15 Steps for new Websites to SEO Success

Plan - how to get better results

To build or maintain a successful website it's required to have a certain vision in the long run. Submissions will become better in time once they are added in an index of a search engine. Check regularly over a period of a year to see how your website has improved in the index and if your website is found more easily. For this structure we've made a plan.
Preparations

Start your preparations by thinking what kind of content you will provide on your website. Search engines will judge the content of your site so it's very important to make web-pages of good quality and fill them with relevant information.
Choosing the right domain-name is often one of the first important things to think of when you want to have your own website. If you only put your logo and an address on this page, the search engines probably won't index or rank your website. A regular website contains of more than 25 pages with "real" content and information.

Optimize your domain-name

Your goal is to get as many visitors on your website as possible. Make sure that you pick the right domain-name. A domain-name should be easy to type and easy to pronounce. Think of the future while picking a name. It happens that in time you want to change your brand name. As a result your listings in the search engines are gone. Search engines check how long the domain-name has been registered. A website that has been active and updated regularly with new items, will be ranked higher than a website that has just started last week. It's smarter to add a sub name to your main domain-name for a new product than to register a new domain-name. E.g. think of a company like IBM. IBM uses sub names for pages in different countries like www.ibm.com/ca in stead of a new name. Choose 1 clear domain-name, 1 clear image and all the subjects will match your main domain-name. So you need to consider carefully what you want to accomplish. Do you want a separate theme website or did you once register a fantastic domain-name that can be used for a certain campaign, don't hesitate to use it. Just keep in mind that using too many domain-names is not useful. We do suggest to purchase false spelled domain-names that redirect directly to your correct domain-name.

Optimize your design

Creating a website is not an easy job to do. What would you like to accomplish with your site or what do you want to offer your visitor? Remember the KiS method, Keep It Simple. You want to provide information so make sure that the information is easy to find. If you want to provide access to your site to all of your visitors, don't use experimental plug-ins despite the speed of your connection and don't use too flashy plug-ins or other scripting programs.

Don't forget that a search engine prefers normal text instead of image tags and a flash website. Make sure that once a visitor enters your site through a search engine, one must be able to find the information what they are looking for and they must be able to easily surf through your website. Framesets can be nice to use. Keep in mind that if you use frames it's possible that a search engine spider indexes a frame within your first web-page. It's possible to add a java script that once your visitor enters your site within a frame, he's directly forwarded to your main page. But that was not the page your visitor was looking for in the search engines.  So be very careful with a visitor on your site. Now you have him/her there, try to keep them on your site. Keep your website updated all of the time, so that the Christmas offers of 2009 are deleted in time. Look at the main page of the search engine Google; it's clean and simple, just what the visitors prefer.

Optimize you web-pages

Search engines prefer small web-pages. Try to limit the page under 20K, under 10K is even better. We even presume that you pay less for Google Adwords if the landing-page has a low loading time. Use the possibilities of e.g. Photoshop to leave out certain colors in logo's or photo's. Delete HTML code in your webpage that has no meaning and avoid moving images when you enter the website. User our Free Website Analyzer to test the loading time of your page and make improvements. PLease use the following tips: Make as few HTTP Requests as possible Add an Expires Header Use the Gzip Componenten Place your CSS in the top Put Scripts at the bottom Place JavaScript and CSS external Make as few DNS Lookups as possible Use less JavaScript Don't use a Redirects Prevent the use of double scripts Remember our example of the search engine Google, clean and simple html source, it's just 9k...

Create real and original content

Make sure that you have real content on your website. It may sound strange but try to pay attention to placing content of good quality. Put text on your website that really means something. If you're having trouble writing text maybe it's a good idea to hire a scriptwriter and make sure you have at least 500 words on your web-page.
Relevant information means that your site must have a meaning. Nobody is looking for a website without relevant text or just with a few photo's. If you want to be successful on the internet you need to invest time and effort.
Make sure to have a large variety of items on your site.
Use the spelling controller in your text program or have someone else read your text. Try to use specific keywords in the text. Keywords that are also used in the metatag Keyword. Try to avoid using the same words over and over but try to find words that have the same meaning.

Internal,  external,  incoming and outgoing links

Almost everybody has links in it's website to external pages. Search engines value these links between websites. If more people place a link to your website the content of your website becomes apparently more important. These are the so called external links. Don't forget to check these links regularly. If someone asks you to place a link, check if they place your link as well.

Internal links link pages within your website. Make sure that if you put information about e.g. lamps on your website that you place a link to the page with content of lamps. You want the information on your website visited by many different people. Compare your website with a large store, you don't want all the customers at the entrance but you want them on every floor of the store. It's important to add a statistic program to your website. It provides you with a lot of information. What word did your visitor type in on the search engine and therefor clicked on your website or on what page did your visitor enter your website. If you get a lot of visitors that find your website by typing in a specific keyword of product A on the page that contains information about product B, make sure to place a internal link to the page of product A. Your visitor and the search engine will understand the meaning of this link.  The listing will be much better, your visitors enter your website where they find what they are looking for, so they get less frustrated or leave your website immediately. We advise you not to use link-farms or free-for-all-links scripts. Placing links is only useful if the link is relevant. Get your website online   Now it's time to upload your website. Make sure that a spider of a search engine can crawl through your whole website. All pages must be linked to one another otherwise the spider gets stuck in your website. Always make sure that your visitor can get back to the index-page with one or two mouse clicks. Your site must be completely finished, if one part is still not finished or under construction some search engines will not list your website. You get only one change for a good first impression with your website!   Make sure your website is always "up". If your company depends on your website, do not choose a budget hosting company.  Because if you pay peanuts get monkey. You probably know those hosting companies. They offer a 99% up-time for a small amount of money. The 99% means that your website will be offline for about 4 days a year. In those four days, all the effort you've put in to rank your site with the search engines is lost because visitors are not able to access your website and click on the link of your competitor. Choose a professional website hosting company that offers 100% up-time. Your website is worth it! Submit your website   Now you are ready to submit your website to the search engines. Use one of our packages to submit your site. Manage your keywords, content and description online . It's also possible to enter more than one website. After submitting your website you will have to have patience, the most difficult thing of the whole process. Search engines get many submissions every day. Wait patiently for your website to appear in the index. This process can take 6 weeks or longer. Don't submit your website again after two or three weeks. It's than possible that the search engine will place your website on the blacklist and your website will never appear in the index again. Do it yourself ? Some people think they can do the submission process themselves. We give you a few reasons why it's better to ask help from the professionals at Metatags to submit your site: 1) Time Factor Submitting your website to 50 search engines will cost you a lot of time. You need to find the submitting page of every search engine, follow all the steps, fill out the security code, answer emails etc. What if it takes you about 5 minutes per search engine, for 50 search engines that will be 250 minutes and that's over 4 hours! It will cost you half a workday. 2) Money Factor So it will cost you half a workday and if you want to compare it you will have to calculate 4 hours. You know what your hourly rate is, calculate 4 times your rate and see if it is smart to do it yourself. 3) Quality Factor All our staff have successfully graduated in marketing, website building, search engine optimization. We all have a lot of knowledge concerning SEO. Are you also an expert in SEO? Do you exactly know what to do and what's better to skip? Unless you work for us you probably are no expert. Conclusion: of course you can submit your site yourself but... - it will cost you a lot of time - it will cost you money - you lack expertise Can you allow your competitor to choose for search engine optimization and a professional submission of their website? Webserver Statistics ! They are very important ! who visited your site, what did they find, what did they look for, how long was their visit, how often did they return to your site. Use a program that does all these things, don't only place a counter. If your provider doesn't support refers, find a provider that does. We can help you with it. Managing a website without referrals can't provide you with the important information you need.   Avoid using a free statistic program with a pop-up menu. It will effect your submission in a negative way. Statistic programs with clear graphics are handy. You will notice new trends and make the right choice in optimizing your website for the search engines. Spiders and robots   Spiders will begin to visit your website. Spiders are robots of search engines that index your website fully automatically. You can find a list of these spiders on our web-page. Check if it's possible for a spider to crawl your whole site. If a spider gets stuck somewhere in your website, place a new internal link and wait for the spider to visit your website again. It's possible that a spider of Google or Fast visits your site twice before it lists your website. Keep your patience and don't submit your website again. Well known bots are : Yahoo Slurp, Googlebot, Bing-Bot, LinkWalker, Alexa, Ask and Voila Maintenance - Keep your website up-to-date every day   Go back to step 5 and keep repeating this, try to add a new item or page with new content every day. Don't keep a journal but put relevant content on your website. Having trouble writing new text? Hire a textwriter who can help you. Make a plan, what would you like to add this week, or next month? And what will you do next year. Take a look at newssites. Every day new pages and new content. Keep it simple, like the example below. Use enters, make lists subject A subject B Read a book how people read, fast read, cross read. Keep it simple, keep it clear. Make titles, make a piece of text bold, it will hold your readers attention for a minute. Use a clear color-setting. Don't use strange or unknown fonts. Unless you are a graphic designer who will show that you can handle all techniques, don't use to many features. Remember that a website of a well-know pop artist maybe contains some flash, but that this flash feature is very small and developed by professionals. Unbeatable by you, for you miss the skills and the equipment. Be part of a greater network    Build a network. Use a reasonable email-list system. Don't spam but give the users the possibility to sign up for your newsletter. Use the well-known techniques like "tell a friend" or send e-cards. Try to image what your customer expects. What would they like to know or read. Your website is not a brochure. The visitor on your website expects to find an answer to a question he had. Participate in newsgroups and forums. Not to promote your site but to learn and listen and build your network. Log-files   Analyze your log-files. Follow your visitors, what do they do, make a graphic and ask your provider to put a statistic program on your site. It's free information, but you need to do something with it. Also log-files on your server can be useful. Where did the visitor looked at, for how long. From which page did they leave your website. Do your visitors return and what are they looking for. The A-B test Choose a certain page you want to test. Examples of test-page's can be your start-page or a page with product details. Make several versions of your test-page. Create and publish several versions of your test-page and use unique URL's. Use a script that randomly shows those different versions to your visitors. E.g. make 3 pages of a product you would like to sell. On one page you ask your visitor to call you for more information. One the other page you ask your visitor to fill out the form for more information. And on the last page you offer the possibility to order online. Now you can measure which page is more popular. Don't forget to keep the pages active after concluding your experiment due to the fact that many people bookmark your web-page.  Find your conversion page. This conversion page is an existing page on your website that is shown after a conversion. It can be a page that is shown after a customer has ordered an item on your website, or it can be a page which is shown after a visitor has registered for a newsletter or filled out an information form. Now verify using your log-files the behavior of your visitor and if necessary change your page.

Think Ahead

Think ahead. Christmas offer? Make sure you have your pages ready by October. Otherwise you'll never be in time to submit your site and be admitted in the index. Make a task list or an online calender to manage your site. Remove old information and don't submit test pages. Did you know that most submissions don't make it into a search engine index because of pornographic material in a secret map on your server? A search engine spiders your complete website and will find this content on your site. Your site will not be admitted in the index. 80% of all problems are the result of bad website management. Spend money on a decent website and ask for professional help. If you don't do this, your internet adventure can become a disaster.

After six months

Check your submissions and where needed, return to step 8: submit your website again. Don't forget: work regularly on your site. Compare it to a normal shop, clean it every day, new articles on the shelves, paint your shop of redecorate it. Carry this though your website, keep working on the content on your site. If you still have no luck submitting your site or you don't have the time, let us help you. Do the things you're good at and let us help you with submitting your site to the search engines.