How to Optimize Your Site from Zero

How to Optimize Your Site from Zero – Part I

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site optimization seo 300x199 How to Optimize Your Site from Zero Part I

How to develop and optimize your site from zero?

This question is probably one of the most popular ones in the Internet. There is a lot of information online regarding this, which makes it hard to decide which answers to choose and what to trust. I would like to share with you my dear readers (who else), my personal detailed site optimization plan of action for new websites. This will be a sequel with several posts, so stay tuned. I will be writing mostly about the Wordpress engine, since I am convinced this is the best platform for optimization (when properly tuned of course). This strategy can be used for other sites and blogs located on a different engine than Wordpress. Just so happened that I like Wordpress:)

I will be describing my actions, which I applied to a blog in the past when it was just born, adding new elements as the time passed, as we all know the SEO world changes daily and sometimes hourly. In this part one I will talk about the preparation that needs to be done before the actual optimization can begin.

So, let’s imagine that we have a brand new Wordpress blog, with zero visitors, and not indexed by the search engines, which means the PageRank is “0″ as well. Besides all of this, the owner is overwhelmed with negative and weak thoughts like “what if nobody will come to visit my blog and beautiful work I am going to do” or “should I even start this blog”. Sounds like something familiar, doesn’t it?

First thing you need to do before staring your site optimization- is to get rid of your doubts in your success. Any site can be optimized and the visitors will come. You don’t have to give up before you start, even if there are many successful sites in the same niche. Everyone starts like that, from a minuscule little scratch on the wall. On top of this, the competition online is growing every day, and it will only get harder to optimize your site with time. This means, the sooner you start – the better.

Before doing any optimization tasks, you have to first get it ready for action. When the site is prepared, like a good meal, the effect will be much greater. It’s best if the site has at least 3-4 posts, with a couple of categories like “About Me”, “About Project”, “Contacts”, and so on. Without this minimum information, your site can be declined by many resources where we will be adding it soon.

Plugin Installation

Before beginning the optimization of your site, you will need to install several plugins which will make it more effective, and the site will become more comfortable for the owner (you) and the visitors. I have put together a list of absolute must have Wordpress plugins for your new blog. Here they are:

(Please note, it’s easier and faster to just search for these plugins inside of your Wordpress admin area, under the Plugins >> Add New, and then install them from within the Wordpress)

All in One SEO Pack – in my opinion THE most important plugin for the Wordpress blog optimization. It lets you optimize meta tags for each page, which makes them more attractive for the search engines. In order to tune this plugin, first thing you need to do after activating it, is to open Settings and fill out the information in Home Title, Home Description and the Home Keywords.

This is important – uncheck the “Rewrite Titles” checkbox, since many Wordpress versions get the titles all messed up. I don’t know why this happens, maybe someday I will rewrite the Wordpress code and send it to the original author as his birthday gift.

In meta-tags we are going to place the keywords we will be targeting in our optimization plan. Your TITLE meta-tag length must be no longer than 72-74 characters with spaces, your DESCRIPTION meta-tag must be no longer than 150-170 characters. In KEYWORDS I usually add 3-4 search request for each page. Despite many cool SEO dudes out there keep insisting that this meta-tag doesn’t get counted by the search engines, we will go ahead and make it look and feel right in case those boys are wrong.

If you don’t know how to fill meta-tags correctly for your site – look at the meta-tags of the competitor sites from the top 5 search engine results. You will find some interesting stuff there, I promise:) If you don’t know how to look up meta-tags on a given site – open the site in the browser window, press CTRL+U, find the words “title”, “description”, and “keywords”. If they are difficult to find, press CTRL+F, type in these words and hit enter.

Feedburner Feedsmith – plugin that redirects your blog RSS feed to the Feedburner.com service. You need this, and I will explain why later on.

Google Sitemaps – this plugin lets you create your site map for Google, which will improve the indexing of your site.

WordPress Database Backup – very useful plugin that lets you email daily, weekly, or monthly backups to your email address. I usually use gmail account created only for the backup purpose.

WP-PageNavi – displays your page navigation at the bottom as 1,2,3,4…

Adding your site to Search Engines

If you add your site to search engines, it will be indexed faster as a result.

Before adding your site, create a text file, which will have your site address, your site name, short description, contact person and email, and then just copy+paste this information into the needed boxes. This will make the site addition process fast and easy. I personally think that site optimization has to be fun before anything, and then it will all work out great.

Below are some example links to add your site to search engines:

Adding your site to the Google webmaster service

After you activated Google Sitemaps plugin, you can go ahead and register in the Google Webmaster panel and add the freshly created sitemap in there. This will make the engines’ work easier and will also make your site’s indexation complete.

You will need to register an account in Google Webmaster and then add your site there by confirming it via either uploading a dummy file to your site’s root directory or by placing a meta-tag into your template. All of this will take only a couple of minutes. After you did this, add your sitemap.xml to the webmaster service.

If for some reason you want to be different, you can add your site to MSN Webmaster Service or the Yahoo Webmaster Service and add your site and the xml sitemap as well.

Adding RSS feed into Feedburner service

Feedburner.com – a very useful service, which allows you to redirect your RSS feed. Feedburner – is the largest RSS feed management services provider. This service was purchased by Google.

In order to add your RSS feed into this service, all you have to do is enter your site address and then just follow the instructions (a few very simple steps). Inside the Feedburner settings, I recommend to do the following: Go to Analyze, then in the side menu (on the left hand side) choose “Total Stats PRO”.

Then make sure to uncheck the “Item link clicks – optimize for”.

This will allow you to create a direct links to your posts in RSS feeds. Why do you need this? You will know in the next step:)

Adding RSS feed into RSS aggregators

Registering your site’s RSS feed in the RSS aggregators lets you broadcast your site news to the RSS resources out there. What does this give you? A lot.

1. For example, you are publishing a new material on your site and after an hour or sooner, it’s already in the Google search results. This is mostly because of the RSS aggregators let the search engine systems know that the new information has just been published on your site, and the bots quickly visit your site and index it. As a result, your site will end up in the search engine results quicker.

2. Automatic distribution of your material via those same RSS aggregators, where many people can read it and visit your site via links.

3. RSS aggregators place links to your site, which have a pretty good weight as well, which will help with your PageRank and SERP as a result.

4. On top of all the goodies listed above, registering RSS feed in the RSS aggregators lets you increase the quantity of your RSS readers and increases the visibility in the search engines.

Don’t forget to prepare your text file ahead of time with all the fields you will need to copy+paste in order to speed up the addition of your site into the RSS aggregators. You will need the following information in the text file: your site address, your RSS feed address (if you are using feedburner.com – your feed will be accepted to many RSS aggregates, which means you should do it), your site’s name, categories in which you would like to register your site feed, keywords, and site encoding.

Here is the fresh list of the RSS aggregators, so go ahead and add your RSS feed asap:

Fresh List

Most of the RSS aggregators you can find online accept RSS feeds for free. There will be some that will become paid with time, and it’s your choice to choose it or not. I normally use the free ones – there are enough of these online to achieve the results without paying for them.

Adding your blog into blog rating sites

If you have a blog, then it can be and has to be added into the blog rating sites. You will need to prepare another text file. By now you should know what should be in it, if not please read this post from the beginning:)

Adding your site into catalogs

It’s a good idea to register your new blog in the catalogs. This registration helps improving the positions of your blog in the search engine systems and also attracts new visitors.

Adding your site to Dmoz – find the matching category and only then find the link “Suggest URL” in the top right hand corner.

You can also register your site in the catalogs atomatically. I recommend the program called Allsubmitter. In order to register, you will need good catalog bases. A good one comes with the software, however you can always purchase additional ones to increase the effect.

Ping Services

Copy+Paste the list below into the “Writing” setting’s bottom box in your Wordpress Administrator and press “Save Changes”:

Fresh List

I think this should be enough information for the part I. Feel free to write your thoughts, comments, suggestions, questions, and so on in the comments area. In the meantime, I will go work on the upcoming optimization part II.

Note to self:

“Be careful what you wish for – you just might get it” – Chinese proverb

Beck @ ProfitSEO.com

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