"Twelve Paid Directories"
"Eleven Bloggers Bloggin'"
"Ten Lord's a Link-Baiting"
"Nine Laides SEOing"
"Eight Web Stats You're Milking"

Today: 7 Basic Steps to Great SEO

7 is the Biblical number for perfection, it's a nice wholesome prime number that's got lucky connections too. Coming up with swans and SEO was too hard so I opted for labeling seven crucial steps to SEO.

Understand the list I'm about to give you is not comprehensive as the conditions for a properly optimized web site has 100s of variables. But for quick assessments of your pages here is a good start.

1. If you're a first time visitor to a web site then the first exposure to any web site is the design. Is your content easy to read? Nice design? Looks professional? Web 2.0 elements? Adequately reflects the purpose of your web site? Interactive content? It actually HAS content! Wasn't churned out in paint shop. A simple, clean, but professional design will go a long way in retaining visitors.

2. In order to receive the design it needs to load fast. Are your file sizes too big that make load time longer? Do you have huge pictures that need to be smaller, deleted, broken into pieces, lower resolution? This brings up a good question about your web host. Do you have a competent host? Do you have a comfortable level of resources?

From an SEO perspective, so long as your web host is professional enough to not cut corners in their hosting (i.e. dangerously sharing IPs), than shared hosting isn't a problem. For many shared hosting is sufficient for their demand. Of course there are other levels of service including VPS (virtual private servers (some people don't think they're much different than shared, I think they are, a bit)), and dedicated hosting. (There exist corporate options as well.) Dedicated hosting provides the option of owning or renting your very own web host (the box with all the hardware). Usually this comes with a degree of self-service so prior knowledge with such programs as Unix, Shell, etc., would be an asset.

3. SEO Your Content. I'm not even going to chat about your code right now. Google has made it clear they'll find your content regardless of how crappy your code is. (*NOTE, they'd rather clean and efficient code, and whether that takes less time to spider = Google.) The 'free market' of the online world would also attest that content is the number one aspect of important on any web site.

Your content needs to be relevant, unique, interesting, and something more than re-writes of news releases and reviews. If you're adding to the betterment of your particular industry than you have good content. Whether or not it's marketable is another story. Here are some SEO tips once you've actually written the content:

• 3-5 keyword phrases per page depending on length (try not to write your content around keyword phrases all the time.)
• Don't worry about keyword density, write naturally. Only keyword density number to worry about is zero.
• Occasionally bold keyword phrases using either strong or < b > tags. (Once every 100 words?)
• Have paragraphs, good! Put header tags for new paragraphs (where appropriate) h1, h2, h3 tags are important for navigation, help with clarity, and add SEO benefit.
• Prominent text, large text, and black text. No white on pink background please. Also, content does not consist of one header and 2 sentences.
• Add images to fatten your text to make it appear like you have more; separate long articles into two pages for more!

4. Watch Your Code. CSS IS THE STANDARD. It makes things cleaner (for the most part), looks nicer, and if more efficient (since it reduces your file sizes, etc.) If you're getting the designer to code you a new look, it should be in CSS, no questions asked. Having said this, if you're still using tables it's not a big deal, you won't be penalised nor is there evidence CSS leads to better SERPs. Other key aspects to remember:

• Error free. Use the W3C validator if you have to.
• Why so much Java and Style?!?! Please put all your JAVA and your STYLE sheets in separate files you can link to. This usually cuts code down my 75%!
• Title tags are a must, 2 meta tags are all you need (Descriptions, charset.)
• No flash on the index page, limited flash elsewhere (you can still use it, but complement it with content!). NO FRAMES.
• Alt tags on images? (Keywords on some, but if they have a purpose, then place what the image is. The purpose of the ALT tag is not for SEO but for text browsers.)

5. Off-Page Optimization. Ensure that you have appropriate links to help complement all the work you have placed into your code and design, and most importantly your content. As usual, on topic one-way and relevant (to your industry/content) links from web sites with high page rank are the best. This doesn't mean other avenues do not yield 'link-weight' but there are 'better than' links. Other low-key options for getting one-way links include:

• Article directories
• web directories
• press releases
• blog entries
• forum posts (getting to know your community, not the signatures)
• creating blogs
• RSS directories
• social bookmarking

These are worthy places to get links, however, natural linking (that is links from web sites who choose to link to you (and have great PR too )) remain the best 'kind' of link to get. Go ahead and implement the other tactics to get one way links, just make sure ALL of your links don't come from one place (like free directories.)

6. Check your web stats. See our previous post one web stats. "Eight Web Stats You're Milking". These are free metrics about your clients and users. You need to pay attention to their behaviour and the results from your efforts. You can't tell if your SEO effort have been successful if you don't have a method to measure it.

7. Sit back and sip some nog. For new sites it's a waiting game before the #1 rank in Google turns up. For more established sites, you put the effort in, and then in a couple of months results start coming in. (This is for organic listings, viral marketing strategies tend to be fast when it comes to sending traffic....) Patience while simultaneously writing new cool content and getting links are a virtue.

With your eggnog, read some more SEO blogs and forums so you aren't left in the dark when the next trend and changes occur, cause you're already behind!

[tags]basic seo, seo, crucial seo, beginner seo[/tags]

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