This is a great guide to search engine optimization, from beginning to end.
Keyword research begins before Web site design. It may help you determine the information architecture (IA) of your site.
Research your logs (or stat program) to see what phrases people currently use to find you. Note though that this only tells you what has worked in the PAST.
Research your competition’s phrases by viewing source on their HTML. Note this only tells you what works for your competition. It may or may not help you with your company’s focus/niche.
Research new words/phrases from the CLIENT’S point of view. Clients may not know proper industry acronyms, terms and jargon.
Determine a loose IA for the site. This will be the organization of pages and sections of your site. The more finely you focus each page, the better for SEO, however it also means more work building and updating the site. If you have a 5-10 page Web site it is likely you’ll never be found in a SE except for possibly via a search of your actual company name.
IA should initially be based on what is the most usable, logical structure from the user’s POV. Resist basing the organization of your site solely on your company’s organization, or what makes sense to you and your managers, but rather keep in mind what makes sense to your audience.
Augment your IA with ideas from your keyword list. Maybe a section could be added or renamed to take advantage of a powerful keyword phrase. However, always keep in mind the user.
Now is the time to think about what will make people choose to visit your site from a sea of choices. Can you offer them content not available elsewhere? Review your keywords to see if any ideas are sparked. If you have a student loan site, perhaps you could add a glossary to help define confusing loan terms. If you have a Web design site perhaps you can offer design, usability or SEO tips? It is great to offer any content but the best content is that which cannot be found elsewhere…
Engines want to help users find the page that is the most directly about the words he has searched for. Therefore, the more targeted and content-focused (helpful) a page is on ONE topic, the more highly regarded it will be by an engine and a user. So, the ultimate goal would be to make each individual page about ONE topic. However, there are no rules. Since most people can’t afford to build and maintain 1000-page Web sites you’ll need to combine some phrases into each page. Look for logical ways to group phrases into pages if necessary to keep you Web site from being too large. Currently we shoot for 3 phrases on each page, but there are no real “rules”. Use as few keyword phrases as you can bear per page. The more you use, the less effective they are.
Firm-up your IA
You should have a firm idea of the structure of your site now. You may require more keyword research at this point for pages you may not have thought of, or for pages that have been combined in a way you didn’t imagine at the beginning of the process.
Be sure you now have a strong idea of the phrases to be used for each page and each phrase’s order of importance on a page.
Build the site. Each page should have its keywords organized and ready, with the most highly targeted phrase being first in your list for each page. The order does matter.
Using the logical groupings of pages you’ve decided upon for your IA, create folders that mimic the levels of navigation.
Name folders and files with the strongest phrase from your ordered phrases belonging to that page.
Each page is a possibility
Every page is a possibility for a search engine hit. Since no person fully understands the capricious desires of users and search engines, all one can do is give one’s best effort at optimization for a specific phrase/phrases and hope for the best. Remember that other phrases may also bring in hits for this page so although you want to target a page on just a few phrases, there will be a myriad of related phrases that could help the page. Focus on using key phrases in the content of the page because it is the most important part of the page. Some people offer content saturation guidelines while others poo-poo them – scuttlebutt we’ve heard indicates to shoot for at least 250 words of content per page with a 4%-8% keyword saturation. Take that with a grain of salt…
Use at least the main target keyword phrase in the META TITLE, more if possible, in order of their importance. Don’t overdo it. A laundry list of your phrases is not the goal here. Be helpful to your user, who will most likely see the TITLE as a result in a search. Shoot for about 80 characters, no more than 124.
Use your keyword phrases in order of importance in the META KEYWORD tag. Less is more on a finely focused page, but you can use as many as you feel are necessary. We shoot for 3 phrases per page.
Use keyword phrases in order of importance in the META DESCRIPTION tag. A laundry list of your phrases is not the goal here. This description is what a user will likely see in a search result if it is unaltered. It is less likely to be altered if you keep it short and stick to facts so write a succinct sentence or 2, avoiding superlatives.
Use the ALT tag for images within a page to describe the image. If an image is related to your keywords, all the better. However, remember that abusing any tag could be cause to be banned from an engine altogether. In fact, because of this possibility apparently some engines only consider linked images in their algorithms.
Use good HTML markup. Not only is proper code a warm and fuzzy feeling, but some markup could benefit your SEO efforts, such as using H1-H6 tags for headings, or B tags for bold items. As usual there could be penalties for abusing tags, so use them appropriately.
Make sure you have a site map and that it is no more than one link away from the home page. Some people prefer to use phrases in their site map as opposed to the actual page name, though this smells like spamming to me…
It’s a good idea to link keyword phrases in your body content to relevant pages of your site.
Make sure you’re using a stat program like Stat Counter to view the stats of pages, users, keywords, etc.
Site’s done. You’re not! There’s plenty left to do…
Once you’ve launched and the new content is live, submit your domain to the major engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ. If this was a redesign of a former site you may not need to submit to all engines – if you’re in their engine already then you’ll be updated at some point. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to submit again as long as you haven’t submitted in the last 30 days.
If you don’t have a Google sitemap in place, get one.
Particularly Google relies more heavily on incoming to links to help rank your site. You have lots of work to do getting people to link to you, so get started. Fortunately, you listened earlier when we talked about creating reasons for people to want to come to your site. Write articles, press releases, or other types of content that can be submitted to other Web sites for syndication. Provide a forum or blog where users can interact so interest is generated in revisiting your site.
Use Google for keyword campaigns if you’re interested in paying for results. Some 3rd party companies can generate traffic for a fee as well.
