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DIY SEO, Where Do I Begin?
By Jaan Kanellis (c) 2007

Sure Do It Yourself SEO can seem very daunting at first sight,
but once you put together a plan of SEO action steps for yourself
it can be much easier than you think. One thing I tell most of my
clients is that SEO is not rocket science. There are clear rules
and reasons why websites get ranked well in the search engines.
Below are some of the more basic ones for all you newbie SEOs'
out there:

1. Internal Navigation
Sure the search engines are getting better at learning to crawl
complex websites, but you need to make it as easy as possible.
Avoiding JavaScript, Image Maps and session IDs are just a few
of the pitfalls many newbie's miss. Create your navigation in
CSS or standard text. One way to see if your navigation is easily
crawlable is to check the Google cache and click on the link
"Click here for the cached text only." If you can see your links
in hyperlinked form you are probably ok. This is probably the
most universal issue I see as a problem for newbie SEO's and
even some of the largest online companies
(http://www.homedepot.com/). Get this fixed, do nothing else and
you could see large improvements in rankings and conversions.

2. Why Are You The Best?
Maybe the 2nd most important item in marketing your website
online is setting yourself apart. If you're just another website
that offers DVDs (or whatever) online for the same price as BMG,
Best Buy, etc., what makes your website better? The internet is
a network of interesting content, products and services. You
must make your content, products and services stand out above
the rest. How you do that is another story altogether.

3. Links
OK in a perfect world you could make a great website with
awesome content and it would rank fine. Our world is hardly
perfect and the search engines are not even close. The search
engines will more than likely always use some sort of linking
weight in their algorithm, so after you build this great website,
let the world know. Contribute in blogs, forums, and message
boards related to your website. Write articles. Contribute To
The Internet. Become an authority on what your website deals in
and before you know it you will be getting those one-way links
without even asking for them. This is truly the link you want.
Remember there are no short term link building strategies that
work long term.

4. Content
a) OK obviously you can't just have a website made up of images
and one sentence on each page. Text is the meat that those search
engines love to cook and grub on. The more relevant text you can
write on each page the better it is for the search engines and
the better it is for your end users. One thing to remember here
is not to squeeze too many subjects onto one page. Break pages
out as much as possible. Check out this example:

http://orchidsbyohlman.com/Care.htm

What a great page full of great content, but much different
content. The search engines rarely associate many keyword
combinations to one page. So break it down for them. Each of the
caring tips for the orchids should be broken down into its own
page and expanded on even more.

b) A second point to consider when writing content is natural
language queries, personalization and local search. These will
be the future of the search engine algorithm, so consider them
when writing.

c) I will tell you right now. If you don't have a blog create
one now. Blogs can really help keep your website "fresh". You
may have heard that this is necessary to rank. I disagree that
it is necessary to constantly change your content on your website
for you to rank. That is where some get confused. What the search
engines like about fresh content and blogs is NEW content. You
are consistently posting relevant, fresh content on your website
about your business. This is great for end users so it is great
for search engines. Blogs are a great way to attract in-bound
links, fresh content, and are easy to crawl. These are basically
the three cornerstones to successful SEO, nuff said.

5. Title Tags
Another no-brainer. Looking at the example above, the website
owner is not using unique title tags on each page, but you should
throughout your website.

6. Duplication
Sure we have heard all kinds of confusing horror stories on
content duplication. Sure you want to avoid doing it, but I have
yet to see Google or other search engines actual penalize for it.
What the search engines do is rank one page over another and yes
sometimes if they find a duplicate they will toss it in the
supplemental index. If you call that a penalty fine, but I call
it Google choosing one version to rank over another. Make sure
you provide only one to rank! Also, if you write an article,
just make sure to publish it on your website and WAIT a couple
of weeks and then syndicate it. It will give the search engines
time to associate you as the author/owner of it.

7. Competition
Please recognize who your competitors are. If you are going head
to head with websites that have been online for years and maybe
even decades, then you should realize your SEO battle will be
uphill and difficult, but not impossible.

8. Finance
If you are on a shoe-string budget or just have been burned by
SEO's in the past and don't want to invest more money into it
now, this is OK. But please understand the leg work is now on
you. Only expect "high-level" ideas and recommendations from
forums. The best thing to do is to dive in and do the work
yourself with the support of the forum. Don't rely on the forum
as cure for your website marketing sickness, but rather as an
antibiotic that works within your body to heal.

9. Tracking
You better do it! If you don't know if your website is making
you money, then who cares if it is optimized. Who cares if it is
ranking? Who cares what Google PR it is? Two hundred #1 rankings
mean nothing if you not making money off of them. That mind set
is important. If you do not track leads/sales, then start now.

10. History
How long have you been online? Less than a year? More than 5
years? This makes an ENORMOUS difference. I don't care what
anyone says. The longer you have been online the more likely you
are to have good results. If you still don't have good results
and you have been online for a while, don't fret. Your fixes
should take hold quicker in the search engines once you make
them.

11. Code Bloat/Download Time
OK I understand you might be a SEO newbie. What do you know
about coding websites, let alone inline CSS or JavaScript?
Bottom line is your either going to need to learn or get someone
who does know. No excuses here. It is becoming more important to
have valid and easy to crawl code. I am not saying it is
absolutely necessary. I see websites that rank all the time that
are ridiculous when it comes to valid code, but if you can fix
this, then do it. The second part is to make sure your pages
download in a reasonable time. Once again you will find slow
websites ranking all the time, but get it fixed not only for the
search engines, but for your end users.

12. One Change At Time
Sometimes even minor fixes to one of the concepts noted above is
enough to make the jump you have targeted in the search engines.
Take your time and evaluate changes one at time. Changing too
many things at once can cause "Chasing Your Tail Syndrome".

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. There are
many more and always remember each website's SEO needs are very
unique. I have yet to see one website need the exact same
solution set as another, when optimizing.

If you do decide to take your SEO efforts upon yourself, make
sure you determine a clear action plan and stick to it. Good
luck!
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Jaan Kanellis is the founder of www.KBKMarketing.com, which
provides organic and PPC website marketing to clients, agency
partners and SEM companies. Read his SEM and SEO blog at:
http://www.jaankanellis.com/ . Jaan has been involved in online
marketing since 1999.
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