SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

1. Domain Names. Buy your Domain Name early (for .coms .nets etc. we recommend or ) even if you don't use it for anything, you need to get a page up on the net with some basic information about your company as quickly as possible (preferably including keyword phrases that you have already researched) in order to avoid Google's Sandbox.

Google will normally take between 9-12 months to index any new domains on the net. Buying a domain is not enough you have to have a page out there with incoming links to gain Page Rank over time. Link to your new site from a site that has already been indexed (recommended) or submit your site to Yahoo, MSN and Google. The whole "Submission of Sites to 300 Major Search Engines" industry is a on the whole a con! These days if your site is out there and a link is created to it from another higher Page Rank site then your new site WILL be crawled by the spiders, htis link back might well be as a result of an article you had published by an Article Database!

If branding is important to your business then buy a name that reflects that i.e www.jenson.co.za if that's taken then www.jensonparts.co.za if your company is spares company. Alternatively if your Domain is going to reflect an important keyword from your site then research keywords first!

2. Keyword Research. Solid keyword research is paramount. We recommend that you create an account with a company like KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool or Wordtracker, two of the top keyword research companies on the net and work hard at digging out the high KEI (index out of 10, 10 being the best - it is an indicator of which keywords / phrases are best) keyword phrases - a long laborious task but vital to the success of your site. Both the above work on a monthly or yearly subscription which can prove quite expensive if your budget is tight an alternative that we highly recommend is this once off payment download package called Keywords Analyzer .

Look at what keywords your competitors are using (physically open their sites in your favourite browser and check!) and do searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN to see what the keywords that you imagine describe your company or service bring up in the first 10 listings. Are there any keywords / phrases that create a whole new angle on your market for you? Brainstorm, see what you can come up with.

3. Design. Good clean design is a must and navigation must be obvious, simple and quick! If your need SEO to work for you stay away from flash sites i.e. use flash as images that you scatter around the page, the Search Engine spiders cannot crawl flash sites at all. Try not o over fill your site with moving, flashy bits too. It's hard to read text with lots of movement on the same page!

Use external .CSS files to control font size, link rollovers, etc. and use external .JS files for all your Javascript and try not to use frames as the Search Engines have issues with frames too it is possible but more work to optimize a frames site.

A site that is clean, easy to navigate and has lots of good content is the kind of site that holds peoples attention.

4. Page Size. Small page size is essential! Check every image you put into the page to make sure that it isn't 400kb in size - the total page size should be under 30KB if you can manage it to a maximum of 60KB. This is not always possible but work hard to adhere to these rules.

Interested browsers are normally lost within the first 15 seconds of a page loading! Doesn't sound long does it but you try looking at a blank screen for 15 seconds...

5. Content. Good well written content is a must and the more the merrier! The spiders need to have multiple pages to scan and the more pages you have which support and enrich your site the more chances you have to use page specific key words or phrases, and the more individual landing pages that the Search Engines can find that have clearly defined subject matter using relevant keyword phrases unique to those pages. You need particular keyword search terms to find more pages than just your home page - that way with certain search terms your homepage and another page will come up together in the search results. Imagine you could come up no.1 and no.2 on Google for one key phrase. Result!

Content is KING! The more you can update your content the better, especially on the home page. Try to change something every 2-3 days if possible. The spiders will want come back and check more often if they know they'll find fresh content each time.

But writing keyphrase rich text is not easy! We strongly advise that you download, read and absorb Jill Whalen's excellent "The Nitty Gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" and Karon Thackston's "Step-By-Step Copywriting Course". They're kinda required reading for anybody serious about writing good web copy!

OR

If you're serious about learning more advanced SEO techniques then sign up for one of Dan Thies excellent courses or buy one of his books at www.seoresearchlabs.com

6. SEO Reading. If you don't get round to reading the required reading mentioned above then at the very least follow these rules of thumb:

1. Name each page of copy after the keyword you intend to make the primary keyword of that page i.e. if the page is about red boxes then call the page red-boxes.html (hyphenated - Search Engines ignore the hyphen and read the name correctly as two words) i.e. your key phrase!
2. Start your title tag with your primary keyphrase "Red Boxes" not your Domain Name, if for branding purposes you feel that your title needs to be incorporated then put it at the end of your Title tag
3. Include your primary keyphrase for that page in your meta description and meta keyword tags

NOW FOR THE TOUGH NITTY GRITTY!


4. Each page of website copy should reflect the keywords you are trying to target on that page, don't wander off and start discussing issues which are nothing to do with that page...If it's red boxes then write about red boxes. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that randomly including keywords in a page is enough - it's not! The spiders are smart and they read everything!
5. Try to use only one or two good keyphrases per page, perhaps more but fewer is more effective
. The more targetted they are to the page content the better.

6. Repeat each keyphrase about once per paragraph, placing the keyword or keyphrase near the beginning where possible but do not keyword stuff, by this I mean repeat the exact keyword phrase too many time or twice in a row in one sentence or repeat the same keyword twenty times in one paragraph this could be seen as spamming by the Search Engines. Not good. It's far easier to be thrown out of Search Engine indexes than to get back in again.
7. Create a heading per section of the page including the appropriate keyword each time if possible - in Bold and Underlined where possible too. The spiders quite rightly assume that this heading is significant.
8. Create a line of keyphrases appropriate for that page as the last line of text on the page. Keywords first and last! This confirms for the spiders that the page surely is about "red boxes"
   
   

Lastly write your web copy for people not the Search Engines, it must flow, be funny if appropriate, and most all inform naturally. If you like the way it sounds when read aloud then you're probably on the right track.

8. Navigation. The Navigation Menus or Globals should be kept simple, try to ensure that all menus are in plain text (rollovers controlled by external CSS) wherever they are: Top, Left, Right. And then repeat them at the bottom of the page as well in plain text and make sure the phrases in the links are keywords and match the names of the pages created for the site as far as possible.

If for design purposes the top menus are made up of .gifs or .jpgs because they look better, make absolutely sure that you have the same menu items in plain text links at the base of the page.

9. Images. All images must be sized correctly and they should all have alt tags and title tags (Firefox reads title tags). Include variations of your keywords where you can in your alt / title tags, but once again don't over do it.

10. Site Maps. You need to build two SiteMaps for your site. One which is simply a page that contains a plain text link to every page within your site (all pages should have a link to this SiteMap within the site), it's included to make navigation easier for your viewers and the other an XML file which is created for and verified on Google SiteMaps. Either use Googles own sitemap creator or download and use this excellent FREE tool called GSiteCrawler which will crawl your site and then create an XML SiteMap and upload it for you if you fill in the FTP info. This Google sitemap is an essential as it tells Google exactly which files and folders your site has for them to spider.

You will need to create a Google Account for this whole process, but that is no bad thing as these days this account allows you to login into AdSense, AdWords and SiteMaps. Create a Google Account here https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

11. Robots.txt. The next essential is to create a robots.txt file and tell the spiderbots which files and folders on your site you would like them not to waste time on e.g. the following might be excluded: your CSS folder, your Images folder (though if you could be found by image searches then don't exclude the images folder), your CGI folder, etc. This file is important and a lot of advanced spider functionality depends on their being told where to go and where not to go.

We suggest that you validate your robots.txt file by using the tools available at http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml

12. White Hat SEO only! Don't even begin to think about using Black Hat SEO practises: doorway pages, cloaking, keyword stuffing, invisible keyword stuffed text (i.e. text that is white on a white page - the spiders can see it but your viewers can't!), etc.

The temptation to try to cheat the Search Engines is overwhelming at times but good safe SEO practises will mean that in the long run your site will grow in stature on the web and climb in the rankings organically while the get-there-fast-boys will be in the Sandbox. DO NOT LISTEN TO "We can guarentee to get your into the Top-10 on Google for your best keyword phrases within a month!" You'll end up playing in the SANDBOX!

SEO is 90% grind, consistent steady input, staying power and a lot of time, but hang around the trip is worth it! Think about progress being made in your sites growth in 3 - 6 month cycle.

13. Search Engine Submission! If this is your first website then submit your site URL to the three major engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN...ONCE ONLY EACH! You do not need to submit every page of your site and you do not have to submit your site again and again...in fact doing so will hurt your chances of being seen rather than help. THE SPIDERS WILL FIND YOU! As I mentioned in the 1. point the wild promises that some companies make about submitting your site to the top 300 sites is absolute nonsense and dangerous nonsense at that. In fact if you are going to write articles to support your site as you should you don't have to worry about submitting to even the top three search engines they will find you!

14. Directory Submissions! Submit your site to the major Directories:

1. DMOZ - http://www.dmoz.org
2. Yahoo - http://ecom.yahoo.com - Pay the $299 it really is worth it!
3. Use this directory to find other international high PR directory sites -
   SEO Friendly Directories (Download the Excel Spreadsheet which contains the most comprehensive list of SEO friendly Free and Pay-4 Directories on the web. An awesome resource!
4. Your local area Search Engine directories if local marketing is important to you.

Don't pay for links on Directories unless they really are worthwhile i.e. they specialise in listings for your area of business or have exceptionally high Page Rank or are reasonably priced. And DO NOT link back to the directory if you can avoid it. One-way links TO your site are much better for your Page Rank.

15. Links Campaign! Get a reciprocal links campaign underway as soon as possible. While it is NOT recommended to populate link-resource pages with 100's of reciprocal links to varied sites around the world they only have real value if they relate to your sites subject content in some way. Why link to a car sales site if your subject is flowers (beware link stuffing it's counter productive)?! The point of this page is add value to the site for your customers and that's not to say that you shouldn't go out looking for them.

Avoid LINK FARMS like the plague. The SE's don't like obviously manufactured link pages where the links bare little or no relevance to the site content. Also beware building link pages too quickly. The process needs to seem organic i.e. happen steadily and naturally as it would if people started visiting your site and one by one suggesting link exchanges. If you get 5-10 link requests a day, add maybe 1 or 2 a week if that to appear natural. Mosts the link exchanges are not worth it any way. Get PICKY!

In particular try to find links from sites whose Google Page Rank (PR) for the link page is good. Links from PR4 pages are much better than links from PR0/PR1 pages. ALWAYS check the PR of the page that your link will on not the HomePage of the site that your link is on could easily have PR3 site with PR0 links page. PR0 link pages are worthless to you.

The best link reciprocal linking exchange is a Triangular Link Exchange: Site 1 links to your site, and you link to Site 2. Still make sure that the links page linking to you has page rank!

Tracking links, deciding who to link to is time consuming and mind numbing, we highly recommend that you use every tool available to help automate this process without actually losing the human touch. Have a look at this product from Axandra which has a fantastic tool called Arelis within the software bundle which enables the creation and maintenance of link pages, tracks backlinks to ensure that the links to your site are live and continue to stay so...it's not unknown for less than scrupulous link builders to include your link on their link page for a few days and then drop it from once they feel you have verified the link...mmmm...scoundrels!
FREE TRIAL! Link Popularity Software

16. Article Writing Campaign! Start writing articles...one a week if you can and publish them on the web through Articles Databases. This is absolutely the best way to get multiple back links quickly and steadily over the first 6-9 months of your site's life. There are a bunch of excellent article databases that are worth submitting to and also a few sites that submitted your articles on your behalf such as Article Marketer & iSnare.com plus a few tools that make article submission easier such as Article Submitter Pro, it helps enormously with basic stuff like keeping track of who yhou 've sent articles too and helps to set the accounts with each Article Database but the most useful feature is the comprehensive list of Article Databases which are updated on aregular basis. A gem!

17. Blogging! Start a blog or two with multiple links pointing back to your site. It's not a bad idea to use your keywords as blog titles i.e. http://red-boxes.blogspot.com. For beginners we highly recommend Google's Blogger.com as it has the easiest interface of all the free blog sites.

18. RSS Feeds! Content is King, Queen and the kitchen pot so RSS feeds which constantly updates content is a huge bonus and with sites where news is appropriate is a major bonus for your clients.

19. Press Releases! Announce all newsworthy products and services that your site offers by putting out Press Releases. Syndication of Press Releases is an excellent way to get organic back links to your site but also to pick up extra traffic. The best online Press Release service is PRWebDirect Free Publicity from Press Releases

20. Site Stats / Analysis! Use decent stats analysis software!!! Free counters and most of the hosting supplied stats are not good enough. You need to track the following at least:

1. Unique Visitors
2. Top Pages
3. Entry Pages
4. Exit Pages
5. Referral Sites
6. Geographic Location
7. Search Terms
8. Search Terms by Search Engine

Good stats are invaluable they provide the information needed to optimize your site appropriately, but you will mostly have to pay for good stats! There is one amazing exception Google Analytics which you can set up FREE when you create an Adwords Account - Google Account https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount. Google Analytics provide exceptional stats with an immense amount of detail. If you do not want to create an Adwords campaign then have a look at the following great stats providers:

http://www.clicktracks.com - Winner of the 2005 Best Web Analytics Tool overall - Free Trial! If you would like to browse through this overview of this excellent analytics package click on this link Clicktracks overview!

http://www.visitorsville.com - a graphical, fun stats resource that has excellent support and it's like watching a mini cartoon of your stats. Entertaining and informative. Fantastic!

http://www.hitslink.com - this is another excellent inexpensive option with good clear stats based around an easy to use menu system and which usefully allows you to gather stats from multiple sites under the same account - Free Trial!

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