Jamie Le Souef

The following is from a post from Webmaster World.

The following will build a successful site in one years time via Google alone. It can be done faster if you are a real go getter, or everyone’s favorite, a self starter.

1. Prep Work & Begin Building Content

Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a one hundred page site. That’s just for openers. That’s one hudred pages of real content, as opposed to fluff pages like copyright information and about us pages.

2. Domain Name

Easily brandable. You want Google.com and not MyKeyword.com. Keyword domains are out—branding and name recognition are in—big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name has never been less to search engines.

Learn the lesson of Goto.com becomes Overture.com and why they did it. It’s one of the most powerful gut check calls I’ve ever seen on the internet. That took serious resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding.

3. Site Design

The simpler the better. A general rule of thumb to follow is that text content should outweigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in everything from Lynx to leading edge browsers. Keep the HTML clean and stucturally sound, it makes it easier for spiders to eat up your content.

Stay away from heavy things like Flash, Document Object Model (DOM), Java, and JavaScript. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them—there is little reason to have them that I can see—they will rarely help a site and actually stand to hurt it greatly due to the many factors most people don’t appreciate, such as search engines’ distaste for JavaScript being just one of them.

Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit. You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root. This is a rather controversial method, but it has been producing good long-term results across many search engines.

Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability. Learn the lesson of Google itself. Simple is retro cool. Simple is what surfers want.

Speed isn’t everything, it’s almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even three to four seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in trouble.

Those few seconds may vary for someone living in a country other than your native one. The site should respond locally within three to four seconds tops! Any longer than that, and you’ll lose ten percent of your audience for every second. That ten percent could be the difference between success and failure.

4. Page Size

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can. I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. Yeah, it sucks, and it’s tough to do, but it works. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers.

5. Content

Build one page of content with 250 to 500 words per day. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword selector tool and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

6. Keyword Density & Position

Simple old fashioned search engine optimization from the ground up. Use the keyword once in the title, once in the description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italics, and once high on the page. Try to hit a keyword density of five to twenty percent.

Use good sentences and speel check it. Spell checking is becoming increasingly important as search engines use auto-correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can’t spell—unless, of course, you really are phonetically challenged.

7. External Links

From every page, link to one or two high-ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text, as this is ultra important.

8. Internal Links

Link to on-topic, quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links to the fruits and veggies page.

Specifically with Google, on-topic internal linking is very important for sharing your PageRank value across your site. You do not want one “all-star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want fifty pages that produce one referral each a day, not one page that produces fifty referrals a day.

If you do find one page that drastically out performs the rest of the site with Google, you need to balance some of that PageRank value by moving it to other pages. It’s the old share the wealth thing.

9. Put It Online

Don’t go with virtual hosting. Stick with a hosting plan that offers a static IP address. Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than two levels deep from the root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to the root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your site’s main “topic index” pages.

Don’t put it online before you have a quality site. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. You want it flushed out from the start.

Go for a listing in the Open Directory Project (ODP). If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo—but don’t hold your breath.

10. Submit It

Submit the root to Google, Fast, AltaVista, WiseNut, DirectHit, and HotBot. Now comes the hard part: forget about submissions for the next six months. That’s right. Submit it and forget about it.

11. Logging & Tracking

Get a quality tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files. Don’t use a lame graphic counter, you need the real deal here. If your host doesn’t support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can’t run a modern site without full referrals available all day, every day, and in real time.

12. Spiderlings

Watch for spiders from search engines. Make sure those that are crawling the full site can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system to make sure the spiders find their way through the site. Don’t fret if it takes two spiderlings to get your whole site done by Google or Fast. Other search engines are pot luck and it is doubtful that you will be added at all, if not within six months.

13. Topic Directories

Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on its topic. Go submit within the guidelines.

14. Links

Look around your keyword sector in Google’s version of the Open Directory Project (ODP). This is best done after getting an ODP listing. Find sites that have a links page or that freely exchange links. Simply request a swap. Put a page of relevant content and links up for yourself as a collection spot.

Don’t freak out if you can’t get people to swap links. Just move on. Try to swap links with one fresh site a day. A simple personal email is enough. Stay low key about it and don’t worry if a site won’t link with you. Eventually they will.

15. Content

One page of quality content per day. Timely, topical articles are always the best. Try to stay away from to much personal, blogging type stuff, and look more for article topics that a general audience will like. Hone your writing skills and read up on the right style of “web speak” that tends to work with the fast and furious web crowd.

Lots of text breaks. Short sentences—lots of dashes—something that reads quickly.

Most web users don’t actually read, they scan. This is why it is so important to keep low key pages today. People see a huge overblown page, and a portion of them will hit the back button before even trying to decipher it. They’ve got better things to do than waste 15 seconds trying to understand your whiz bang flash menu system. Just because some big support site can run flashed out motorhead pages, that is no indication that you can. You don’t have to do what they do.

Use headers and bold text liberally on your pages as logical separators. I call them scanner stoppers, where the eye will logically come to rest on the page.

16. Gimmicks

Stay far away from “fads of the day” or anything that appears spammy, unethical, or tricky. Plant yourself firmly on the high ground in the middle of the road.

17. Link Backs

When you receive requests for links, check the site out before linking back with them. Check them through Google and their PageRank value. Look for directory listings. Don’t link back to junk just because they asked. Make sure it is a site similar to yours and on topic.

18. Rounding Out The Offerings

Use options such as email a friend, forums, and mailing lists to round out your site’s offerings. Hit the top forums in your market and read, read, read until your eyes hurt because you read so much. Stay away from “affiliate fads” that insert content on to your site.

19. Beware Of Flyer & Brochure Syndrome

If you have an e-commerce site or online version of bricks and mortar, be careful not to turn your site into a brochure. These don’t work at all. Think about what people want. They aren’t coming to your site to view “your content,” they are coming to your site looking for “their content.” Talk as little about your products and yourself as possible in articles.

20. Build One Page Of Content Per Day

Head back to the Overture keyword selector tool to get ideas for fresh pages.

21. Study Those Logs

After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places you’ve been listed. Look for the keywords people are using. See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the search engine what it wants.

If your site is about “oranges,” but your referrals are all about “orange citrus fruit,” then you can get busy building articles around “citrus” and “fruit” instead of the generic “oranges.”

The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be fed—listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it’s just a matter of panning for it.

22. Timely Topics

Nothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments in your keyword sector. If big site is coming out with a new product at the end of the year, then build a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get it by December, e.g. go look at all the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii sites in Google right now. Those are sites that were on the ball last summer.

23. Friends & Family

Networking is critical to the success of a site. This is where all that time you spend in forums will pay off. Here’s the Catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and cohorts. You learn long-term by the interaction—not by just reading.

Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges, and it will put you “in the loop” of your keyword sector.

24. Be Social

Social bookmarking and networking sites can be used to your advantage if the content is right. Places like Digg, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and so on, can really expose your site to those that truly are interested. Expect some great backlinks and traffic if you use this to your advantage.

25. Notes, Notes, Notes

If you build one page per day, you will find that a brainstorm like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point. Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it down! Ten minutes later and you will have forgotten all about that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds simple, but it’s a life saver when the ideas stop coming.

26. Submission Check At Six Months

Walk back through your submissions and see if you are listed in all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not, then resubmit and forget it again. Try those freebie directories again too.

27. Build One Page Of Quality Content Per Day

Starting to see a theme here? Google loves content. Lots of quality content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end of a years time, you should have around four hundred pages of content. That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords, generate reciprical links, and overall position your site to stand on its own two feet.

Do those twenty-seven things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between 500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines.

If you build a good site with an average of four to five pages per user, you should be in the ten to fifteen thousand page views per day range in one years time. What you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough to “do something” with.

The general marketing information employed by various advertising agencies varies with each web hosting deal as well as the jobs available and the type of adsl used.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 3:22 pm and is filed under CSS, Design, General, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are 25 Responses to “ 27 Tips to build a successful SEO website in 12 months ”

1

chipseo Says

Good list for developing a website or blog, thanks. I would say keywords are out for domains but you still have to have a good combination of: short as possible, some kind of recognizable attribute (keyword perhaps), and easy to type-in.

I have a few keyword real short domains, the longer more descriptives ones do much better, but I like the shorter ones better :)

October 29th, 2007 at 10:36 pm

2

sgirlies Says

Blog Archive 27 Tips to build a successful SEO website in 12 months – is very good site with odp

November 24th, 2007 at 5:44 am

3

Andy Piper Says

I believe you are right! I am doing many of these things to optimize my real estate website in a relatively competitive market and it is working.

Thanks for the checklist though because I found a few things I need to revisit and others I need to do more of!

No substitute for good content – seems Google is pretty good at indexing and like minded people will find you.

October 26th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

4

Jamie Le Souef Says

@Andy Piper -
Hi Andy. Thanks for your comment.

I should really re-visit this article because so much has changed since.

I defiantly agree with you on good content. The best tip I give people who I’m not building SEO for is write naturally. If you try too hard to trick the SEO’s then you’ll get done. Remember. Google has 100’s of MIT Professors working for them, are you smarter then 100+ MIT Professors?

October 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am

5

Jon Boyd Ann Arbor real estate buyer's agent Says

I think these days it is important to also see what your competition is doing. (Or at least doing right.)

Also, with the Google keywords tools it is much easier now to see what search phrases people are using and how often they are using them.

Finding out what terms are being searched that don’t have as much competition at the popular terms has helped me.

- Good article by the way :-) -

December 11th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

6

Jamie Le Souef Says

@Jon Boyd Ann Arbor real estate buyer’s agent -
I agree 100% – if you have no idea what you competition is doing then you have no starting point to compete in your chosen field.

Solid research of your competition is defiantly a key to successful SEO.

Thanks for your comment.

December 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am

7

sasidesign Says

hmm…
i still learn about seo..
still try to understand it
but thanks for sharing this
i have to do more than..

sasidesigns last blog post..PrideWithLove | Grayscale

December 17th, 2008 at 9:45 am

8

Frank Pipolo Says

Jamie,

Good stuff! New sites are a 12 month start project if your looking for organic placement

January 15th, 2009 at 12:49 am

9

Jamie Le Souef Says

@Frank Pipolo -
It sure is. True SEO is a process that takes time, get ranking quick schemes generaly will work to start with, but end up doing more damage in the long run then they are worth.

(BTW i really need to go over this post and do an update.. it’s well out of date now!)

January 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm

10

Vasilis Says

This article is absolutely amazing, im truely impressed. It is so well explained, with so much details. I really appreciate your effort for such a wonderful write up. Thanks a lot , it has been of great help to me !

February 9th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

11

affiliate.solutions Says

I was reading your blog and you have some really good content thanks. Feel free to give me some feedback on how I can make things better on mine

February 10th, 2009 at 10:59 am

12

herry Says

was Blog Seo and Website Seo use the same method ?? 1 posting a day with 500 words :D wow that’s a lot of words…. :D but i think i will try it… thx for the post man… it was useful foe me…

February 27th, 2009 at 10:14 pm

13

My Love Says

wow. This is very cool tips you compile and kudos for sharing it to others.

April 16th, 2009 at 11:48 am

14

Jamie Le Souef Says

My pleasure :)

April 16th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

15

Morgan Says

Wow, long article…but I don’t feel tired to read it till end. It’s a good idea to post many articles as a start and one 500 words article daily. Do you think it’s enough to post only one post a day? I see many people post up to ten or even more.

April 18th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

16

Jamie Le Souef Says

Hi Morgan,

I don’t think posting more is going to hurt you, as long as what you are posting is genuine content and not just spam or regurgitated RSS feeds from other sites. It would be better to post 1 genuine posts rather than 10 ’spam’ posts.

April 20th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

17

Morgan Says

Yes, totally agree with you. Genuine content will always have fans that keep coming back.

April 23rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm

18

Haerano Says

Hello, I like your website design, it’s cool.

Haeranos last blog post..What Is An Address?

April 23rd, 2009 at 3:52 pm

19

Jamie Le Souef Says

@Haerano Thanks :)
@Morgan – spot on. Genuine is the way to go.

April 23rd, 2009 at 3:57 pm

20

sports chat Says

In a nutshell, a sucessful website is the one that focus more on the need of others by providing good contents and article and for sure many visitors will come in to your site..

just my 2 cents.

May 17th, 2009 at 1:46 am

21

laser etching Says

Thank you for the good info about SEO, we really need to put some of this into pratice and your article is very helpful in that regard.

October 18th, 2009 at 12:17 am

22

oes tsetnoc Says

thanks for your very informative seo tips. This tips can help me on my future seo life.
.-= oes tsetnoc´s last blog ..Oes Tsetnoc team give up? =-.

December 7th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

23

Ashley Says

Awesome tips..

very useful for the SEO people..Content is king.we must careful when we write the content..Links are more important in SEO.The number of relevant links make a site to get better ranking in the search engine..

Thanks for sharing ..Very informative..

January 25th, 2010 at 8:02 pm

24

Stupidly Simple SEO Bonus Says

I think one of the best things people can do over a 12 month period is to continue to work on high quality backlinks. If people can get just 10 good backlinks per month they will have a great foundation after 12 months!
.-= Stupidly Simple SEO Bonus´s last blog ..About Me =-.

March 13th, 2010 at 7:28 am

25

Engrape Financier Says

Social bookmarking and networking sites can be used to your advantage if the content is right. Places like Digg, Delicious, Technorati, StumbleUpon, and so on, can really expose your site to those that truly are interested.

May 22nd, 2010 at 4:29 pm

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