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Back in October 2004 I launched a series of articles outlining the ten crucial steps to a well optimized website. The steps were:

1.Keyword Selection
2.Content Creation
3.Site Structure
4.Optimization
5.Internal Linking
6.Human Testing
7.Submissions
8.Link Building
9.Monitoring
10.The Extras (all those things that didn’t fit in the first 9 steps)

Well in case you’ve been asleep for the last few years on in case you’ve just recently joined us in the SEO-realm, I – along with some of my good friends in the web marketing world – have decided to re-write the series with new information and new perspectives.

The New Series

In our updated series we’ll be dropping some of the articles and adding others to account for changes in the industry. Another major change in this series is that we’re going to compliment it with a weekly segment on Webmaster Radio’s Webcology (http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Search-Engine-Optimization/Webcology/) on Thursday afternoon at 2PM EST where we’ll be conducting interviews and discussing tools with their manufacturers to help our readers and listeners make the most of this information. If you miss the show, you can always download the podcast free of charge afterwards.

The 10 steps covered in this series will be:

1.Keyword Research & Selection
2.Competition Analysis
3.Site Structure
4.Content Optimization
5.Link Building
6.Social Media
7.PPC
8.Statistics Analysis
9.Conversion Optimization
10.Keeping It Up
Step One: Keyword Research & Selection
There are two times in a site’s life when keyword research is conducted – when researching a site to rank in the organic results on the search engines and when researching keywords for a PPC campaign. In our article today we’re going to focus on the former and save the research involved with PPC campaigns for step seven in this series.

So we’ve got the topic down to “just” keyword research and selection for organic SEO campaigns – from there the topic once again gets split into a variety of areas. Those that we will cover here are:

The raw data
Studying those who’ve gone before
Understanding your choices

The Raw Data

The raw data is the raw estimated searches/day that you can expect a phrase to get on the major search engines. There are a number of tools you can use to compile this information. Here are some of the more commonly used:
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Index is a website which contains details and links to millions of websites divided to categories and topics. Indexes can have multiple purposes.

Local Business Index – like Yellow pages. This kind of indexes apply to people who are searching for services in their town or area. It is a good idea to sign your company into few such indexes in case your business is locally oriented like flower shop or electrician. Inclusion in these indexes , at least the most popular of them , is usually quite expensive but also useful from the point of view of customers seeking local service and search engines, since you can include your site URL and earn a strong incoming link .

Global Business Index – like Hoovers.com or business.com. These indexes usually contain data about large companies with turnover of few millions of dollars a year. Not everyone is able to enter such index, although some of them allow small companies listing in exchange for reciprocal link or inclusion fee . Inclusion in these indexes is important to large companies who apply to customers worldwide , and they also give a good incoming link in terms of SEO.

The third type of indexes is Internet indexes which main purpose is to provide incoming links to websites. Usually these indexes are manually edited which means it can take months before the editor approves your link. Some indexes like yahoo require inclusion fee , some are free, like DMOZ and some require fee or reciprocal link. Website promoters largely use indexes to provide the new built websites with incoming links, although , not all indexes are usefull and important in terms of link strength and website promotion. Therefore I suggest to submit your website to as much as possible free indexes but be careful before paying for listing or exchanging links with nameless indexes.

In this article I will list some of the most important indexes to be included in.

General Guidelines to submitting your website to index:

Make sure your website has no pages “Under construction” or “Not exist” (Error 404) , since some indexes might disqualify your website because of that.
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Reading a website is not similar to reading a book or a newspaper, therefore before you start spilling money on campaigns be sure your site is built in accordance with internet writing standards. Lets talk about few simple rules you don’t want to break when building a website:

Don’t waste your visitors time

Time is money. Most people decide whether they are interested in what the website has to offer in just to seconds. Therefore make sure your landing page provides the most crucial and appealing information about your business.

Number one time waster is a heavy loading pages with lot’s of flash animations and pictures. Make sure your web pages are not too heavy otherwise you might loose your visitors before they entered your website.

Most of the visitors need to find what they are looking for fast, otherwise they look for it elsewhere. As a webmaster you must make sure your data is well categorizes and divided to relevant pages , categories, headlines and sub-titles. A visitor must be able to navigate your website easily and successfully.
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Color is a very important aspect of design and website in general. Picking the wrong colors may repel your costumers in subconscious level and make your website and business look amateurish and unreliable. Many things have been said about colors and what they represent. In this article I will explain some basic rules in choosing website color.

Colors are connected to certain associations, this is something to keep in mind. Red is a color associated with danger and it is very intensive, therefore you shouldn’t make it the dominant color if you want to create calm, reliable atmosphere. Pink is a very feminine color so you better use it in websites related to children and women. Blue is the most popular color when it comes to website design because it represents calmness and reliability. White is the most popular color for a background, although many websites use black and dark backgrounds.
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Advantages of a custom website versus using a Website Builder Tool

The internet has revolutionized business all around the globe. Almost every competent new or existing business wishes to exploit the incredible potential of the internet, and the first step is to have a web site designed done and maintained by a professional web site design service or build and maintain it yourself. One of the first things to consider is your computer ability. If you despise computers and software and find them confusing and frustrating then building your own website can be quite a task. One that you may not want to undertake. However, if you enjoy working with computers and learning new things or if you just have the patience to stick with it, then building a website is within your grasp. You may also decide to do it yourself to save cost. If you still feel that you want to build your own site you should choose software that is easy to use and user friendly.

Your website should be as unique as you and your business. You should select the website that is specialized in what will meet all your needs, both now and in the future. Custom based websites are for those who already have a website but are looking for those special finishing touches that quality custom graphics can provide. Designer graphics can make your website stand out above the rest and a custom website specializes in taking your original graphic or photo and turning it into a unique work of art. Quality graphics make an incredible difference in the visual appeal of your website.

Actual site “content” continues to be essential to the success of a website. More often than not though, visual appeal is the determining factor as to whether or not a client or customer will remain on a website long enough, to actually see the product or service the business is providing. Custom websites are for those who don’t have the time to design or create, but want to get things mush better and fast with a nice graphics.

Web site builders are online tools which anyone can use to build a professional looking Web site without programming and have it hosted instantly. No software to buy, no code to learn, all you need is to be a little Internet savvy and know how to click your mouse.
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A Proven Formula for All Websites

Every business needs a website. It is an absolute MUST! Nowadays, it’s like not being in the phone book. The Internet is a digitally-indexed database that is searchable. Whenever anyone wants to know more about anything, they look it up on the Internet, in their own time, 24/7, without the pressure of a sales person. With search engines, such as Google.com or Yahoo.com, the information they are looking for can be found in seconds.

If you aren’t where people are looking, you CAN’T get the sale.

Even if you aren’t planning on selling anything online, you still need to have an Internet presence, telling your story and being a 24/7 sales person for you. The Internet is information. So, even if you just have an informational website, people can find out more about you, your company, what you have to offer, and why they should choose you over your competition. A website gives you the opportunity to get all of that across to your potential customer.

Following, are proven components of a website and why you will need them in yours.

A Home Page is the window into your website and should be short, sweat, and to the point. Statistically, it has been proven that you get about 3 seconds, once a person arrives at your website, to get them interested enough to click for more information. If you can get them to click, then you have them! If you try to give them all of the information at once, then you will lose them.

Some websites try to give you their inventory on the home page, or write a story that scrolls forever. This is not good. A home page should not scroll. This is a big “No No”. When people get to a home page and see paragraphs, trust me, they go on to the next website. It needs graphics that represent the services, happy pictures, happy customers, and a quick sales pitch. Remember, people are lazy and won’t read large amounts of text, unless they have a need to. And included on the home page, needs to be quickly gotten across, why someone should use you over your competitor.

The About Us page sometimes gets left off, in favor of making the home page the About Us page. You will want to have an About Us page that explains in detail what you have to offer, your history, your mission statement, and a good reason that a potential customer should use buy from you over your competitor. This can be seen as the detailed version of the home page. However, it is a mistake to forgo the About Us page in exchange for a detailed home page. Again, this will just push people away who do not want to read all of the details to find out who you are and what you have to offer. This information should be available for those who wish to see more information after they are intrigued by the home page.

Design rules. For uniformity and good design, websites (any marketing piece) should have rules for graphic elements and text. For example, all headings should be the same size/style/color, etc. All subheads should have their own size/style/color, etc. This helps the eye make sense of what it is looking at. Guide your visitor with well-placed graphics and text.

Make sure that your website has good navigation, with buttons/links for all main sections of your website. And be sure to keep these navigation buttons/links visible on ANY page. There is nothing more frustrating than to not be able to find your way while browsing a website. People will leave before becoming too frustrated. Don’t let this happen on your website!

The constant, flashing email (or other) button/advertisement is a “No No” these days. In the old days, flashing and blinking graphics were used. As websites became more graphically sophisticated, these types of elements were not used any more. It can be annoying to see something flashing just off your vision, when you are trying to read the web page.

Text links at the bottom are rarely used any more. They were implemented back in the day of the text-based websites, when they were just starting out. This was for the dial-up users who had the option to turn off graphics for faster web page loading. When this happened, there were no links for navigation, unless a webmaster placed text links at the bottom. Nowadays, most people have broadband connections, and this just isn’t necessary any more.

The biggest problem I see with websites these days is that a person has to read quite a bit to see what, exactly, a website is selling. When people show up at your website, you get about 3 seconds to peak their interest. Get it across very quickly, with icons/graphics/bullet points that are easy to understand. Tell them why they should choose you over your competition. And then tell them where to go to get started.
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Writing your quality articles using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will insure that your articles will be both easy to read and aesthetically pleasing to the viewer.

A CSS style sheet allows the HTML code for your articles to be cleaner, table-less, easily customizable, and “liquid.”

Removing the display attributes of your articles from the HTML code allows you to concentrate on using the HTML for organizing your document’s content.

When you use CSS, a new approach is possible to writing your articles for the Web:

* First, you write your article in a very basic HTML document, using simple HTML code. At this stage, use only the most common HTML tags. Focus on organizing your article’s content first.

* Next, you identify parts of your document for special display formatting.

* Finally, you define the formatting in the CSS file.

Once you work through this process, you can reuse both the HTML document and the CSS file as templates for your future, quality articles.

This article will provide the tips, tricks, and sample code to give you a head start in creating your own quality articles and templates using CSS. If this all seems complex and intimidating at first, don’t despair–read on. I will explain the basic HTML and CSS terminology throughout the article.

THE BASIC HTML DOCUMENT

The basic HTML document is devided into several sections: html, head, and body.

Tags are used to demarcate document sections, or “elements.” Content lies between the tags. For example, the article you are now reading lies between the body tags of an html document.

Tags usually exist in pairs, a start tag and and end tag. The start tag is surrounded by less-than and greater-than angle brackets. An end tag is bracketed with the same symbols but the first character of the tag is a forward slash (/). For example, HTML code for a paragraph element would include the start and end “p” tags with the content sandwiched between the two.

The basic tag pairs found in web pages are:

* html — These tags tell a browser that this is an HTML document and define the start and end of the document.

* head — The head element can contain information about the document. Although the browser does not present the information to a viewer, the information can be “seen” and used by search engines.

* title — The title tags define the title element that will be used by a browser for the document’s title.

* body — The document’s content is placed between the body tags.

In HTML 4.01, not all tags exist in pairs. The “!DOCTYPE” and “meta” tags do not use an end tag, for instance.

The first line of code in the basic document is the Document Type Definition (DTD). The !DOCTYPE tag tells the browser which HTML or XHTML specification the document uses. HTML 4.01 specifies three document types: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset.

The first meta tag in the basic HTML document provides information about how the page-content characters are encoded so that a browser can interpret them correctly.

If you want your articles to be widely seen on the Internet, you need to be particularly interested in the meta tags for keywords and description. These can be seen and used by search engines.

Use the “keyword name” and its related “content” in a meta tag to list your keywords or keyword phrases.

Keywords ought to be appropriate for the article content. They should also reflect what internet surfers actually type into a search engine’s query box when hunting for the information you are offering.

Keyword research is a study in itself. Freeware is available on the Internet that can help you determine the best keywords to use in your article and keyword list. Keywords or keyword phrases within the meta tag need to be separated from each other with a comma.

Although not all search engines will utilize the description meta tag for their search results, you still need to include a good description for those that do.

If you had just a few characters to describe your article, or to entice a surfer to select yours from the results of a search, what would you write? What you would write is what should go into the description.

USING CASCADING STYLE SHEETS (CSS)

I have already suggested several reasons why today’s preferred method of creating web pages is to separate a page’s content from it’s display properties. It’s time for a demonstration of how this can be accomplished.

In the past, HTML tags included attributes to define how the content was to be displayed by a browser.

Today, CSS is used to concentrate these attributes in a single, separate file. Simple HTML code specifies “what” content is to be displayed; the CSS code defines “how” the content is to be displayed.
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Sales pages, to be effective, must immediately catch the attention of even a casual web surfer. The sales message contained in the sales page needs to be both easy to read and understand. If the content-display styling is well-crafted, the sales message can be absorbed with just a rapid page scan. An interested reader will re-read the page for the details.

Sales copy provides the content which entices the reader to move deeper into the page towards the “Order Now” button.

The job of a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), is to

* facilitate page navigation,

* improve readability, and

* call attention to important content.

There are lots of articles and ebooks available on the Web about “writing” profitable sales copy. You can easily find them with a quick search. This article focuses on “styling” the sales page and its content with CSS.

There are several advantages to using CSS for display styling. One of the best reasons is that it frees the copywriter from initial concerns about page formatting. Using very basic HTML code, such as that allowed for submissions to ezinearticles, the page content can be written with any basic text editor without concern for special content formatting.

Before any CSS styling has been applied, the sales page would not convert any prospects. At this stage, the HTML document contains all of the “content” that will be used. Text and images will typically be positioned on the page in roughly the order these elements will be used in the final sales page. CSS will make everything “pop” and “sizzle” when it is applied to the page.

After the sales copy is written, important page elements (identified through HTML tags) and content (information between HTML tags) can be identified and linked to the appropriate CSS formatting code, contained in separate CSS text file, for browser display. A previous article of mine, published at ezinearticles, explains how the HTML content gets linked to the CSS file. Briefly, the HTML-CSS link is done through the HTML “link” meta tag and content is identified through class and id tag attributes and through the use of the HTML span tag.

Content-specific styling includes special text formatting, such as highlighting and quotations, and the placement of items such as images and forms within the page.

I like to display the content in roughly the middle half of the monitor display and use a line length of about 60 characters. I also like to use a large enough font size to make blocks of text easy to read.

Because the page layout is so important, I use a fixed table design for the content: the content is placed in the center of the display and is framed in by wide right and left margins and narrow top and bottom margins. If the width of the browser page is narrowed by the reader, the right and left margins will narrow equally but the content area will remain the same width, and thus the content layout remains the way it was designed (i.e., not “liquid”).

Essentially, my basic page layout consists of 4 nested “boxes:”

* HTML Box — demarcated by html tags and contains all other boxes.

* BODY Box — demarcated by body tags and contains the table and main-content boxes.

* Table Box — demarcated by table tags and contains the main-content box.

* Main-Content Box — demarcated by div tags and contains the sales-page content.

The HTML box includes the entire HTML document (except for the document-type declaration). The Body box contains everything visible to the reader. The Table box contains the sales page. The Main-Content box, as the name implies, includes all of the visible content of the sales page.
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These days in a world ruled by technology, virtually anyone can build a website, but few have the skills to build a website that functions. Even though there are plenty of low cost tools and services out there, far too many web sites are virtually useless, gathering virtual dust on their virtual shelves.

You can design and build your website with a lot of effort. But that alone does not guarantee that your website will be a success. You have to give importance to factors that will encourage people to visit your website. You can market your website in many ways, to increase traffic to your website. However, online marketing is quite expensive.

When you are operating on a small budget it is essential that you build a website that is optimize for search engines. You will save a lot of advertising dollars by ensuring that all your web pages have quality keywords. Keywords are words or phrases that the world uses to find what they are looking for in the web.

If you want to make your web page appear live for the world to view, you simply need to research a hosting company with experience, register your domain name, create your account, build your personal site, and then publish it. It is a very simple process! The important part is finding a hosting company that provides you with a domain name (your personal website name) registration, site builder tools, and hosting.

Some site builder tools require you to be proficient in HTML (Hyper Tex Mark up Language). Otherwise look for site builder tool that does not require you to learn the language. To build a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) that works require upfront planning. After deciding on what niche you want to pursue, you will need to come up with a name for your website, build a keyword list, register your website name, sign up with a hosting company, and submit your website to the search engines. All this can end up costing you quite a bit.

In summary, building a Website that works is going to cost you. But, you have control over how much it costs you financial and emotionally. All you have to do is to figure out exactly what you want the website to do, identify the resources that you will need, establish a budget, then go build your site. It is that simple.

About The Author
Tem Balanco

Building a website that works is a bit difficult. There are many tools and services available for anyone who wants to build a website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/). Even though your website may work, it is not necessary that it will attract people. Different marketing strategies can be used to increase traffic. Advertising costs can be reduced by having proper and good quality keywords. Planning is a major criterion in this matter. Once you decide on the theme of your website you have to find a name, gather the keywords, then list the domain name, link with a service provider, and optimize the site for search engines.