Perfect Search Engine Optimization Recipes Vol. #1

Section 1 === Research IT === Start you "perfect" web site by doing a keywords research. A fast & easy way of knowing what the "hot" keywords are is, to get them from existing reputable competitor's web sites. These keywords should be considering it as reference keywords. Yahoo/Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion Google Adwords https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Wordtracker (paid service) http://www.wordtracker.com/ Yahoo Google MSN Keyword Suggestion Tool http://www.monsterweblinks.com/tools/yahoogoogleoutput.php Section 2 === Register IT === Try to catch and register the "right" domain name for your web site. Your domain name should have some degree of association with the services or products that your business is to offer. You should consider using your company name as a part of web site domain name, only in cases when your company name is a well known brand. If that is not the case, consider to construct a domain name of "hot" keywords that you found from a previous section. Section 3 === Visualize IT === Create a "visually fair" XHMTL/HTML template – template should not be "overloaded" with images, flash movies, etc… unless your web site is about arts or video. If that is not the case, it should contain about 90% text content and 10% "arts". Your template should be structured by the following sections: TOP – could be an image that carries name, logo and contact details of your company. This section should also include links to important parts of your web site. BOTTOM – if you TOP section's links build using JavaScript language; you must repeat your links using regular HTML hyperlinks, i.e. href tags. In addition it could also include company contact information. Every legit business should carry a physical address, phone and fax number and an email. LEFT MIDDLE – most of the time this section would carry an index to all of web site's visible pages. This index could be arranged as tree of links. ASP.NET 2.0 comes with "almost" a built-in functionality. RIGHT MIDDLE – most of time this section will include page content. Content will the text that relevant to the selected index from LEFT MIDDL section. Section 4 === Build IT === Create your first 2 pages. Re-use a previously created template by using ASP.NET 2.0 MasterPage feature. MasterPage comes with placement tags for content and template locations. Section 5 === Validate IT (W3C) === Check for code validity on all of your web pages using World Wide Web Consortium web site. Clean and "spelled correctly" web pages are a perfect recipe for a "better" web site. Check XHTML http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.yourdomain.com/ Check CSS http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=www.yourdomain.com/styles/style.css&usermedium=all Check for Dead Links http://validator.w3.org/checklink?uri=http://www.yourdomain.com Check RSS feed http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http://www.yourdomain.com/RSSFeed.xml Check you web server, IIS, SMTP and DNS settings http://www.dnsreport.com/tools/dnsreport.ch?domain=yourdomain.com Section 6 === Sitemap IT === Create sitemap.xml, url-list.txt and sitemap.html for your site. You can accomplish this task by using a sitemap generator tool. One of easy and free example is: http://xml-sitemaps.com. Sitemap.xml and url-list.txt files represent an index for Google and Yahoo web spiders and allow them to "read" your web site easily. You will need to upload these files to you root web site directory. Don't forget to add a hyperlink to these pages. Section 7 === Submit it === Submit your web site to as many directories as possible. One of well known and free, but hard to get in to directories is DMOZ. If you web site is in a fair "built" condition, submit it to http://dmoz.org web directory. If you have a budget of $US 500 per year, you should consider submitting your site into http://www.bussiness.com ($200/yr.) and https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/ ($299/yr.) paid web directories. Section 8 === Webmaster IT === Google Sitemap Create a Google Account Verify web site ownership Add a sitemap to your web site account (sitemap.xml). Check Google WebMaster Tools page on a daily bases. Check external links and web site diagnostic tabs. * You can also notify ("ping") Google crawler (Google Bot) about changes on your web site http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml Yahoo Site Explorer Create a Yahoo Account Verify web site ownership Add sitemap to your web site account (url-list.txt). * You can also notify ("ping") Yahoo crawler (Yahoo Slurp) about changes on your web site http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=yourAPPID&url=http://www.yourdomain.com Section 9 === Content IT ==== Create as much content as possible. You can consider U.S. government web sites as a fast and still a legal way to aggregate informative content for your web site. Most of U.S. government internet content is royalty free (exceptions will be a U.S. Postal Office and State web sites). Look for copyright (©) sign. Section 10 === Optimize IT === Most of your web site content, links labels, files names, image "alts" and META keys MUST have usage of keywords that were researched. Revisit you web site and change accordingly. Section 11 === Logs IT === Read you web site logs. Analyze how, from where your web site's visitors are coming. It will be very useful, if you can also see a robot's (web crawlers) visits too. One of sophisticated tools that you can consider is Google Analytics (a.k.a. Urchin). Get Google Analytics Key and add a META key or a JavaScript code to your web site's web pages that you would like to track. Section 12 === Link Exchange IT === You should exchange links with other industry relevant web sites. Create a links page, with links to other web sites that are linking to your web site. Link exchange strategy should be implemented for any web site that runs a similar type of business or even a direct competition (most likely that is not going to happen). Section 13 === Everyday IT === Try to repeat sections 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 on a daily bases.