Page 1 of 2 This two part article discusses some of the basics of structuring a web site to help with Search Optimization, and then applies these optimization tactics to two different Community MX JumpStarts. This is Part 1 of 2, and discusses theory of search optimization, keyword research, buying a domain, and structuring a web site. Part 2 brings this theory and prep work into practice using some of Community MX's excellent JumpStart templates. We'll be including and editing little snippets of these JumpStarts in this article, but you'll be best served if you download both of the JumpStarts now.
If you have a membership to Community MX already, then go download Siberia and Stelvio Pass so that you can follow along. If you aren't a member, you can apply all of these tips to your own web sites, or buy Siberia and Stelvio Pass individually, but once you've paid for this article and those two great JumpStarts, you'll save money by buying a membership anyway! Community MX's JumpStarts are flexible, compliant with W3C standards, and easy to use; they're worth the price of membership alone, frankly, so if you aren't a member, sign up today to get access to the 3,000+ articles and dozens of JumpStarts now.
If you don't want to use one of Community MX's handy JumpStarts to speed up your development time, you can apply the tactics in this article to sites that you make yourself as well. The code snippets that are included in this article won't work without some customization on your part, however, so bear that in mind as you follow along.
If you build it, the saying goes, they will come. On the internet, though, building it is not enough—you've got to make sure that they can find it. Search optimization is designed to make your site easier for internet users to find you. You might notice that I'm not using the term SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) here. That's because what we're going to discuss is more than just optimizing your site for search engines. A big part of being visible on the internet is organizing your site's content logically, making it easy for anyone to share your content, and taking some time to publicise your content.
It's best to start your search optimization process at the very beginning of your site design phase, before you have coded a single line of HTML or CSS, back even before you have a URL. You probably know that having a URL that relates to your business is an excellent start to make your site more visible, but before you know what words to put in your URL, you need to find out what keywords people search for that are related to your business. So before you go to GoDaddy or Network Solutions to register that domain of yours, let's do some keyword research.
There are a number of free keyword research tools that you can use to get started, but I prefer Google's Adwords Keyword Research Tool and SEO Book's Keyword Suggestion tool. Let's imagine that you want to build a site for a web developer who knows PHP. Here's how I start my keyword research:
For the sake of this article, let's go with "PHP developer", "PHP development", "PHP web developer" and "rapid PHP development". That's two terms that are very common (and are going to be hard to make your site visible for) and two terms that are less common and may be easier to get noticed with. Lets also say that your web developer is working out of Seattle (so we can tie the site to "Seattle PHP developer" and "seattle PHP development") to give you some keywords that will help with geo targeting.
Look to see what the combined daily traffic for Google, Yahoo, and MSN are here and, if you're feeling adventurous, you can click the Google Insight link (G Insights, third from the right) to see how your keyword has ranked over time. You can find rising search terms, here, which can give you great ideas for new pages for your web site.
Keywords
domain, keywords, search optimization, Google, search engine friendly
