An SEO’s Guide to Web Site Building
By Richard A. Baize ©2006 Internet-Marketing-One.Com

Introduction

Three search engines control approximately 95% of all worldwide search engine traffic; Google (43%); Yahoo (30%); and MSN (22%). Ensuring your web site is built so it can rank well with these search engines is the vital part of building a web site. After all have a web site that nobody finds is like owning a store with no customers.

The factors that determine how well a web site ranks number over 200 per search engine but we can break them down into three major categories; Structure, Popularity, and Content. Any SEO company that guarantees a particular position on a specific search engine is misleading you.

This informational brochure is to guide you to creating a web site that does rank well with search engines that brings you visibility and subsequent business.

While it is our hope you will ask us to build or repair your web site so it ranks high with all search engines, we sincerely hope you find this information useful and it helps lead you to solutions that raise your web site’s search engine rankings even if you choose not to have us do the work.

Keywords and Phrases

The first step in either building a new web site or reconstructing an old web site is determining the primary keyword or phrase the site will be constructed around. Also secondary keywords and phrases will also be selected at this early stage.

Keywords and phrases are the important words you believe people use to look for goods and services like yours. The use of these words and phrases in a web page is a vital component to any page that wishes to rank well with any search engine. Proper placement of these keywords and phrases throughout an html document goes a long way to getting a page to rank high. Improper keyword placement or over use of keywords or phrases (called keyword spamming) can actually hurt a site’s ranking or bring search engine penalties and even site banning from a search engine.

How do you select the best keyword? You select the best keyword or phrase by brainstorming all employees as to what they think people would use to search for products and services like yours. You can look at competitor’s web pages to see what words they are emphasizing. You can use online tools to help you select the best keyword. Overature.com, which is owned by Yahoo, has a keyword tool that allows you to see what people actually used last month. Just enter a keyword or phrase and you get the results as well as many other possible keywords and phrases. This tool for all servers as at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.

Some keywords and phrases are so competitive that it is impossible to capture the internet market and rank high enough to make a difference. Generally any keyword that has more then 20 million web sites indexed for it will be difficult to capture. The best keyword or phrase is one that would be used most of the time for your target audience but narrow enough as not to compete with the entire market.

Companies like Internet-Marketing-One.Com has sophisticated software’s that can pretty accurately predict the daily internet traffic a web site would attain for any keywords and phrases. They can also see if a marketing effort for a particular keyword or phrase will be worthwhile by predicting its probability of success.

When you are done with your brainstorming and research you should have a list of keywords and phrases with the best on top as the primary and a projection as to what traffic your will obtain if your web page attains the first page for this keyword or phrase in Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Selecting a domain name

Ideally your domain name should contain your primary keyword with in it and it should be in the most prominent position in the domain name (first). For example: If you choose the keyword/phrase “dog food” as your primary keyword/phrase then your domain ideally would be www.dog-food.com. If that domain was already taken select an alternative that keeps the keyword/phrase the most prominent, like www.dog-food-here.com, not www.here-dog-food.com.

Constructing a Home page and web site

A web site’s home page is the most important page for getting a high search engine ranking. A home page can only be constructed around one primary keyword or phrase. Additional keywords can be included in the code where ever they do not detract from the primary keyword or phrase. Let me give you an example which explains this. While there are over 200 individual ranking criteria one is keyword/phrase Prominence. This means how close to the beginning of an html section a keyword is used. The closer to the beginning the keyword or phrase is used the more prominent it is. There is only one most prominent position per html section, like the Title Tag, so only the one keyword or phrase will be the most prominent and other keywords or phrases used would not be as prominent. So while we may include several keywords and phrases in a page, that page needs to concentrate on a primary keyword or phrase and your current page does not.

Ensure your home page has all required Meta tags, title and body text and is structured to ensure your primary keyword is used prominently in each section of the home page.

All remaining pages in the site should be modified clones of this optimized home page changing only the basic page content, title, etc.

Avoid dynamic or complex URL string sites like php or asp types. While most engines do index Active Server Pages (usually ending in .ASP), only Direct Hit, Lycos, HotBot, Google, and Alta Vista are known to handle the special characters (? or &) usually tacked on the end of an ASP page. This means that while most engines can index a URL like http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.asp, only Lycos, Google, and HotBot are known to index a URL like http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.asp?id=302&custid=997.You should instead create static optimized pages if you were planning to submit URLs with? or & in the URL. Keep it simple to rank higher.

If you have a shopping cart be sure your cart is search engine friendly. An unfriendly ecommerce solution will make your site rank lower because search engine will be unable to crawl or spider the site due to the complex url string caused by the session code url.

Pages Published (Content)

One of the factors all search engines, especially Google, use to rank the value of a web site is the number of pages published within it. They assume the more pages, the more value a site has and the higher rank it is assigned. You need to keep regularly publishing new pages with fresh content. Adding pages and/or making changes to existing pages regularly are important per all major search engines ranking criteria. Make small changes on old pages to give them a new save to stay fresh.

Link Popularity

Link Popularity is another big factor in a web site’s search engine ranking. This is how many other web sites have your site hyperlinked off of their site. The more sites that link to your site the higher popularity your site has and the higher your site is ranked by a search engine.

High link popularity is usually achieved by implementing a reciprocal link program where you exchange links with other sites in order to mutually increase your collective sites popularity. It is important to ensure only similar content sites are exchanged with to avoid search engine link farm penalties.

Google’s Sandbox Filter

There are many articles published on the internet about this filter Google appears to have implemented in March 2004. What this filter does is basically penalize all newly published web sites for approximately 1 year, so if your site has been published over a year ago this probably doesn’t apply to you. This filter artificially prevents new web sites from ranking as high as their popularity and structure should rank them. There are several theories about why Google implemented this filter, one reason being to fight web spammers who publish quick single page sites and load it with an excessive number of targeted keywords (keyword spamming). Another reason may be this filter inflates the value of Google’s Adwords by increasing demand for a high Google Ranking thereby increasing the value and price of Google’s sponsored rankings in Adwords. The best any SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) can do to combat this Sandbox is get you ranked well in Yahoo and MSN and wait eight months to a year to exit the sandbox. After this time passes if you are ranked high in Yahoo and MSN you will probably jump to an equally good ranking in Google.

Conclusion

We hope you find this information useful. If you wish we can help you raise your search engine rankings. We emphasize Google, Yahoo and MSN who control over 95% of the worldwide search engine market, but will also work with all other major search engines.

Whether you, a competitor or you ask us to do your web site work we sincerely hope this brochure was useful to you and your web site now or in the very near future ranks high in all major search engines.

About the Author: Richard A. Baize is a 29 year retired United States Air Force Officer, formerly a base communication commander. Before retiring he spent 1-1/2 tours at Andrews AFB and in the Pentagon as the Plans and Programs Division Chief in charge of future development and modernization of all ANG computers and communications worldwide. He currently owns a couple internet businesses, one being an Internet Marketing One.Com. He also substitute teaches at local schools grade K-12.