This post suggests initial steps to be taken when launching a site to ensure that the process of search engine indexing gets off to an early start.  These steps should be taken as soon as the domain has been purchased, whilst the site is in development.

Step 1. Holding Page

Google and the other major search engines take time to index a site and also take the time that a site has been active as a ranking factor.  It is therefore important to create a holding page on the chosen domain as soon as possible.

As soon as the information becomes available the <title>, Meta-tags and page content should be optimised to contain the keyphrases for the site.

Step 2. Launch Blog

It is a well know ranking factor that search engine place a premium on unique, frequently updated content.  For these reasons, as well as to introduce the people running the site to the wonderful world of blogging, a blog should be started on the domain as soon as possible.  This blog should be placed at the same URL as the final destination of the blog e.g. www.yoursite.co.uk/blog

As soon as the blog has been launched it can be added to blog search engines and directories such as Technorati and Google blog search.

Step 3. Build Incoming Links

Best practice for getting a site initially indexed by Google is to quickly build some quality incoming links.  The following are sources of quick link wins:

• Sites you already own e.g. a blog
• Supplier sites
• Business Partner sites e.g. your web developer

Step 4. Google Webmaster tools

Google webmaster tools, including Google Sitemaps, are a set of tools which allows webmasters to inform Google as to the constituent pages on their site and also provide the webmaster with information on the performance of their website e.g. number of pages indexed.  Installing Google webmaster tools on a site is an important step to getting a site indexed on Google and therefore all sites should have google webmaster code integrated from launch.

See http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Step 5. Google Analytics

All live sites should also implement Google Analytics so that we can immediately start measuring the performance of the site.
 

I have some across some interesting information recently about analysing the traffic going to competitor websites.

Firstly, Andrew Girdwood wrote an interesting post on the eConsultancy website on the matter - Andrew is head of Search at Big Mouth Media, a leading SEO company so probably know what he is talking abou.

Secondly, was just looking on the TechCrunch website and found a post on an interesting new service call Xinu which shows all the publically available info about a website in one place

Consumers are increasingly turning to search engines such as Google and Yahoo as a convenient and quick way of finding products and services. Fifty percent of online purchases start with an online search and the market is growing by 30% per year representing a huge opportunity to drive traffic to your website, increase sales and acquire customers.

To get significant clicks, your pages will need to appear high up in search results, preferably on the first page. The process of organizing your website so that it appears prominently in the results of searches relevant to your products is known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Many companies underestimate the potential of SEO. However, using some simple techniques it is possible for even organizations with a limited budget to improve their performance.

How Search Engines Rank Web pages

The inner workings of search engines can seem mysterious. However, whilst they have complex and constantly evolving systems for producing their results, there are two fundamental sets of factors which their software considers when ranking sites.

On-Page Optimization. To produce their results search engines create a database of the content contained on millions of web pages. When performing a search, the search engines use the position and frequency of the words on the pages to judge how relevant the page is to that search. Pages which feature the search terms more prominently will rank more highly in the results.

Link-building. Search engines consider each link from another web page as a vote for that page. For any given search, pages which have more links will rank higher. It is not just the quantity but also the quality of links which is important. For example, a link from www.bbc.co.uk carries more weight than that from www.trevorginn.com (unfortunately).
How to Optimize Your Website

Step 1: Research Keywords

Keyword research and selection is core to success in SEO. Start off by making a list of the areas of your website to which you would like to drive traffic. For each of these areas brainstorm the phrases which your customers might use if they wished to find your services. To help you find keywords you can use tools such as Yahoo’s keyword tool (http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion ), Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com ), your competitors websites and if available, information from your weblog.

When you have built your list, select 2-3 key phrases for each page you wish to optimize. Choose phrases which you think will drive targeted traffic to your website but be careful not to choose phrases which are too generic or too popular. For example, there will be fierce competition to rank highly for the word insurance. However, a more specific phrase such as flood insurance will be less competitive and bring more targeted traffic.

More info:
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Choosing-Keywords-Help/

Step 2: Eliminate Barriers to Indexing

If a search engine cannot read your site, then no matter how relevant your content, you will never appear in the search results. Search engines have difficulty reading sites which make use of frames/tables, flash, javascript and content management systems. To find out how many pages in your site Google has indexed type site:yoursite.com into the search bar. If significant pages are missing you may have to review how your site is constructed.

More info:
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Search-Engine-Spiders-Help/

Step 3: On Page Optimization Factors

The frequency, position and emphasis of the key phrases on your site are very important for optimization. The challenge is to produce copy which reads well and also contains your relevant keywords. The following is a list of important factors:

• Keyword frequency. Repeat your keywords throughout your page. To do this you can vary the usage of the keywords e.g. eBay store, eBay stores, eBay stores in the UK
• Position. It is best to position your keywords in the first and last paragraphs
• Emphasis. Include the keywords in your page headings and use bolding in the text
• Tags. The Title tag on a webpage is the most important factor in optimizing a webpage and so it should contain your most important keywords for that page
• Repetition. A keyword will hold more weight if it is included in several areas of the page including the title tag, page content and the URL.

In addition to optimizing current content, consider creating new content for your site. This could take the form of new pages for your products, guides, press releases or a blog. Remember that good quality content will attract visitors.

More Info:
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Google-Optimization-Help/
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Search-Engine-Optimization-Help/

Step 4: Off-Page Optimization Factors

One of the reasons for the dramatic growth of the Internet is the ease with which related sites and pages within sites can link to each other. Search engines use the number of links to a page as an indication of the importance of a page. All other things being equal, for a given search phrase, the page with the most links will get the highest position in the search engine results. It is therefore important to increase the number of links to your site to improve your rankings. There are six main strategies for increasing links:

1. Natural link-building through quality content. Sites with good quality content will naturally receive links from other sites whose owners believe the linked content is a good resource for their visitors.
2. Requesting inbound-only links. Enter your site into online directories and ask your business partners, clients and staff to link to your site.
3. Reciprocal linking. Requesting link exchanges with other websites to build the number of links to your site.
4. Creating your own internal links. Creating links between your internal pages contributes to their rankings.
5. Generating a buzz through PR. Submit press releases and articles to relevant websites

More info:
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Web-Directories/
http://www.seochat.com/c/b/Link-Trading-Help/
http://www.toprankblog.com/2005/10/lowdown-on-press-release-optimization/

Step 5: Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

It is important to monitor the traffic to your site to see where your visitors are coming from and what search phrases they are using. This information can then be used to refine your site. Google provides a free tracking system called Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics ) and there are also other free services such as Statcounter (www.statcounter.com ).

This Article originally appeared in Auctionbytes

This article recently appeared in auctionbytes newsletter.

Despite 50% of online purchases being researched via a search engine, most eBay sellers ignore the potential of search engines to drive traffic to their listings. By optimizing your eBay presence your products could improve their rankings in the search results on major search engines and boost your sales.

High rankings can drive huge amounts of traffic to your products. Some companies spend millions search engine optimizing their sites but even with limited resources it is still possible to apply techniques which will increase the rankings of your eBay shop and listings.

How to search engines work?

When looking for a product a customer visits a search engine and enters a search term or keyword, for which the search engine produces a list of results which it considers to be most relevant. It is by understanding how this list of results is produced that your eBay page can be optimized.

The ranking of a web page for a keyword depends on three things:

1. The links going to that web page
Search engines consider an inbound link as a vote of popularity. Google, for example, gives each web page a score of 1 to 10 (called a pagerank) depending on the number and origin of inbound links. For a given search the page with the higher pagerank will appear higher in the list of search results.

2. The position and frequency of the keyword on the web page.
When producing results for a search term, search engines will rank your pages based on the keywords they contain and their prominence on the page.

3. The content of the page’s HTML tags
The search engine also looks at the content of the title and Meta tags of the page’s HTML code.

When listing on eBay you have direct control over the content and hence the keywords you include. You can, however, only access the page tags indirectly, through configuring your shop and listings.

How to optimize your eBay Shop and listings

Step 1: Choose Your Keywords

The first stage of search engine optimization is to choose the keywords for which you would like to be found.

To select keywords put yourself in the shoes of your customers and consider what keywords you would enter if you were looking for your products. eBay shop traffic reports are useful as they contain the search terms that users are entering in order to find your listings. You can also use Yahoo’s keyword tool for popular web search keywords and eBay Pulse to find popular eBay searches. Choose more general keywords for your eBay shop and product specific keywords for your individual listings.

For example a PDA seller might choose Palm, Handheld and PDA as keywords for their shop. For the listings they also use the keywords referring to the item model number and features.

Step 2: Optimize your eBay presence

Repeating a keyword in a number of different places such as your shop URL, title and item description will increase the search engine’s perception of how relevant your webpage is to a particular keyword. However, be careful not to go overboard this is know as ‘keyword spamming’ and is penalized by the search engines. As well as containing keywords, your description should be clear and readable.

Your shop name. Your shop name appears in your eBay shop’s URL and ideally it should contain your most important keywords.

For example a bike shop seller might choose ‘Mountain-Bikes-UK’ which would give a shop URL of http://stores.eBay.co.uk/mountain-bikes-uk

Your item title, description, shop custom pages and about me page. The title which you give your product is very important as it also appears in the

Your product description and custom pages copy should also include your keywords. Search engines attach the most importance to words in titles and bolded words, so ensure that you have placed you keywords prominently.

For example a good item title would be Palm T3 Handheld PDA New Boxed rather than Palm T3 New Boxed as the latter can not be found for searches for PDA or handheld.

Your eBay ID. eBay includes your user ID in the

Try and choose a memorable and individual eBay ID, as this will help customers find your eBay presence by searching. For example an eBay name like “PDA-Wonderland” will be easier to find in Google than “Online-Deals”.

Your shop keywords. In the Manage my Shop area eBay enables the selection of search engine keywords. Once again these keywords appear in the

Also make sure to include your keywords in your shop’s description as this appears in the description Meta tag of your eBay shop pages.

Reviews and guides. eBay reviews and guides are a great way of driving traffic to your listings, from both inside and outside eBay. As eBay is a major website, content is well indexed by the search engines and articles containing your chosen keywords, linked to your eBay shop have the potential to drive traffic to your listings.

Step 3: Build links to your shops and listings

To improve the pagerank of your eBay shop, create as many links to your eBay shop as possible. Encourage your business partners to link to your eBay shop and you should enter your shop into online directories such as Listmystore.com. Do not ignore the potential of links within eBay to boost your pagerank. Always link to your eBay shop from your listings and also from all of your guides or reviews.

Step 4: Track your performance

Once your have optimized your eBay presence it is important to constantly track your performance and make improvements. All eBay shop sellers have access to traffic reports which allow you to see the keywords used to find your listings and the search engines that driving traffic to your shop. If you wish to see more in depth statistics, use Sellathon which can give you the traffic data for individual listings and pages.

Search engine optimisation for eBay has two purposes.

1. Ensuring that your product for sale on eBay are found by the major search engines
2. Promoting your brand through eBay.

This article covers the ways in which eBay can be optimised for search engine inclusion

Optimisting eBay Item Description Copy

As with any webpage, keywords in the titles and copy of the page contribute to search engine rankings. Choses three or so keywords for each page and ensure that they are in your item title and in any secondary titles. You should also bold the keywords once each. Your keywords are probably the brands of the products which you sell.

Optimising eBay Custom Pages and About Me Page

These pages should be used to build your brand on eBay and promote your business in general. Ensure that the pages include keywords about your business. For example on the auctioning4u eBay shop the Our Services page has been renamed to Our eBay Drop-Off Service

Remember that you are allowed to have a link to your website on your about me page. This contributes to the page rank of your website.

Adding Keywords to eBay shops

In the eBay shop setup there is a option for search engine optimisation of the shop. In this area it is possible to enter keywords for which you wish the shop to be found. These words are placed in the

Completing the keywords for all your eBay pages is an extremely effective way for your eBay shop to be found. Take care that your keywords reflect search queries for which you wish to be found.

Shop Categories

For the shop category homepages, the name of the shop category appears in the

Optimising Shop names and eBay Usernames

eBay shop names appear in the

Reviews and Guides

Articles and guides are new to eBay and so it is not clear how much they can contribute to SEO. I would recommend that you write a few buyers guides to your products and then link these back to your eBay shops.

eBay guides cannot link outside eBay so use guides to drive traffic to your eBay shop.

I have recently placed our companies on Google Maps and I have made some interesting observations on how to optimise this service

Optimising Keywords

It would seem on Google Maps that their is no limit to how long the company name can be. It is therefore possible to add keywords to the title which will be found by Google search. Here is an example. Imagine you run a recruitment agency for actors called Cast in London. You could give your company’s entry in Google Maps the title

Cast

and place it in the recruitment category Which will ensure that it turns up for searches for recruitment in London. Alternatively you could give it the title

Cast - Actors Recruitment Agency

Which will mean that it will also turn up for searches on these extra keywords

Adding multiple services

To optimise how you are found, you could list multiple entries for your company on Google Maps for the different services you provide. Imagine that our fictional agency also recruits for singers and directors. You could then create two additional entries for your company e.g.

Cast - Singers Recruitment Agency

Cast - Directors Recruitment Agency

Enabling you to appear in extra search results.

Recently I been singing the virtues of search engine optimisation to anyone who will listen. To help explain matters I have written a short intro to the subject to explain the basic concepts

Introduction

Online search is growing massively with users increasingly relying on the main search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN to find information and inform purchasing decisions. Optimising your site so that it appears highly in the search engine results for searches relevant to your business is a very cost effective way of marketing. If your business cannot be found by the search engines then it is invisible to a huge potential audience.
What is Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines can find information quickly as they build an index of a huge number of web pages and their content. When a web search is performed it is this index and not the internet which is searched.

When a search is performed, the search engine searches its index for pages containing the search word or phrase and it will return a list of results displayed in sequence according to its ranking algorithm.

The method for achieving a high placement on the search results page is called search engine optimization (SEO). The objective is to gain a high placement for searches which are relevant to your website.
What should I do to?

Step 1: Research Keywords

Web surfers search on keywords and so it is important to establish the words and phrases for which you would like your site to be found. If the words are not there, you will never appear in the search results. You can do this by looking at search popularity tools such as http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ or by looking at your web logs.

Step 2: Eliminate barriers to indexing

The first goal of SEO is to ensure that the search engine spiders can properly index or read all the pages of your site. If a search engine cannot index your site, then no matter how relevant your content, you will never appear in the search results. Barriers to inclusion include the use of frames/tables, flash, javascript and content management systems

Step 3: Get Indexed

Search engines are constantly scouring the web for new pages. If, after you have solved any technical issues, your site is still not being indexed, most search engines have a site submission page which you can use. Google also has a tool called Google sitemaps (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap ) which helps Google index sites.

Step 4: On Page Optimisation factors

Search engines assess each web pages and assign importantance to the words and phrases on it. It is therefore vital that you optimise your page for the words which you think are most important. Think of a search engine as like a person. When you read a document you pay most attention to the words which are in the titles, near the top of the page and in bold. Here is a quick list of areas of your page to optimise for your chosen keywords

• Page meta tags such as and
• Pages titles
• Your first and last paragraph

Each page should be treated individually with different keywords relating to the content of the page. It is no good giving each page the same treatment.

Step 5: Off Page Optimisation factors

Search engines use the number of links going to a page as an indication of the importance of a page. All other things being equal, for a given search phrase, the page with the most links will get the higher position in the search engine results. It is therefore important to build the number of links into your site to increase your rankings. This can be done by having quality content to which people want to link, asking for links from your business partners or buying links.
Step 6: Monitor, Monitor, Monitor

It is important to monitor the traffic to your site to see where your visitors are coming from and what search phrases they are using. This information can then be used to refine your site. Google provides a free tracking system called Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) and there are also other free services such as Statcounter (www.statcounter.com).