DIY SEO Part 1

I have been asked many times by friends and business associates if I could produce a series of documents that would give assistance to people who are seeking help with the optimisation of their own websites. I hope these articles will be easy to understand and prove to be an excellent resource in unravelling the mysteries that surround Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Where to Start     ?

You have made the bold decision to venture into the world of online business. This is an important time to take stock and devise a plan of action, being impatient and instantly searching on Google for ‘cheap web designers’ is the most common mistake.

The first thing you need to consider is your domain name. Google holds over 80% of the market when it comes to online search, over the past few years they have given more precedence to keyword rich domains. Keywords are the words or phrases typed into search engines by the general public. It is estimated that a keyword rich domain will perform 30% better than a non keyword rich domain. When deciding what keywords are worth targeting, software can be purchased from Word Tracker or Keyword Discovery or use Google’s free software at http://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

It is advisable to write down the theme of your proposed website inner pages, you can then try and match them to good quality keywords, these are words or phrases that are popular but have little in the way of competition. The rule of thumb for selecting good quality keywords is to try and find words that are typed over 100 times a day, and have less than 1 million pages in Google’s index. It is imperative you do not rush this research you want to get it right first time.

An example

You have decided to purchase the domain www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk targeting the keywords

Bulgarian Property
Bulgarian Properties
Property in Bulgaria

Your Websites will cover the following areas

Golf Developments
Skiing Developments
Services
About Us
News

You can then assign keyword rich sub domains to each section

Golf Developments = www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk/golf-bulgarian-property.php
Skiing Developments = www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk/skiing-bulgarian-properties.php
Services = www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk/services-property-in-bulgaria.php
About Us = www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk/about-us-bulgarian-property.php
News = www.bulgarianproperty.co.uk/news-bulgarian-properties.php

By following this methodology each page of your website will be geared around good quality keywords. Every page of a website has the ability to rank highly in its own right; too many people become focused on their homepage, forgetting their sites inner pages.

In the next article I will expand on the Bulgarian Property website going through other aspects to be considered before getting to the stage of searching for a suitable web designer.


Pete Arkwright

This article has been sponsored by Sweet Ideas, The UK's leading supplier of Promotional Sweets