Traffic from Google, Yahoo, Bing and other web search engines is the holy-grail of web traffic and a dream of every website owner. One of the greatest challenges related to getting to the top of search results is not how to get there, but actually where and how to start. This article will give you some very cool and powerful tips SEO gurus use when they launch a new site.
1) Buy an existing domain name (if possible)
Whatever you do - don't buy and register a brand new domain name for your new site unless you really have to for some reason. Google and other search engines put a lot of weight to the age of domain name and how long has it been around. Existing domain names are usually more expensive than new ones, but buying one will jumpstart your way to the top of Google and will save you anywhere from a few weeks to few month - this is how long it normally takes to get a brand new domain to the top of Google.
2) Optimize your website for people, not for Google and other search engines
Sure, there are some "technical rules" you need to follow to get listed at the top of Google, but 90% of SEO start-ups fail because they over-optimize their sites for the search engines, instead for their target market. You're ultimate goal should be to meet the needs of your target market (aka human visitor), not Google.
After all, it doesn't help you a lot if your site is ranked #1, but your visitors leave your site 5 seconds after landing on it. Always start with how your site will meet the need of your target market (what content?) and only that wrap everything with technical SEO stuff like keywords in internal links, content, meta tags, backlinks, etc.
3) Pick the right keywords
Often times the keywords you think your target audience might be searching in Google may very well be totally incorrect. Make sure to spend some time researching and finding the right keywords to optimize your site and content for. To do that you can use tools like Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or any other keyword tool.
Also, don't make the mistake of going after generate 1-word keywords like "business", "finance", "travel", "leads", etc. Not only these keywords are very broad and don't precisely indicate what your site is all about, but they're extremely difficult to rank well for because they're very competitive.
Shoot for 2-word, 3-word or even 4-word keywords like "mlm leads", "mlm lead generation" or "free mlm lead generation".
4) Structure your website based on your keyword research
Once you have a keyword list, you need to categorize them into clusters. This will help you in creating user-friendly architecture and navigation for your site human visitors and search engine spider will have no problems understanding and using.
5) Make sure Google can easily crawl and analyze your website
One of your core goals for your site should be to make is accessible so Google can easily spider and analyze its content and structure. Google can't fill out your forms, can't see the Javascript links or navigation menu and can't see into graphics and Flash animations. You need to make sure that you always provide some sort of plain HTML links (text or graphic) either in your main navigation or your sitemap which should links from and to your pages.
