Search Engine Optimization Process

You should start at the beginning. The most important place to start optimizing your web site for the search engines is with the basic design of your web site. Always approach the design of a web site with the best interest of your target audience in mind. Always remember - they do not know as much as you do on the subject matter you're discussing. If you do your work properly, the web site becomes a repository for your knowledge, and a resource for your target audience. They become clients for your information, and then customers for your goods or services.

Your web sites design will play a crucial in role in the decision that visitors make whether to remain at the web site or not. Graphics, layout, load time, fonts and ease of navigation will all have an influence on the users decision. When you craft a web site that is well designed and laid out, you are also putting in place a proper foundation for search engine optimization tools to succeed. Remember, the search engines are less intelligent than any of your human visitors. If anything is confusing or hard for a person to understand, it's probably going to be next to impossible for a robot, or search engine spider to comprehend.

Aside from attracting and retaining visitors, the design of a web site is also critical for search engine positioning. Directories, such as Yahoo!, will review your site before accepting it. Directory editors look for sites with good design to add to their indices. If they don't 'get' it immediately, they probably won't spend the time trying to figure it out. With Yahoo! this test may have cost you their $299 submission fee.

Once you have a proper web site design in place, a proper search engine optimization regimen will properly prepare every aspect of your web site for promotion to the search engines. This means that all search engine markers are put in place, and any search engine barriers are removed. It also means that all the great content that has been placed on the page, and within the web site, is easily found, contextually reviewed, and properly used to promote the web site to the search engines.

»	Seek to promote your web site based on the content of the site;
»	Utilize data of how the average search engine user actually looks for information on your site - including alternative terms, synonyms, common phrasing, etc;
»	Include the creation, or addition of a search engine optimized relevance based reciprocal links network to your site;
»	Follow up on the preparation period with scheduled search engine submissions, promotional tools, and some means of reporting your success, usually a statistics report.

If you are unsure where to start, we recommend reading the section called strategies for building a website, as well the sections contained in our page search engine strategies