SEO Tips Intro

[Alphawolf]

Building A Solid SEO Foundation for Websites – by Alphawolf

The tips list is based on a year of intense research and analysis (paid member of webmasterword.com) and utilizing the techniques in the real world to help clients get to Top 10 in Google for broad phrases like “industry name”. Current best is #4 out of 4.5+ million results in a niche service market and #2 for “industry name company” out of half a million. My client was able to drop that $6/click phrase on Overture.

I don’t take clients anymore. I decided to *really* work for myself and make my ___OWN___ sites. Just providing a frame of reference as you read these tips. Its Google orientated because Google and Google powered engines dominate the market currently. When Yahoo switches to Inktomi as it’s currently being tested in the U.K. it will be interesting.

The general scope of the tips should serve any website well in any search engine. If anything else it will give you a good base to start from.

Tips follow in replies as I cannot post in one message.

AW

[Alphawolf]

Good luck:
1. ALWAYS have a good Site Map- designed not just for SE Bots to easily find all your pages, but make it for your surfers too.
2. Serve up plenty of *good* separate pages of content. Each page is an opportunity to get indexed and possibly found. Don’t stuff your site full of ‘fluff’ pages…make it worthy for your users.
3. An Optimized Page Title + H1, H2 text can go a long way in *unoptimized* SERP's.
4. Use CSS instead of font tags and stick your JavaScript and CSS into external files whenever possible.
5. The anchor text in backlinks is VERY important- though often hard to control unless you own your own network of domains. MIX up your anchor text on your links. THINK like Google. Is it natural for someone to all of a sudden get dozens of links with the same exact anchor text? Nope. DON’T potentially draw attention to yourself that may result in a penalty.
6. If you plan your own network of domains its best (IMO) to spread them across multiple Web Hosts. Multiple web hosts also diversify your risks if/when a host goes down or gets attacked maliciously.
7. Google’s toolbar *may* be a helpful tool in gauging how established a website is *if* it reports back accurate PageRank.
8. Page rank is important, but like all other aspects there is no 'magic bullet' where one thing will rocket you to the top. The purpose of links should be about gaining new users from other sites. We may know differently, but too often newbies get caught up on seeing the little green bar go up and lose

[Alphawolf]

8. Page rank is important, but like all other aspects there is no 'magic bullet' where one thing will rocket you to the top. The purpose of links should be about gaining new users from other sites. We may know differently, but too often newbies get caught up on seeing the little green bar go up and lose sight of more important stuff. I have clients whose #5 referral site is a PR0 while a link on a PR6 site isn’t even in the Top 100 referrals. Don’t become PR prejudice!
9. Domains. This is often our first step…getting a Domain Name. Stick with shorter, easy to brand domain names over www.keyword-keyword-secondarykeyword.com (exceptions for test domains <g>)
*Special Note for Adult site domains: If it’s a really choice domain name and someone is selling it- ask yourself why they are selling it? If they have gotten a Google penalty it will be a huge uphill battle to bring it back to life. *ALWAYS check the Way Back Machine to see what they were sticking on their site!
10. If you use what is commonly called ‘blackhat’ techniques like Cloaking, it is very important you perform your initial tests on a ‘throw away domain’ until you really nail your techniques down.
11. Backlinks with a PR4 and above will show in Google’s Backlinks on toolbar or 'link:www.domain.com' but links from lower PR sites *still* count.
12. Use www.alltheweb.com come to check back links to see as many backlinks as possible regardless of PR. This is my personal choice. Doesn’t mean all those links are counted in Google BUT it can be very useful to see the broader picture. E.g. Google may only show 40 links, but when ya check ATW you see over 500.
13. Useful Google queries "link:www.domain.com". "allinurl:www.domain.com" "allinanchor:word or phrase", “allintitle:word or phrase” Get the Google Hacks book for a lot of cool stuff.
14. A bigger site with more pages that has proper site map MAY benefit from the internal linking, hence the bigger (more content/more pages) is better theory.
15. Buying a text link or any sort of link just for PR is something Google does not like AT ALL. Do not under any circumstances buy a link from a site that references their PageRank in their content!

[Alphawolf]

16 While Page Rank in the Google Toolbar shows as round numbers, Google itself calculates it to fractional numbers. Meaning, even if you show as a PR5 the websites above you who are a PR5 may actually be a PR 5.9 and there is an exponential difference as you go up in Page Rank. Going from a PR4 to 5 is easy. Going from 5-6 is tough but doable. Going from a 6 to 7 gets really friggin’ hard. If you type in just “http:” at Google you’ll see the TOP ranked sites in the World Wide Web- roughly in order.
17. To check all 10 Google data centers at once go to http://googledance.seochat.com/
18. You need a good bit of patience before you see results from SEO techniques to work. Though, Google has been quick to react to changes lately.
19. For immediate visibility check out Overture/AdWords and analyze your potential ROI for various phrases.
20. All the page tweaking and SEOing of a website won’t mean anything unless you have or get LINKS to your site.
21. Utilize ROBOTS.TXT files to save bandwidth on your ‘image’ directory or to 'noindex' a page that you don’t want people to find. One very good example of this is to specifically ban picture bots that do obey robots.txt and to ban the Internet Archive (Way back Machine) bot so that people like me cannot see what your site looked like 6 months ago or a year ago. Often, I have found some juicy info for clients using way back machine and viewing the OLDEST versions of their competitor’s websites. Like personal e-mail accounts, home phone numbers, and general insight into the competition.
22. Follow good coding like DOCTYPES and if possible validation http://validator.w3.org/ Don’t become one of those “I’ll do anything to show my w3c button” to the point where you are spending hours just to validate. Some of the top sites in the world don’t validate and they survive.

[Alphawolf]

1. Go here to learn some stuff for free: http://www.w3schools.com/
2. Go here to get the best books and online video tutorials in my strong opinion: http://www.lynda.com/ You can pay $25/mo and view as many movies as you want. I did this for Adobe illustrator- waited for movie to fully load then copy the movie from my cache folder in order. It’s tedious, but you’ll be able to burn to CDROM and watch at your leisure.
3. This is for Adult sites in particular…for the LOVE OF GOD optimize your image files specifically on your home page! I’ve seen dozens of crap adult sites that are nothing but FireWorks image slices exported into a table. Nothing wrong with that, but if you can easily tweak the JPEG or GIF settings and save as much as 60% without visible degrading in many cases.
4. *****The BEST book you could ever get if you operate a website is also the smallest and quickest to read.******
5. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug ISBN: 0789723107
There ya have it. Those are the basics- of course, I’m leaving out all my best stuff.
I had much of this from a checklist and while all of it will be common sense to some of you, I hope this helps SOME webmasters out there.
Knowing all this is one thing. Implementing it is another deal. Bringing it all together into a coherent design that really works…is a whole other deal completely.
Good luck!
AW

[Linkster]

First off - welcome to the board Alphawolf

Its good to see some overall good general info all in one place - and some good tips - You'll find some other good tips here that tend to apply specifically to the adult side of things that (for lack of a better way of saying it) just aren't talked about over in the WMW supporters forum

[Cleo]

Welcome to the board Alphawolf.

That is some bit of first time opening text.

[docholly]

Wow.. What an Entrance!!!

and Thank you for the Info..

[Jim]

Welcome to GreenguyandJim, Alphawolf
And thank you for the tips...

[Alphawolf]

Thanks for the warm welcome folks.

I never knew a site where a green blob was flippin' me the bird could be so darn helpful!

Likster, what specifically would you or anyone else modify or add to the list that would be more Adult specific?

[MrMaryLou]

Hey welcome to the mix Alphawolf

[Linkster]

One of the things I'd add right now - you mentioned the interlinking of internal pages, which I agree helps - what will add to that is since most people here are doing galleries and free sites underneath their root domain sites, is to make sure you get those little sites linked individually by DMOZ in the proper cat. With the number of directories worldwide (including Google) that use that directory, its a huge boost in backlinks and a "trusted" link.
I hear a lot of people moaning that they can't get listed in DMOZ, and while there were some problems recently with the admin side of the directory, most people that I know that submit there regularly do get listed. There are some rules given in the submit pages and its very important to follow them to the T - things like not repeating a word between the title of the site and the description (seems little but it will get the submit deleted) - not reading the "what type of sites belong in this cat." page etc.
Its just like following the rules for submission to a LinkList - pays to follow them.
With just six of the larger linklists and a DMOZ link, you can pretty much rank in the top 10 for phrases with less than 100k page results in Google "almost" every time. There are some small exceptions where someone has spammed the first 20 listings, but that normally doesn't happen where the resulting SERPs are less than 100k

Back to the original tip though - since you have good links coming into those internal pages, and you interlink and linkback to your root, you help move that linking importance around.

[Alphawolf]

Linkster,

RE: DMOZ...

The scoop on WMW is that it can take forever to never to get listed- particularly for adult sites.

Not that I wouldn't submit...

It would have been awesome to get into DMOZ early with good anchor text. Easily 100's of replicated perfect links across all sorts of sites.

Now...it's just to slow particularly for the Internet.

Submitted my web design site 11 months ago. Checked with resource-zone to see if I was in the right category. Followed the submission guidelines to a T.

REGIONAL listings are often overlooked by people in general as a quick and easy way to get a site into DMOZ. all the sites I've submitted have entered into rgional listings. NONE in their proper categories.

Would hate to see how long the que is for Adult categories.

What has been the average wait time on adult sites?

I'll still do it, but submitting to DMOZ feels like adding a URL to Google's Addurl page.

Know what I mean? :-)

[Alphawolf]

Oh. I forgot add the following tip to that list:

You have to be checking your web stats on a very regular basis. I mean- like a hawk.

Of course, use the tool you prefer and gets the job done for you.

There are free, cheap, packages that come with hosts (sometimes OK) and there are the more granular ones:

Some of the slicker ones:

http://www.netiq.com/webtrends/default.asp

http://www.sane.com/products/NetTracker/

http://www.clicktracks.com/

Your webstats program- "Don't login without it." :-)

[eatapeach]

Originally posted by Linkster
There are some rules given in the submit pages and its very important to follow them to the T - things like not repeating a word between the title of the site and the description (seems little but it will get the submit deleted) - not reading the "what type of sites belong in this cat." page etc.

From the
ODP Adult Guidelines :

"Do not unnecessarily overuse words in the description, or repeat words used in the title. Similarly, keywords that are in the category name should not be repeated in the description. Keyword stuffing or altering descriptions to unfairly position one site over others is considered abuse."

at least they put the rules down in writing rather than let you guess why they reject like some tgps are known to do. |rainfro|

[urb]

Originally posted by Alphawolf
The scoop on WMW is that it can take forever to never to get listed- particularly for adult sites.

I've submitted a lot of both adult and non-adult sites to Dmoz and I think the Adult Dmoz editors are a load faster than the average non-adult Dmoz category editors.

[Alphawolf]

urb,

I guess they like what they do more in checking adult sites!

[urb]

Yep

If the site is good, they'll list it quite fast.

Non Adult Dmoz is a lottery, and usually a much longer wait.

[AussieWebmaster]

Use your alt tags... a lot of adult sites are image heavy and text light... you can cram a few keywords in the alt tag of each photo on the page... it helps.

Name your pages... keywords-separated-by-dashes.html

Title tags are crucial but don't stuff them 3 keyword phrases max.. 10 words total if possible.

also don't go for sex adult pics etc... leave that to the tail chasers... work on more specific terms 3-4 words per phrase... 35% of searches are 3 words.

[DangerDave]

Hosted in CA?
Registered in NYC?

Whats aussie about that?

DD

[AussieWebmaster]

Just the accent and origin of the webmaster!

[AussieWebmaster]

Was banging strippers and hookers in the valley (Brisbane) long before it was legal or trendy or you were born no doubt mate.

[urb]

I just saw a site that was using some very old (and dangerous IMO) techniques... for example 3 titles on an index page.

<title>keyword 1</title>
<title>keyword 2</title>
<title>keyword 3</title>

But however temporary a ploy this may be, the site remains at number 2 in the serps.

[Alphawolf]

Originally posted by urb
I just saw a site that was using some very old (and dangerous IMO) techniques... for example 3 titles on an index page.

<title>keyword 1</title>
<title>keyword 2</title>
<title>keyword 3</title>

But however temporary a ploy this may be, the site remains at number 2 in the serps.

urb,

I noticed when searching for "girls name pics" on certain girls one dude with probably a 100+ or far more domains used all sorts of iffy stuff. His crap was spread across the top 20 results.

And no- he didn't even have thumbs of the girls. Massive keyword stuffing and probably interlinking shoe horned him in.

Luckily, I was often greeted by some nice TPG's too.

But- on a lot of stuff especially when there seems to be SPACE at the bottom I CTRL+A and see all the wonderful hidden text. Even a rather high profile site has about 800px of space then using FONT tags hidden text. Using FONT tags and specifying a color same as the specified BG color *should* flag an automated penelty from Google.

Sing after me..."It's a spammy world afterall...it's a spammy world afterall...it's a spammy world afterall...it's a spammy spammy world."

[urb]

It is a spammy world.