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Thread: SEO for New Website
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May 25, 2006, 11:44 #1
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SEO for New Website
Hi all,
I am about to launch a new site for a client. He wants it to get to the top of search engines quickly.
What can I do that will make this happen? The site is clean coded, compliant to web standards and uses css/xhtml.
Thanks.
Kevin.
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May 25, 2006, 11:46 #2
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We'd all like to get to the top of the search engines quickly. But until that's realistic, we'll have settle for "in a reasonable amount of time".
Also, from the Search Engine Optimization FAQ:
What would be a good SEO strategy?
Before you write one line of code:
- Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target
While constructing your website you should do the following:
- Use markup to indicate the content of your site
- Optimize your <title> tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
- Create unique Meta Tags for each page
- Use header tags appropriately (H1 > H2 > H3)
- Use <strong> and <em> tags if appropriate
- Optimize your URLs
- Use Search Engine Friendly URLs (for dynamic sites)
- Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
- Use keywords in your URL (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)
- Use dashes instead of underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)
- Optimize your content
- Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
- Have unique content
- Have quality content
- Use search engine friendly design
- Create a human sitemap
- Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript menus)
- Minimized outbound links
- Kept your pages under 100K in size
- Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)
- Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site
- Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you
- Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)
- Make sure your website is complete before launching it
Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:
- Submit your site to all major search engines
- Google (Use a Google SiteMap)
- Yahoo (Use the page list option)
- MSN (Finds your site via incomming links)
- Ask (Finds your site via incomming links)
- Submit your site to all free directories
- Submit your site to relevant directories
- Find more at ISEDB
- Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)
- Put a link to your website in your forum signatures
- Reply to relevant blog posts (Don't spam please)
- Submit articles to relevant websites
If you will pay to promote your website:
- Submit your site to pay directories
- Purchase text links from high PR (Pagerank) sites related to your site
Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:
- Continually update your website will quality, unique content
- Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre
Do NOT do the following:
- Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)
- Use JavaScript for navigation
- Spam other websites for incomming links
- Launch your site before it is done
- Use duplicate content
- Point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect
- Use markup inappropiately
- Style <H>eader tags to look like regular text
- Hide content using 'display: hidden' (for the sake of hiding text)
- Use other "black hat" techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)
- Doorway/Landing pages
- Cloaking
- Hidden text
- Keyword stuffing
Additional Tips:
- Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature
- Be patient! High rankings don't happen overnight
- Don't obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.
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May 25, 2006, 13:45 #3
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Wow Stymiee! What happened to the standard "Look at the SEO FAQs" response?
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May 25, 2006, 13:59 #4
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Originally Posted by HAWK
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May 25, 2006, 14:05 #5
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Originally Posted by stymiee
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May 26, 2006, 02:10 #6
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Do NOT do the following:
- Launch your site before it is done
Will this have a bad affect on SEO?
Thanks.
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May 26, 2006, 02:50 #7
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Just dont get internal links to the website, dont submit to google etc
Or maybe use .htaccess encryption to dissallow access, create a splash page and name it index.html and have your main page index.php (index.html gets priority over index.php on a standard installation). There are many things you can do.
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May 26, 2006, 05:30 #8
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Originally Posted by obrienkev
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May 26, 2006, 08:15 #9
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Until it is ready to go, put a robots.txt in the root directory blocking access to the site. That way they do not index any half-completed pages. Once you are ready to launch just delete that file.
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May 26, 2006, 08:16 #10
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just put this in your root directory and call it robots.txt:
Code:User-agent: * Disallow: /
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May 29, 2006, 08:50 #11
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thanks. I have read that robots.txt file can potentially get a website banned from search engines.
Is this true?
The domain name has been registered for near a month now.
Thanks again!
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May 29, 2006, 09:58 #12
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Originally Posted by obrienkev
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May 29, 2006, 12:22 #13
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Yea, robots.txt can NOT ban you from search engiens, however you can use robots.txt to tell google/yahoo/msn to NOT index your site.... but it isn't technically a ban.
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May 29, 2006, 13:20 #14
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Originally Posted by obrienkev
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May 29, 2006, 13:22 #15
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Originally Posted by stymiee
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May 30, 2006, 09:09 #16
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Is it too late to use robots.txt file? Domain has been live for over a month now. Will it make any difference if I use robots.txt file now?
Thanks guys.
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May 30, 2006, 09:11 #17
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It's only too late if you don't do it.
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May 30, 2006, 11:58 #18
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Originally Posted by stymiee
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May 30, 2006, 12:28 #19
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Those people probably also think playing leapfrog with a unicorn is a good idea.
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Jun 7, 2006, 23:33 #20
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Originally Posted by stymiee
That way, the time you spend on developing the rest of the site (which you can hide from the SEs with robots.txt or robots="none" meta tag) is time taken off the amount of time you might spend stuck in Google's ageing delay after launch.
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Jun 7, 2006, 23:36 #21
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Originally Posted by stymiee
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Jun 8, 2006, 02:27 #22
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Something which may actually help your pages (I did this for one of my sites) is to upload an index.html page which you have SEO'd to the max. Make sure the actual meat of the page tells casual visitors to watch this space, but also use the page to tell visitors what the site will be doing.
In the head elements of the page, make sure you include the relevant meta tags. There are people out there who will tell you meta tags are next to useless, but I absolutely disagree with them. I managed to get one of my sites into 8th position on MSN for the keywords "great boobs" because I accidentally uploaded an index.html file I created as a joke to one of my serious sites. The joke page had every metatag I could possibly get dreamweaver to insert into the head and it was only online for two days before I removed it. Also, the meat of the page was an image rather than text and the keywords I mentioned weren't used on the page except in the head.
That sort of suggests to me that metatags work and work well. Use them.
We won't even mention the sandbox for the moment.
cheers,
awroweLast edited by awrowe; Jun 8, 2006 at 02:29. Reason: calming it down a bit...
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Jun 8, 2006, 05:57 #23
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Originally Posted by Tyssen
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Jun 8, 2006, 06:00 #24
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Originally Posted by Tyssen
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Jun 26, 2006, 02:26 #25
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try this
I had some luck adding my site to online business directories for caravans, holiday homes and related topics. It's often free! But be patient-it does take a while!
Hope that helps!Last edited by stymiee; Jun 26, 2006 at 03:35.
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