Before creating and submitting your website to the SE's, you first
need to setup your website to make it attractive and valuable for the
search engines and your visitors who are looking for your content.
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Make a good plan what you want to do
with your website
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Know exactly who your audience
(customer) is
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Learn about your direct competitors
(just have a critical look at their websites and learn from the
good things (their success) and avoid the bad things.
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Make 'your' website unique, comparing
to your competitors. Do something different what others don't do
to attract visitors. Distinguish yourself from your competitors.
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Design an all-embracing keyword-rich-title
and a keyword-rich-description
for each page of your website.
Related topic:
How Web Design Can Affect Search
Engine Rankings
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Define a list of keyword phrases that
are relevant to your business (website).
Use SEO tools to do your research.
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Browse Google using your defined keywords and
see what sites are listed in the first 2 pages, study those
websites and try to make your website better (remember,
because these competitors are already listed, they are a big step
ahead of you, but if you want, you can beat their position!).
Use specific tools to do your research.
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Write natural, informational and relevant
content, and use your defined keywords phrases between the
content.
Related topic:
Writing SEO Copy – 8 Steps to Success
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Use your metatags to let robots find your
site and pages:
<meta name="robots" content="INDEX,FOLLOW">
<TITLE>Create an all-embracing title using your primary
keywords</TITLE>
Create the same for your 'description' meta name. (<meta name="description")
And also for your keyword meta name (<meta
name="keyword"), which is not useful for Google but still
for some other major SE's.
Read more about title tags. Do this
for EVERY page of your website.
Related topic:
All about title tags
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Use H1, H2 and H3 tags in your content
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Use style sheets, instead of on-page
formatting
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Avoid using frames, frames are
difficult or even impossible to read for the SE robots. If a robot
can't read your page, then you will not get indexed. If you can't
avoid using frames, then use the no-frame page for your metatags.
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Use normal index names, like:
index.htm, index.html, index.cgi, index.php, but try to avoid page
names with large (database-entry) ID's or parameters. This is also
difficult to read for robots.
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Use keywords in page-names. Use page
names like this: basicwebdesign.htm or basic-web-design.htm, but
NOT: basic_web_design.htm.
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Use keywords in your (internal and
external) links
(we call this anchor text). Do not use:
click here or
read more. But
better is: book here your weekend
to Paris
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Build a sitemap and call this page
sitemap.html. On this page you show
(only normal text, no graphics etc.) a complete overview
(chronological or alphabetical, whatever is best for your site),
of all your pages, sub pages or topics, including short
descriptions that are published on your site. A sitemap is easy to
access for robots to find and index all your website pages.
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Do not use too many graphics, graphics
can't be seen by robots, but if you do, then always use the
alt-tag with keyword rich text, to describe the specific
graphic. Keep the alt-text 'natural' otherwise it will look spammy
for the SE's.
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Use an easy-to-access navigation bar at
the top or left-top of all your pages, but also at the bottom of
all your pages. Make it for the visitor easy to navigate through
your website. If a visitor gets lost after page 2, it will
immediately leave your site! Best thing is to use breadcrumbs,
show the visitor where he is and from where he came from.
Avoid using java-script/applets menu's, although they look
nice, they can't be seen by SE robots.
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Do not use large flash movies or heavy
animations. Most web surfers still use a slow phone line to
surf the web. Slow loading pages will definitely give a visitor a
reason to leave your site.
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Analyze your website (pages) regular,
by using the statistics tool which will be provided (free) by most
webhosts, like
Google Analytics or
Awstats.
Related topic:
Choosing a webhost
And finally...
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Do not rush to finish your website just
because you want to submit it to a search engine. Always test you
websites for errors, dead-links, spelling errors, HTML syntax
errors etc. Make your website easy to read, with a professional
look. Remember, your personal taste of 'design' is not leading for
your visitors. Your visitors are looking for your product, not for
your super designed website with tons of animated graphics and a
sea of flashing colors. Define your own house-style (not more than
3 colors) with your own graphic logo and create all your pages in
the same look-and feel. The use of stylesheets (CSS) is a perfect
tool to accomplish this.
Click here
for the official W3.org stylesheet information.
