A common misconception of search engine optimization (SEO) is that websites on the first page of Google, pay for it (monetarily), but this could not be farther from the truth. There are hundreds of tips and tricks for becoming number one, but there is no secret way to somehow "pay off" Google.
One of the most critical errors businesses make is ignoring SEO in the initial web design process. Many of these errors can be covered up or improved slightly, but large gaffes in design can cause long term traffic loss and a quick path to an unsuccessful business.
Therefore, I would highly recommend that you hire an SEO/Web Design expert to create your website and optimize it for you (like Imperial Marketing Concepts). This will assure you that it has been done right and that the back end SEO processes are complete. It is far more difficult to go back and optimize (on the back-end) once the site is already established.
Even if you do hire us to do your website/seo, it is important for clients to understand these points below, because a lot of times clients will demand certain elements within their website that we know are not SEO friendly, and quickly dismiss our suggestions because they do not have a proper understand of SEO.
Here are some solid tips for the first steps of creating your website, and your site content:
1. DOMAINS: Pick a short, relevant url. I like to recommend using a .com, because while search engines may not discriminate, people do and having a .com address makes your business seem more legitimate and it helps users to avoid mistakes like accidentally going to yourdomainname.com instead of yourdomainname.biz. However, if your domain name is not available in a .com, do NOT add hyphens… Studies suggest that these are seen as a poor quality signal to the search engines, and they retain many of the same qualities as the URLs that keyword stuff (like discountcouponpromos.com): lower clickthrough rates, and a strong sign that your website is not one worth linking to.
2. URL STRUCTURE: The biggest, and most difficult to repair problem with many websites is their initial URL structure and Site Architecture decisions. For a contact page, your site should simply be www.yourdomain.com/contact/ NOT www.yourdomain.com/website/funny/penguin/content/contact/
3. CONTENT: If you read my last post, you probably got a good idea about good vs. bad content. But just to recap, there are a few problems that arise here: not enough of it and duplicating it too often. Not enough content could include having little or no information in the first place, placing everything in tables, or putting your text into flash or javascript. Duplicating is when a website repeats content on several pages, most often product pages. Search engines see this as a duplicate content error and cause some pages to be deindexed or devalued, or worse, make the search engine hate the entire site.
4. COOL IT ON THE FLASH: Some websites will use Flash and JavaScript too heavily and completely ignore standardized text. This text is a strong sign of keyword relevancy to search engines and is vital to get pages to appear properly optimized for a search term you want to rank for. Search engines do NOT read content within flash/javascript.
I think that's a good starting point. Whether you use Imperial Marketing Concepts or take these first steps yourself, make sure you follow these rules now so you can avoid a major headache later on.
