What are the most important SEO steps I should take?
We've put together a very brief summary of the most important steps you should take when starting your SEO campaign for your new online store.This is simply to head amature's in the right direction. If you're after the full story in detail, click here for more
Keyword Analysis
Choosing the right keyword is pivotal to your SEO campaign. If you're opening a new online store, stick to longtail
phrases rather than main keyword phrases. e.g. "Flower shop" is too competitive; try something like "Yellow long stem roses" This will be less competitive and more targeted. Your chances of a visitor who will convert to a sale is much higher. Each of your longer phrases should still contain your main keyword "flowers".
What do your visitors really want?
When choosing what to write about in your site, think about what your visitor would like to read and how it can help them. For example, if your product page is selling "yellow long stem roses", include some useful content about how to preserve them, cut them, where to place them, arrange them or what other flowers they look nice with.Write or get good content articles
Useful, unique and well written content not only helps your visitors, but also search engines. The recent Google Panda update focussed on web spam, getting rid of or demoting sites with poor quality or duplicate content. If you simply write generic product info or copy from your manufacturers website, don't expect great SEO results. Google recently published an article about writing good quality content for your website.
Site Map & webmaster tools
Upload your sitemap to Google webmaster tools. You store's sitemap is auto generated after your domain name e.g. http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml. The same can be done for Yahoo and Bing.
This basically tells search engines all your pages it can index.
Link building
Build some quality links. Quality is a broad definition and to describe this briefly, it referrs to related links from
related sites with good quality content. i.e. not spammy sites with loads of outbound links. Some examples just to get your started are;
- Paid, related directory's
- Well established and related Forums (get involved in discussions in your industry and place a link in your signature)
- Article submission services like ezinearticles.com
- Social book marking sites like http://www.delicious.com/ and StumbleUpon.com see more
4 Responses to “What are the most important SEO steps I should take?”
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2011-08-01 14:58:00
How much does social media help with rankings these days?
2011-08-01 15:09:00
SEOmoz recently ran some tests after the Google "Panda" update using Twitter.
They found that a non indexed domain was indexed within up to 8 hours purely by a single tweet, less in Bing and Yahoo.
They also tested the use of mass tweeting and re-tweeting to find that within a couple of hours the effect was a number 1 ranking for the sites main keyword.
So yes, social media, in this case Twitter, plays a huge role in SERPs, however, the search engines reactions seem to be based on real time. For example, a response to mass tweeting may only help for a day or two. So I would assume a consistent chatter on the worlds social network would help your rankings long term when measured against less topical competitors.
2012-01-03 14:35:00
Another important aspect would be to turn off the images and then CSS of your website and see how your website appears. This is the way a search engine like Google will look at your website. Have all the alt tags been added perfectly? Does your website looks fine without CSS and images? If not, then you must take care of your website right now.
2012-03-21 11:19:00
This blog is really good. Good work done by you..