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Discussion in 'SEO Search Engine Optimisation' started by cc976a, Feb 6, 2012.

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  1. cc976a United Kingdom

    cc976a Well-Known Member

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    Does anyone have checklist of sites or a process you follow to help gain a search engine listing for a brand new site - and start getting on to the SERPs, get the first few backlinks and some traffic through the door?

    Thought it might be a good idea to start a thread giving some help to the new and some new tricks and ideas to the more established

    My couple are:

    1. Add a sitemap and submit to G

    2. Start a £5-10 CPC campaign on Adwords (I've seen better rankings on sites I advertised initially than ones I didn't - be good if anyone can share their own analysis on this)

    3. Get listed on Splut.com


    Anyone else care to share....
     
  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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    IWA Meetup
     
  3. cc976a United Kingdom

    cc976a Well-Known Member

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    No one?.....thought it may take a while to get this going :)
     
  4. boxfish United Kingdom

    boxfish Well-Known Member

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    I usually just start adding content. By the time I have a decent amount on then the site is usually indexed. I think this is down to using Wordpress and it sends pings every time you post.

    I then leave it before I start looking at getting links, which vary depending on the type of site it is.

    I don't submit anything to G, don't use adwords on most sites and don't even know what Splut is.

    I don't see the point in doing too much at the start, I would rather just get the content indexed and leave it sat for a while.
     
  5. VSC

    VSC Active Member

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  6. MASSEY

    MASSEY Active Member

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    Adwords has no affect on your rank.

    Sitemaps are only needed for huges sites that can't link to all the deep pages so well from the valuable pages on the site.

    And splut.com is a place to get a link, not the best to get indexed straight away.

    The way to get a new site in the serps quick is to publish a page of decent content on the site, then use one of your other sites that has been indexed for a while and publish a blog post linking to the new site. You have brought it to the attention of google then and it will index accordingly, not always straight away.
     
  7. alex

    alex Active Member

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    I feel it never hurts to get the Sitemap in there, however many pages the site has. Also, with regards to adwords I find my sites generally rank better when using adwords. If anything, new pages are indexed more quickly.


    The steps I use are as follows:

    1) Ensure site/new page follows a good logical structure (i.e. CSS/style.css; images/generic/image1.png; products/category1/product1.php etc). Also good to use a descriptive file name e.g. red-parker-pen.php. Many argue that using '-' is better than '_', and vice versa, to seperate words in file names! My experience suggests using '-' is better than '_'. Any opinions?
    2) Ensure page has good content (for best results regarding a descriptive page use approx 150-300 words of unique descriptive content that is not spammed with keywords).
    3) ensure correct use of h1,h2 tags etc. Use correct html tags rather than 'creating them' with CSS. CSS is there to style, not replace! Make sure CSS is in external file.
    4) Get the SERPs right first time - devise good META title/descriptions. be specific to the page, not the site as a whole.
    5) META keywords - generally considered to have little effect, but surely helps some sites/databases etc so I do it as part of the routine. Choose maybe 10 good and specific keywords.

    *Upload Site/Page*

    6) Create Sitemap.xml that truly reflects update frequency etc. This is important since in my experience Google et al seem to really appreciate this information.
    7) robots.txt
    8) submit to webmaster tools etc
    9) If selling products then set up a feed in Google Merchant Centre.
    10) Site-specific privacy policy.

    *Then tinker*

    11) Investigate appropriate internal linking structure and use link title tags for more description.
    12) As much JavaScript as possible in external files (use as little JavaScript as possible as a rule).
    13) use most size effective image file sizes at 72dpi. Only use images where code won't do it because keeping load time down is important!

    *Then off-site SEO begins*

    14) Social Media and feeds
    15) Adwords etc.
    16) Blog posts. Do not spam, do not rush! no-follow is just as good as do-follow links! This assumes you are of course playing a long term game where you wish to receive quality traffic rather than make a quick buck!
    17) Link Building, but don't go crazy! This is a gradual process and I find it's better to receive links from 10 industry-specific sites than 100 free databases etc.
    18) Sign up to review sites if appropriate. After 30 reviews you get the star ratings in Adwords and it instils trust.

    I would say don't get all stressed out with low Page Rank scores, if you're getting TARGETED traffic and are ranking well for your keywords who cares how much traffic you receive. I always say it's better to get 50-100 quality hits per day than 1000 that are not of your target market. EDIT: To clarify this point of course traffic volume is important, but targeted traffic is better than masses of irrelevant traffic.

    Also, don't stop once done. Regularly add pages and tweak if appropriate to improve quality. It's better to have many pages of quality interlinking content than a few full of information that could be seperated.

    This is what has worked for me, but I would certainly love to hear your opinions since approaches vary and although this has worked, I'm sure there are better ways of doing it! Anyway I hope it helps. :p
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2012
  8. VSC

    VSC Active Member

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    I also always create an RSS feed, a comment script, fast loading pages.

    Comment script is especially important I believe. I generally make the comments myself, but it adds interactivity to the site and makes it simple to "update" pages in the view of the search engines. The main search engines are looking for as much interactivity as possible nowadays.
     
  9. alex

    alex Active Member

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    Really good points! I mentioned feeds and touched upon fast-loading pages by reducing images, proper mark-up etc in my post, although it maybe wasn't quite clear? What I didn't mention was comments.

    Interactivity is definitely an important aspect of modern sites, but I also feel they should only be used where necessary. Naturally all sites vary and in my case for my online shops I have to be careful. For example I decided not to build a product review script because you just can't control what customers write. Including a blog with interactivity is however something I'm currently working on. I guess it comes down to specific pages and what you're trying to achieve from the site. I've used www.disqus.com which is a pretty good tool.

    On a similar note pages that you want to use as a fixed point of reference, such as archived pages or fixed fact pages/descriptions etc would probably rank better if you set the update frequency in the XML Sitemap as 'never' or 'yearly' and disable comments. I find that if you inform search engines of pages that never change then they may crawl them less often, but they rank better than 'dynamic pages' that actually stay the same.

    Another point I thought I'd mention regards html sitemaps. I agree in that you should use them, but I would block them from being indexed by search engines. I used to have one for griptape.co.uk and it was being ranked higher than the product pages! XML sitemaps are for search engines, html are for user navigation so it may be a point worth considering.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2012
  10. VSC

    VSC Active Member

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    This is going to turn in to a love fest - Yes, totally agree.

    Comments should only be used when necessary.
    What I try to do, with ecommerce sites is build a blog/comment area. It can be used to promote products, add news etc and add interactivity. Though it's not always practical - time constraints etc.

    Another trap that some people fall in to is only creating backlinks to their home page. Always build backlinks to all your product/content pages. On some sites when I have a new product, I'll put out a press release, get articles out etc etc. It will increase that pages PR and traffic and overall will build the site's rep in the vire of the main search engines.
     
  11. alex

    alex Active Member

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    Haha, well at least we're agreeing. Again good points, I'd do the same. Hopefully this thread will be providing lots of information for people. That said, it's one thing knowing what to do, it's another actually putting the effort and doing it. Unfortunately success is not quickly achieved, work is ongoing and time consuming, but done right will pay off.
     
  12. alex

    alex Active Member

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    Also, it would be interesting to hear from people who do not agree for some fresh perspective?
     
  13. VSC

    VSC Active Member

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    Though perhaps not sounding very professional, I'm into mud throwing ...

    Throw enough mud to a wall and some of it sticks ...
    Build enough sites and some will start ranking.

    That's what I do ... keep building sites. Some start ranking.
    Those are the ones I focus my time one.
    The others I leave online - there's never any telling what a new Google algo change will do, and and some of my older sites which never ranked before suddenly jump up in to the rankings.

    I'm relatively lucky as I can build simple sites relatively easily, so it's just a time cost.

    My belief though, is that we need to be focusing on interactive sites and large / solid ecommerce sites for the long term - those are the ones that will last.

    Anyway, off to build some sites!
     
  14. cc976a United Kingdom

    cc976a Well-Known Member

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    Some great ideas there - and great post by Alex with some useful tips

    ....also glad to see i'm not the only one seeing better or faster rankings by using Adwords...may be something in that after all.

    I personally give up too early with mini-sites. I'm more old school with this - good content and good solid onsite SEO, with a directory link or two used to get rankings. Not so much nowadays - it's all this social crap that's polluting the airwaves because it's seen as cool and 'engaging'. Not my bag - but we must conform to the mighty G!

    Tips like this will keep us scallywags using a few more new site ranking steps and options - before giving up :)

    Any other tips out there to share?
     
  15. alex

    alex Active Member

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    I'm glad you found my post useful. The adwords issue is a dodgy topic, some say it helps, whereas others say it doesn't. Logically I can't see Google ranking advertiser sites higher than others because it may create all sorts of issues for them. What I do believe is that advertising a new site/page instantly informs Google that it exists and since we're paying customers I feel they are likely to fast-track the indexing process. In the past I've waited 3 months to have a site indexed. Now that I advertise new sites/pages when I launch them it's generally a few days before the site is indexed, even before submitting a sitemap to webmaster tools.

    If this is indeed the case then advantage comes not because G will rank you higher, but because you potentially gain 3 months and if you have built the site with SEO in mind then you will tick all the boxes when first crawled. Thus, at first glance and potentially months ahead of other new sites, Google will crawl your site and see the site to be of good quality. You therefore don't have to wait for future crawls, which could be ages away, for G et al to start interpreting the content that you've designed to push you up the rankings.

    Again just a thought, no real evidence, just an interpretation from my experience and I'd love to hear other opinions.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2012
  16. Blossom

    Blossom Well-Known Member

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    There are many places on the web where if you post or ping the URL, you will get indexed within a couple of hours. You just need to pick a website that gets crawled very frequently.

    Edit: Talking about Google here. With Bing and Yahoo you may as well go on holiday for a fortnight whilst you're waiting.
     
  17. Sussexite

    Sussexite Active Member

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    Don't want to repeat what has already been said....

    I also install
    Quick Cache - very simple to run cache.
    WP Post Correct from Excell and CSV

    The latter is useful on directory-type sites because you can manage your posts from a spreadsheet. This allows you to update many posts at once, add and maintain custom fields, quickly write things like custom title tags and description tags if your theme allows it - all in Excel, where you can copy and paste, or write strings using formulae. If, for example, you decide that you need a custom field to do something a month after the site is up and running, you can put the custom field values you want in the spreadsheet, import the whole lot and update the whole site at once, rather than post-by-post ...which would be very tedious.
     
  18. alex

    alex Active Member

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    haha, yeah I'm really only talking about Google when I go through the list. I generally do quite well on Bing/Yahoo etc, but it can be months before I notice changes and I've not yet worked out how to speed up indexing. What is worth considering about the other search engines though is the number of characters they allow in the title and META descriptions - it's worth making sure that your titles are compatible with each as each vary etc.

    With regards to the picking frequently crawled sites I totally agree, I was just making the point specifically about using adwords.
     
  19. cc976a United Kingdom

    cc976a Well-Known Member

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    Any directories or sites you've come across that you can share? :)
     
  20. alex

    alex Active Member

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    I'll have to take your word for it... I don't do so well with WP :( They sound like pretty useful tools though. What's your experience been with them?



    Another thing I didn't mention before is a favicon. Not really a true SEO tip, but makes the site stand out a bit more in a list of favourites etc.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2012
  21. Sussexite

    Sussexite Active Member

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    Good
     
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