jonathan lackman
MCSE, MCSA, Project Management, SEO, Web Design
The ABC’s of getting a new site to show up in search engines.
Why isn’t my new site showing up in Google? I set it up three days ago, and it’s working in Google local, but not in the main search engines. You have to have reasonable expectations. If you have everything set up right it should take 1-2 months to show up in organic search. You see lot of claims on the internet about showing up in 7 days, etc., but they are either scams, or cost a lot of money. There are techniques that can get indexed in hours, but most are not suitable for your average new small business site. For example, both storefront checkout pages, and video can be indexed in hours. I’ve had video results show up in Google in less than 4 hours.
I would advise getting the fundamental building blocks below in place prior to spending a lot of time on other tactics, and keeping your expectations realistic. In my experience there are no shortcuts, and you’re far better off to be slow, accurate, careful, methodical, analytical and do quality work. Over time, it will pay off.
Get familiar with your hosting website stats, and Google analytics. You need to be fluent in reading these stats, so you know what’s working, and where your traffic is coming from. I’ll give one example of what you can do by reading your hosting stats from a Google posting;
1) Read the fields about referring search phrases and keywords. If you see surfers reaching your site by using specific keyword phrases, you can create a dedicated, specific keyword optimized landing page for that search term. Very simple and useful over time.
First,
what are the keywords you’re after? You better know that up front.
You should have them documented, in writing. I usually just dump
them in a text file on the actual website so they’re always handy.
You don’t want to have to remember them, or wonder about it whenever
working on your site. You will be referring to this list all the
time, so to be consistent and accurate you might as well have a
written list. Learn the
STOP words and avoid them in title, meta, and most other
locations. It's not a HUGE deal, but learn to evaluate every word in
critical locations. You should be able to write a good, useful
title, for example, without using "the", "of", or other words that
do not contribute to your SEO objectives.
Secondly,
you must have sitemaps and have them submitted to Yahoo, Google,
Bing. If you have questions or need help, ask me.
For a new site, the next thing is content. Here are some
specifics as of 6/5/2010. The search algorithms change over time,
and this is based on today’s information. You need to get a lot of
content up quickly. I’d aim for 200 pages in the first two months.
TITLE; The single most important text on the page is the TITLE. The title should be 8 words. There should be zero stop words (you can do it, it might take some thought). Keyword density should be 16.1%. Prominence should be 39%.
Meta Description; Google flat says they do not use this in their calculations, but other sites still do. The Meta Description tag should have 19 words. Keyword density should be 6%, prominence 30%.
Meta Keyword; Google says they don’t use this anymore, but other sites do. The Meta Keyword tag should contain 24, with a density of 11%, and a prominence of 53%.
BODY; The BODY of your page should be close to 507 words. Keyword density for your lead keyword should be 1.8%. Prominence should be 28%.
H1 Headings; There should be about 13 words in H1 headings. Keyword Density in H1 headings should be close to 16%. The number of H1 headings that use the keyword should be close to 0.9.
Bold Text Bold text blocks should contain close to 23 words. Compose your bold texts so that keyword density is close to 2.1%. The optimum number of bold text blocks using the keyword should be close to 0.2.
Anchor Text There should be close to 197 words in anchor texts. Compose your link anchor texts so that keyword density for your keywords is close to 0.7%, and the number of anchor texts using the keyword is 0.4.
Image ALT Text Alt text fields should be 33 words, with keyword density of 2.2% and the number of tags using the keyword should be close to .1.
P.S. I've been asked where I get these numbers. There are several expensive enterprise software packages you can get for SEO analysis. I have one that I use for personal use, and clients I support, and contract SEO work. That's where I got the data for this discussion. The software downloads updated definitions all the time to keep up with the algorithms the search sites use, so this is accurate as of this date.
