Lesson #32 SEO Recap: Part #1 - Getting Started!
Written By Cyndalie

Although we at Traffic Talk have covered a wide range of the elements of search engine optimization, many of our readers have asked us where and when should they start thinking about search engine marketing, and what are the step by steps to take. With this two part search engine recap, we will cover how to launch your SEO campaign and maintain your efforts with regular boosts to create a steady stream of targeted traffic that will never run dry.

Laying the Foundation

First, you site must be 100% ready and not under construction. Make sure all your links and images work, and that you have spell-checked your content. If any design or programming work needs to be completed, hold off your SEO efforts until the site is finalized – there is nothing more frustrating than having your optimization changes overwritten by others who may be working on your site – especially after you have submitted it.

Do some research on your domain name. If it is a recently acquired domain try typing the “domain.com” in the search engine to see if any past marketing efforts have been done using that domain – including any pages that may still be indexed and deep a note of any URLS you find. If you host multiple domains under one account, find out if they are sharing the same IP address. You can do this by going to Start < Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and type “ping yourdomain.com” to see the IP. What you want to watch out for is if you have 2 or more domain pointing to the same IP and referencing the same site. Ask your hosting companies if all your domains can have (preferably non-consecutive) different IP's for each domain.

For example: If you have 2 domains pointing to the same site such as mysite.com and my-site.com and both default to mysite.com. Choose one primary domain to market your site and use the other for promotions – do not try to submit the same site under 2 different domains hoping to “double” your rankings. Google and other engines are beginning to conflict with this situation and have developed a tendency to “flip flop” between one domain indexed and then the other.

Choose a primary domain and use your secondary domains for promotional purposes such as feeder sites and places to develop more optimized content. The goal over time is to network all your property together lending one another relevance. IP addresses that are individual and non consecutive can help the engine identify that they are not necessarily from the same owner, offering more chance for enhanced popularity.

Extra! Tips for Choosing Domain Names: A Helping Hyphen

Webmasters commonly ask if keyword rich domains have any influence on your rankings. Keyword rich domains do in fact have a better chance to achieve rankings for those keywords. In fact, many adult Webmasters purchase specific domains to use for promotion in Yahoo! and other engines for this singular purpose. A keyword rich domain name can do half the job for you.

When you place a hyphen (-) between the keywords it helps those words stand out even more to the engine. If you were to register the domain "http://my-xxx-domain.com" and place related content there (not a mirror, but reflecting the content of your primary domain) you may even outrank yourself for the primary keyword displayed in the domain and enhanced by your optimization efforts.

In Yahoo you often see domains like xxx-adult-sex-porn-links-free-pics.com and other ridiculous variations used to submit when they pay for a listing in Yahoo. This helps guarantee some keyword rankings if the editor happens to rip all the keywords out of your submitted title and description (happens frequently). Since Yahoo and other directory-based engines rank pages only based on the Title, Description, and URL, this is the best way to get ranked for the keywords you want.

In it is not necessary to have keywords in your domain, but it never hurts. It can be hard to brand a company name when your URL is keyword-keyword.com so consider acquiring keyword friendly domains outside of your primary domain name to use as SE-friendly property to develop to drive more traffic to your site(s).

Regardless of how much keyword friendly domains can help your marketing effort, it is important to remember that good ranking is rooted in having good content and a well-optimized page. Give the search engines exactly what they want and you won't need any tricks to stay on top.

Optimistic Optimization

Before you begin the optimization of your site you must first choose keywords (Lesson #4 - Search Engine Overview: Key Concepts). Start by reviewing the content of your site and integrate as best you can, keywords into your own sites content. For example: Rather than saying “We offer the sexiest porn on the net” get specific and vary the way you use your keywords and phrases. Turn that sentence into “At XXX Site you will find 5,000 pics of hot naked blondes age 18 to 21 in hardcore, lesbian, and amateur pics and videos!”. Notice how by picking apart the second example you can recreate keyphrases like “amateur pics, naked blondes, hardcore lesbian pics, hardcore videos, xxx pics, etc...”.

By starting from one good base sentence you can formulate a great title, description, keywords, and other keyword and phrase variations to integrate into your content to emphasize. Try not to aim for too many keywords and phrases per page. Remember that you index page has the best chance at ranking for the most terms because with all other pages linking to and from it, the other optimized pages will lend the index page relevance for those terms and often the engine, like Google, will forego a secondary page and index the home page for that ranking term.

Begin by optimizing your home page for your top priority keywords and phrases, often the most competitive. Please reference the tips found in Lesson #7 - Search Engine Overview: Optimization Factors for optimization tips. Once your home page is optimized begin optimizing back through the rest of your site. Remember that if you optimize your tour that your tour is censored! Ideally, you want to make sure that the user confirms they are over 18 before viewing explicit content before they walk in. Some java popup box scripts work well for this where regardless of what page the user walks in on, they have to click yes or no before the page loads, yet only have to do it once per page on your site. So if they enter you site on tour page 3 they click ok and can more forward to tour page 4 or back to tour page 2 without being prompted again. Dynamic Drive (http://dynamicdrive.com/) is a good script resource and can offer some interesting enhancements to your site, including navigation and warnings.