'll begin to have a perceived representation of the brand called YOU. It's "perceived" because you'll have to back it up with your actions. One more thing, it doesn't happen overnight. How do you get it? You earn it. How do you earn it? Read the last point again.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a value-added service. For example, you may have a well-designed site that's user friendly and has great content. But, can anyone find it?

These tips are meant to give you the basics. Algorithms used by search engines can be as mysterious as Area 51. However, by following a few SEO best practices, you can maximize your ranking.

One point I'd like to reiterate... having great content will make a world of difference from the get go. I'm only addressing the structure and how it can optimize your results. Content is still king.

• Domain name. It should relate to the product, service, information, etc. and contain keywords if possible. Not a deal breaker but it helps.
• Directory (folder) and file naming. It should accurately represent content for each section or page.
  e.g. Products > Televisions > Sony > model1234-plasma.php
• Title tags. Search engines place major importance on these to determine what a page is about. It's also what users see when they find your page on search engine listings.
  Sample format: Page name - Site title - Site tagline
  e.g. About Us - Sony - World's greatest consumer electronics and appliances
  Note: the site tagline should state your value proposition and should include some of your keywords.
  Here's a tip for small businesses: including your location can be extremely important as it values users searching for a business in your area.
• Meta tags. The two most important for SEO purposes is the description tag and the keyword tag. The description tag is useful because it's the copy used to describe your site in search engine listings. It may be useful to place compelling copy to entice users to click on your listing.
  It seems the consensus around the web community is that the keyword tag is no longer relevant. However, it never hurts to drop a few in. No need to go overboard, 3-5 words and/or phrases should be sufficient.
• CSS/JavaScript placed in external files. By moving these elements into externally linked files, it won't hog up precious spider indexing resources.
• Heading tags. These help to organize key information points on your page. The h1 tag should be used to explain the main point for your page. Use additional heading tags (h2 thru h6) to further break down your page into additional sections. Therefore, search engines will understand your subject matter and index it properly.
• Add title attributes to your links. Use descriptive text for both image and text links. Be sure they describe the relevancy of the resulting page from which it is linked.
  e.g. <p>Purchase any of our <a href="web-design-books.php" title="View our list of web design books">web design</a> books.</p>
• Add alt attributes to your images. First off, placing these assists visually impaired people who access sites through screen readers. An important reason to use them.
  In regards to SEO, using an alt attribute with your image can place additional relevant text on your page. And, with the advent of Google images search, your image content can now be indexed as well. Just another way for your customers to find you.
• XML Sitemap. Essential to create and submit to search engines so all pages can be properly indexed. Google Webmasters Tools has an excellent Sitemap creating/submitting tool.
• 404 error page. Create like any other page because it can be indexed as well. Code to automatically transfer user (after a specified amount of time) to a specific page. Or, give user other options: e.g. site map, search box, suggested page links, etc.
• Create a robots.txt file. Used to disallow files from being indexed by spiders. Examples include login pages, admin pages, shopping carts, entire directories such as css or js. The point is to allocate as much of the spider's resources to the pages you want indexed. Funnel your crawling budget toward your most important content.

Well, there you have it. Follow these tips and you'll be ahead of the game.

Clean, well-structured code is easier to revise, troubleshoot and update. Proper semantic use can also help crawlers find content that needs to be indexed. Therefore, it will make indexing easier, which encourages relevant listings for the content. Following these guidelines will help with both the user experience (with smaller file sizes) and the developer experience (cleaner code).

• Format (i.e. indent) your code. Your co-developers will thank you.
• Use semantic mark-up - i.e. use specific tags for their intended purposes.
  e.g. <h...> headings, <p> paragraphs, <ul> lists, etc.
• Remove unnecessary <div> tags and declare styles to the selector itself.
  e.g. <div class="contact-form"><form>...</form></div> should be revised to <form class="contact-form">...</form>
• Don't use <div> tags just for spacing margins.
• Comment the closing </div> tag. Important when coding templates – e.g. Wordpress themes have various php files that may or may not include the closing </div> within each file.
• Know the cascading order: browser default, external stylesheet, internal stylesheet (in head section), inline style (inside an html element). Ideally, keep all styles in an external stylesheet but circumstances may preclude this.
• Use CSS shorthand to streamline your stylesheets:
  e.g. {margin:10px 20px 30px;}. 10px=top margin, 20px=left/right margin, 30px=bottom margin
• CSS font property shortcut is a real timesaver. Here's the syntax:
  p {font:font-style font-variant font-weight font-size/line-height font-family;}
  Spaces to separate each value. Note: font-size and line-height are separated by a forward slash (/).
• Document your work. Create a markup guide, stylesheet guide and any other guide to help you organize your work.
• Keep comments to a minimum and place in work guides whenever possible. Try to maintain clean and bloat free code.

Obviously, this is not a complete list. However, I believe it's a good starting point and will help you develop better sites.