The website’s purpose will be the basis of its structure, meaning, that if the website is intended to be an online e-commerce store shopping platform, then access to products in general and to leading products specifically should be comfortable and obvious, using navigation menus, links from text and buttons. On the other hand, if the website’s purpose is to create contacts with potential clients, than the contact form should be at the heart of the website, and the surfer’s attention should be drawn to it. This influences page grid design, navigation and linking items, and funnel tools.

After the website’s goal has been defined, its information architecture should be considered. In other words, this is the manner in which the website’s goal will be expressed in its structure. The most important recommendation at this stage is creating a hierarchy which is as flat as possible. This means that we should create a website in which it is possible to reach each page with as few clicks as possible. This means, that if the website is a coffee machine sale website, it is better to place the product catalogue in the navigation bar, and from each it should be possible to reach each part of the catalogue with one click and it helps the search engine reach each page in the website relatively easily.

Keyword Targeting Strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process affected by recognition of relevant keywords for each site. Jerusalem’s tourism portal, for example, will not necessary reap any benefits from its pages ranking higher in the search engines for keyword strings such as “mortgage for houses in Jerusalem”. The keyword strategy determines, through a comprehensive keyword research, what words are used by surfers when searching for the type of content we are promoting, meaning, what are the important keywords for fulfilling the given website’s goal. For example, if the website is the “Burberry Watches Store”, we should check which is the more common search string among surfers, burberry watches, mens watch or women luxury watches and decide on which content to promote which string.

After the important keywords have been identified, the keyword strategy details a way of promoting specific target pages for search strings found in the first research stage. After establishing a keyword strategy it is possible to deal with the different textual elements of specific pages:

The page’s title.
The page’s description.
The primary headline and the secondary headlines.
The text itself.

External Links.

After the website has been planned and developed, and after unique and relevant content has been posted on it, the time comes to ensure that other sites will establish links to your website. The first step is listing the website in important, popular directories such as Yahoo Directory, Business.com, DMOZ and others, choosing the most relevant category. One should think well of the keywords which are linked, and of the website description, and use wording in light of keyword strategy. Some directories require one time or recurring fees for adding new websites, and this payment should be taken into account in budget considerations.

Another means which is just as important for creating link popularity is adding links from sites which are contextually related, meaning, from sites which deal with the same topic as the website, or a similar topic. For example, if the website deals with international flights, it is important to examine link sources including: tourism portals, tourism forums, tourist agencies, or any site related to the international flight industry.

Link popularity is one of the most important factors in determining the website’s ranking for competitive keyword strings, and therefore you should establish as many links as possible, from appropriate sites. On the other hand, you should avoid using unrelated sites, link farms or sites containing spam.

The Sandbox Effect.

Despite of the tremendous work and expectation of seeing the website come up in Google and Yahoo search results, or those of any other search engines, the results of the SEO process are usually far from obvious right away upon the website’s launch. This is because new websites on new domains, with no previous web presence history, suffer from the sand box effect. The sand box effect is a term describing the period of time required by Google to examine whether the website is a deserving one, with high quality unique content, a website that others find relevant and worth visiting and linking to. The time spent by a website in the sandbox differs from site to site, and can be as short as few days, or as long as a few months in some cases. It is only after this test period, when the links to the site are found to be stable (this process is called in (SEO) optimization terms “link aging”) that Google starts showing the website pages in search results for popular keyword strings.

On Site SEO.

On site SEO (search engine optimization) is very important and we must give first priority to this. You can take care of this from the time of developing the website. Find seven important things that you must take care while building a website below. If you are implementing these steps in the right way, the pages will be indexed soon and half of your SEO jobs will be over. If you have the basic programming and internet knowledge, you can get it done without the help of an SEO expert. All these steps are very simple to implement – but remember – these are necessary.

Website URL – Try to make it your primary keyword or at least a variation of it.

Title text – Each of your web pages should have a title. This title should always include your primary keyword or the keyword for which the page is optimized.

Meta information – The Meta data should be seriously given (Meta description, keywords etc.)

Header Tags – Usage of header tags is a good thing i.e. <H1> and <H2> tags. It should be given properly.

Text formatting – Use bold, strong, italics, underline etc. appropriately.

Alt text – Don’t forget to put the keywords inside the alt attribute of image tags.

Keywords and Keywords Density – Don’t write content just for stuffing keywords. Try to maintain the number of repeating keywords in the allowed limits. Remember to put your main keyword in the first and last paragraph of the content.