i3SearchWorx have carried out Search Engine Optimisation on countless new websites and as such, we have a code of conduct that we religiously follow - our 7 simple SEO steps to complete to ensure measurability and success.
1) Set Up Webmaster Tools (www.google.com/webmasters/tools/)
So you thought number 1 would be Google Analytics? Wrong Wrong Wrong! Webmaster Tools for each of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing is absolutely pivotal to analyze various elements of your website, this can be from monitoring and submitting XML sitemaps, finding errors on internal pages, diagnosing slow-to-load pages and many many many other features - a must have for any new website.
2) Analytics Installation and Milestone/Goal Setting
Tracking website visitors is absolutely paramount - there is no reason why you shouldn't be doing this. Google Analytics is incredibly informative allowing you track geographic location of visitors, visitor numbers, unique visitor numbers, returning visitors, bounce rates and benchmarking along with a whole host of other features. i3SearchWorx also recommends that you track key elements of the website such as contact forms, downloads, plays and purchases.
3) Fix Canonical URL Issues
Masses of people never fix this issue, yet it is very, very simple to fix. Ensuring that you go with the www. or without the www. means that there is no confusion with having multiple URL's for the same webpage which can lead to host of issues - i.e getting link juice to the wrong URL's and confusing Google as to which page to cache in it's index.
To fix a canonical URL problem for .PHP sites - Add to .Htaccess file:
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^i3searchworx.net
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.i3searchworx.net/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^index.html$ / [R=301,L]
ASP Sites: Done through IIS
4) Add a Robots.txt file
Sift through all of your web files and highlight directories that you don’t want the search engines to index and cache. These are normally your administration files or misc. files found on your server, we'd advise that you restrict them.
To implement a Robots.txt file, upload with below text. Make sure you replace “/folder name/ with the folder(s) you want to restrict. Be careful when you are doing this, you want to ensure that the file paths are 100% accurate to ensure that you do not resrict access to a public page.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /folder name/
5) Submit XML Sitemap
Once your website is completed, go and use an XML sitemap generator which will crawl your entire site and index all your pages - you can then easily submit this to search engines. Each major search engine allows you to submit a sitemap which means you will get search engines to crawl your new site a lot quicker and allow the search engines to find ALL of the pages within your website.
6) Set up you local business listings
Google Yahoo and Bing have local business centres which allow you to place a free business listing that has an opportunity to appear in the local listings when a user types in a localised search query relevant to your website - for example, Locksmith in Cambridge would be fantastic for a local business listing.
www.getlisted.org is a great way to syndicate your website to numerous local listings accross the web - give it a try, it's really useful.
7) Submit to reputable directories
There has always been a certain amount of skepticism as to how much impact directories have with search engines. Although we have trialled and tested a list of directories which we are pretty sure can influence and enhance search engine rankings, we also would advise you to list in directories surrounding your niche to generate early traffic/additional traffic. It will take time before you will be ranking optimally in major search engines, so ensure you have other, tactical methods such as Google AdWords and themed directory submissions for back up.
Posted: 12/10/10 07:39
