Define your SEO Strategy – Decide on your target audience you want to reach and the type(s) of searches you want to focus on (text, images, video, local/geography, industry, etc.).
Keyword Research & Analysis - Performing keyword research applicable to your targeted audience and identify your primary search terms.
Website Structure and Meta tags - Optimize your website structure by making your domains, URLs and navigation system search engine friendly and creating Meta tags.
Content Development - Incorporate SEO principles in developing and editing website content and HTML coding to increase its relevance to specific keywords.
Link Strategies – Initiate inbound/back-links to your website from other sites to drive additional traffic (link popularity).
Website Submissions - Submitting your website to search engines and specialized directories, trade organization websites, etc.
Knowledge of your target market/audience is essential and SEO should be approached from the user’s perspective. One of the easiest ways to start identifying keywords is to brainstorm the goals of the website and then for each individual Web page. You need to determine the target keyword phrases that accurately describe your business and that are popular with users.
Users search in terms of phrases (not single words) - figure out the most likely keyword search phrases that the user will type in to find your website.
Research what keywords your competition uses since you will be competing with them for traffic.
Type your potential and similar keyword phrases in the major search engines and see how the businesses on page 1 use these phrases. Your SEO can also help you to research and evaluate target keyword phrases for your website. It could make sense to initially use less popular keyword phrases to reach a segment of your potential market so that you do not compete for position using the most popular phrases.
Your SEO keyword strategy should be formulated preferably before you start developing your website or preparing the website’s content.
Domain Name – Attempt to have at least one of your primary keywords in your domain or sub domain name of your website (use hyphens to separate keywords).
URLs or Website address – Target keyword phrases should ideally be built into your website architecture e.g. www.NEC-phone-systems.html.
URL levels - Any page on your website must be reachable within three levels from the root directory.
Navigation Titles – Develop navigation to be user and search engine friendly using your keyword phrases. Use text for the navigation menu instead of using images or Java scripts.
Sitemap – Create a Sitemap XML file that should be submitted to the search engines so they know how to crawl and index all of the pages of your website. A website map also enables the visitor to reach any page on your website with one click.
The meta tags of a website is found within the <HEAD> of an HTML document and is hidden from the website visitor
Title Tags - One of the most important tags for on-site SEO and is displayed in the title bar of the every browser window. The Title Tag should be unique for each page, be specific and include the primary keyword target phrase for the Web Page (5 - 10 words and 60 to 90 characters with spaces (cws), format <title>Your Title</title>).
Meta Tag Descriptions – A concise summary of the Web page that should also be unique for every page, be written in a marketing style and contain all targeted keywords for that page (between 25 and 40 words and upper limit 150 cws, format <meta name="description" content="Concise synopsis of the Web Page">).
Meta Tag Key Words – Indicates to the search engines what is the most important and relevant keywords for that particular Web Page. Select the five to six most relevant keywords phrases that accurately reflects the content of the web page and put them first and limit it to 15 to 20 words and 900 cws, format <meta name="keywords" content=" web page keywords">. Although not all the search engines give equal importance to keywords it is still worth your while to do it.
Robots Tag to Index Web Pages – The search engines will index all your Web Pages and follow your links without this tag, so you do not need it. Format <meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”>
Robots Tag not to index Web Pages – More important, if you do want your page to be indexed and links to be followed then use tag <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
Robots Tag to prevent a cached copy of Web Page, Open Directory Project description and Yahoo directory listings being used in the description of the search results, format <meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOARCHIVE, NOODP, NOYDIR”>.
Content should be organized in a logical and hierarchy fashion based on both the user’s needs and the targeted keywords. Write the content of your website for people keeping the SEO guidelines in mind with the body text roughly between 200-800 words long. This tells the search engines that the page has enough information to be worthwhile to readers. Remain focused on presenting useful and fresh content to your website visitors that is updated frequently. Create a sitemap before you start writing the content or develop your website. Follow the guidelines below:
Target Audience - Speak to your clients first and then to the search engines. Good SEO content will read very naturally and speak personally to your audience.
Image Alt Attributes - Add descriptive text (incorporate keyword) that indicate to the search engines what that image is all about to generate traffic from image searches.
Heading Tags - <h1> to <h6> provide structure to your website and should contain the most important keyword phrases (most important keywords should be in the <h1> tag.
Key words - Identify 2-5 primary keyword phrases for each Web Page of the Website and use each at least 3-5 times on that page.
Keyword density – Create well written, concise and content rich Web Pages and do not simply load it with keywords. Search engines examine many factors to judge relevancy (the keyword density should be around 3%).
Keyword placement – Consider using keywords in the heading, beginning (first paragraph in bold) and end of page and once every 100 to 150 words. Also include your target keyword phrases in headlines, sidebars, external links, etc.
Keyword Order – When targeting keyword search phrase use the key words in the order they appear in the search phrase (they do not need to adjacent but should be within a few words of one another).
Page Size – To ensure the fast downloading of website pages they should be less than 50KB preferably 15KB for SEO.
As discussed in the ranking of Web Pages section you should encourage and initiate as many inbound links to your website as possible since they are factored into the ranking algorithms of the majority search engines. Link Popularity is based on the number and quality of links pointing to a site since carry the same weight. Links from trusted, popular websites (high PageRank) improve your PageRank more than links from unknown lower traffic websites. Quality links also stem from Web Pages with related content to your website. Establish a selective link exchange program with business and often you will find that websites will link to yours if they have linked to your competitors.
Links between websites and pages (on the same website) should display the keywords that are on the Web Page you are linking to e.g. <a href="http://www.NEC-phone-systems.com"> More Info on NEC Phone Systems</a>. Refrain from participating in link exchange schemes just to increase your PageRank especially with web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" since your own ranking may be adversely affected. Use keywords when cross linking between pages on your website. View the Web pages linking to any website by typing in search box e.g. Google link:http://www.website-name.com.
Get listed in open directories that provide website submission services and list your website under the proper category in a searchable online directory. This increases the visibility of your website and creates relevant inbound links. Furthermore the major search engines use them and since websites has already been categorized they are considered as being relevant resulting in a higher ranking. When submitting to various directories expect some spam so create an email especially for this. The most important reason to list with directories is to get quality in-bound links so you can tweak your listing info for various submissions. Yahoo is one of the most important directories to have well written listing wiith, visit Yahoo. You can also list with the Open Directory Project which is a searchable indexed database and allows other search engines to search it.
The crawlers of the majority of the major search engines will find your website but some you need to submit to manually, visit Self Promotion.
Once you have finished creating or updating your website you can submit to Google and sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools.
