Just over 60 days ago I didn't have the first clue about SEO, now albeit only slightly less clueless I'd like to share the useful things and the useless things I've learnt -- hopefully for the benefit of others who are trying to learn how to optimise their site. Before I found DP I employed an SEO firm. What did they do for £200? They changed my title tags and put some <h1> tags on (these are like a internet equivalent of this is a new section).....anything else? Nope. Having seen what they did I thought 2 things i) crikey thats the worst investment i've ever made ii) if that's all they've done I can do it myself (and hopefully learn something too) I found the forum and starting reading and reading and reading. I supplemented my reading with stupid questions (unfortunately you can't go from fool to semi-fool without some learning). DP members have been exceptionally generous with information and I would like to thank everyone both for posting useful information (which I've read avidly) and also for answering my sometimes ridiculous questions. What I've Learnt 1. Google wasn't indexing my pages because I had a menu system which was clearly impossible for the googlebot (who is googlebot -- googlebot does all the work for google -- kind of like a web surfer on speed -- has a look round and tries to index the web) -- The lesson I learnt from this is that webmasters don't necessarily have the first clue about SEO. They can make things look pretty but not necessarily get you traffic. 2. I also learnt at this time that I had a robot tag -- now this tag was set to tell the googlebot to come back every 7 days -- as john scott told me over at v7n, why tell the bot when to come back -- don't tell it anything (unless there is a good reason) and just hope it comes back soon, so i altered the tag and by doing so effectively hung up a sign which said come back soon. 3. Page rank(PR) -- well at first when i read about this I had a panic -- I thought the fact I had 0 page rank was the reason I was not ranked in the SEs (search engines). So I spent a couple of hours reading about page rank. Endless threads about people fretting that their site had lost PR or people happy they had gained PR. My take on page rank now is that it's not worth fretting about - it will be what it will be, especially given the fact that Google (G) assigns page rank. How do you get PR - well it seems to me that it's based on links (see below) both how many and from who, how old your site is and probably an unimaginable list of things I wouldn't even think about. As long as you are doing the right things to promote your site I think it's a nice bonus when it comes but not worth losing sleep over. I think it is more useful in seeing whether a site that links to you is 'valuable' because as long as a site has PR, it's not infectious (what i mean by this having read around is that some sites do things which G doesn't like and linking to them passes their 'infection' to you) 4. Links - now these are important. It's the essence of how google differed from other search engines (SEs) when it started. So it's described as a system of 'votes' for sites -- however, unlike democracy (not all votes are equal). So what makes a good vote? Well it seems to me that it's a site that's been around for a while and is in someway related to your website i.e. similar content. 5. The Hunt for Links begins - I bought myself a copy of IBP and it has a tool for finding sites to link to. Having sent requests to loads of sites and got very little back i gave up on this.....I'll start again soon. So I started listing in directories (I quickly learnt that some directories are good and some are bad). The easiest way to tell how 'good' a site is by looking at it's PR (in fact I think it's particularly directory owners i.e. people selling links who obsess about PR). I found some great directorys like alive and site sift, theres tons of info on directories on DP. This has proved to be a great investment and as i learned if you make the 'title' part of the submission a keyword or phrase you are looking to rank for in G it helps to get listed for those terms. Submit to DMOZ -- it seems to be very important and it's free 6. Articles - I wrote an article related to my business and started submitting it to the various article directories (you can do this for free, but I gave up quickly and used Mad4 's article submission service). Slowly I stared gaining links and so the theory goes -- if people read the article and it applies to them they will be 'qualified visitors'. 7. Automated directory software - Ok so now I'm starting to feel I'm getting a hang of all this. I sign up for a directory submission service - which lists your site on lots of directories. If you use them I would recommend the following - do not use your real email address (i.e. setup a free one), in submitting my site to 200 directories I got almost 200 emails to thank me for my submission and since then I have to wade through spam on a daily basis. On a second occasion I made a typo on my free email address and if anyone actually owns the typo email address I have sentenced them to email purgatory (still feel guilty about this) - make sure you are submitting to the most appropriate category, like any wide eyed fool i click the SUBMIT button before I checked what category I was submitting it to. DOH! So all in all useful but very dangerous in the wrong hands (i.e. mine) 8. So within a few weeks of implementing all the above I actually started noticing I'd 'arrived' in google -- not in a meaningful way but at least on page 90. Here began a couple of days of constantly using software to check my position. Well it served the purpose of a)wasting time b)getting an error message on google (they had tracked my IP address and given me a temporary ban). Check occasionally but not obsessively, go have a beer instead. Also realise that the SERPS (kinda sounds like a financial product but I understand it means search engine results and then PS - who knows) are constantly changing so don't drive yourself mad. 9. I started looking at my site from a user point of view, so it's not exactly scintilating reading at the moment but I started adding content. Just ask yourself what your users are likely to be looking for and provide it, as a by product you get improved search engine results. 10. Read DP -- it's all here. You could buy a book, or you could employ someone or you could learn yourself. I like DIY. So it's been quite exciting and the main thing I've discovered is that like most things, the more you learn the less you realise you know. If you want predictable and instant results (read expensive) use adwords. Otherwise invest some time in your education and start reading and implementing. Thanks DP
I got PR 4 in about 3 months with no prior experience. All I did was submit to the top directories at that time and I didn't get a DMOZ listing. I think I'm listed in about only 10 directories. I became an editor for a couple of them. So, maybe if I do it 8 more times I'd get PR5. That was 3 years ago. I never bothered to get more links since then.