So… in the last blog we covered the basics, setting up a few SEO sources linking back to you like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Now let’s start thinking about how to get the search engines to index and follow you. Your keywords, META Tags and site-map will help with this and make you look like a pro to the search engines.

I know this next part gets techie, but trust me it will be very helpful for a new website and trust me I have found an easy way for you to do all of these steps. Here’s your SEO tip – Your new favorite new word is going to be “generator” and below you will find links to your new favorite generators.

When you need HTML code written and don’t know how HTML code works it can be a bit confusing. So, I have created this post to solve a few of your website or blog problems. Here’s how you start. Look up the HTML or Meta Tag word you need in Google and put the word “generator” next to it. For instance try – robot text file generator or sitemap generator (Google requires this for indexing your site) or XML sitemap generator, or even Meta Tag generator. All of these searches will take you to tools that will generate your code for your Meta Tags, site-map and any other basics you need for your website. All you need now is to learn how to write the quick simple content that will be copied and pasted into these generators.

Follow these steps to look like a HTML pro without ever learning a lick of code.

Before I get into the steps required to create Meta Tags for your website, let me say, that if you have used WordPress you will not need to follow the links below, you can just read the instructions. Instead You will want to install a plugin called Platinum SEO Pack from WordPress. It will give you everything you need for your blog.

Step #1 Let’s start by generating some keywords.

These are the words you want your customers to look up in the search engines to find you. The best tool I know of is the Google Keywords Generator. Start by search for the broadest term you can related to your business like “baby blankets” and let the generator show you the rest. It will put out a large list of words and you will want to choose 5-10 words that will fit your topic but are not the ones with the greatest number of hits. These words will be too competitive to fight for so you will likely want to pick some of the less popular words that still get good traffic.

Step#2 Now your website needs META Tags and here are my favorite generators from www.scrubtheweb.com.

You will find many resources here, but let’s first look at the generator here for META Tags. META Tags are becoming less popular for some search engines like Google, but are still important for other search engines. So let’s cover all the bases and make sure you can be found by al the search engines. Below are the basic Tags you will need and there are a few others you may consider adding that may not be as important.

a. META Title Tag – this must be the first tag that shows in your websites HTML code. The best way to write this is – “Your Most important keyword to find your website” followed by the pipe symbol | (you can find this symbol by holding the shift key and hitting the back-slash key just above the enter key) and then your business name.
i.e. Search Engine Marketing | semtrak

b. META Description – Your title tag should be approximately 150 characters in length and be full of the keywords that describe your business and is written in a sentence format. This is the description that will show in Google searches for your website in all your organic listings.

c. META keywords – these are your words that you will soon start optimizing for in the search engines. These should be identical to the keywords you chose in step number one and should be in order of most importance. The first word is your most important word and last is least important.

Step#3 XML Site Map Generator and Wordpress Site Map Generator

This piece is very important to Google and other Search Engines. This file will be stored on you servers and tells the search engines how to index your page when the web spiders crawl your site. This is not a page that will be visible to your visitors but it will tell the spiders where your web pages are and how to link to them in the future.

Step#4 The no follow Meta Tag or Robot text file.

This file will tell the spiders to either crawl all of your pages and links or not to crawl certain portions of your pages. This can be important for people that have secure information on their site and don’t want it to show up in the search engines general content. I will post more information on this later.

Step#5 Submit your website to the Search Engines or many of you may want to ping your blog using Ping-o-Matic.

This last step is actually the first step in optimizing your website for the search engines. So far you have worked on making your website look good to the search engines so that you they want to send you traffic. Now it’s time to get traffic. This quick and simple process will guarantee that your pages will be indexed by the search engines and that you start getting traffic from organic searches on the web outside of your first links that we set up from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and your Blog.

And remember, when you set up your submissioninformation to use the exact same information as your META tags you set up for Title, Description and Keywords. This is very important so that Google see relevancy in your submissions and listings.

Here is my favorite tool to submit to the search engines. It is an automated service that automatically submits your website every month for just a few bucks and I get it free with my web host. Finally, if you are a local business with a physical address you will also want to set up your most basic local listing on Google Local, Yahoo Local and Bing (the new MSN). These listings should be set up just like the other above and I will cover this in my next blog post.

Twitter, Gmail, Wordpress, Facebook and your URL

Everyone remembers to look for a good URL to get their website started, but many people forget that they will also want to own the same names for their blog, Twitter account, Gmail and maybe even a (800) number. You want your website found as soon as possible when you launch it and the best things you can do to make sure you are found is to have many other accounts pointing to it even before it exists. I call this “Cabbage Patch Marketing”.

The Cabbage Patch Kids marketing company created demand first, through advertising, then released their product. This is not normally a marketing principle for a small business, but it works on the search engines. Give the search engines something to search for, on a popular site,  and then when your site is available it can be indexed almost immediately. Just start doing a few searches for it organically through your pre-made links and your site will be indexed. No cost, no crazy link building, just search for your website through links that are already live. Follow these 5 steps to do it right.

5 steps to market your new website.

Get a URL with your keywords in the URL. I recommend getting it from a solid provider like IPOWER. They are a very inexpensive service and provide great, reliable service. They are by far one of the least expensive providers and offer many tools built into their service and have great customer service.

Tip #1 When you choose your web address try and stay away from hyphens or dashes in your URL if possible and get your website up ASAP. Even if it’s not very good, you can make it better later when you are making money.

Tip #2 Set up a Twitter account with your URL as the name (or at least a phrase that mentions your URL).

Set up a link to your website from your new twitter account before the site exists and start Twittering with people. This will be your first of many links that you will need for your new site. One goal for you will be to get into conversations with highly publicized organizations on Twitter. These tweets can quickly show up in organic searches for your company name and will show up in your organic search results. (This will be link #1.)

Tip#3 If you don’t have a Facebook account get one.

Your business or service needs to be public and here is a place you can talk about your new website to your friends and put out links to products and services you may offer without being salesy. (This will be link #2.)

Tip#4 Get a LinkedIn and Gmail account (using your URL@gmail.com).

If you are serious about SEO it is almost required to have a Gmail account. At some point I bet you will get one so why nt do it now?. Also, you want people to be able to contact you if they are interested, even if your website is still in its infancy stages. Overall, Gmail is a great place to start because of its access to other tools like Google Analytics and its ability to use for logging into many different accounts on the web like YouTube and Facebook. Now go to your LinkedIn account and set up a link to your website. (This will be link #3.)

5. Download WordPress (it’s free) and host your blog on your website using the Thesis theme.

Wordpress is not just for blogs and the Thesis theme will make your site look great. It has a minimal cost, but it will help you make a beautiful website not just a blog. This is a one-time investment in your new website and well worth it because it will teach you how to make a great site that is search engine friendly and will help your SEO. It will also ensure that you get your blog up quickly and it can be hosted directly on your new website.

If you are not ready to spend money on your website there are other services like Blogger that will get the job done, but I wouldn’t recommend them unless you are only blogging for fun. Best practices say to have a blog on your website, because this will keep more of your traffic on your website. This is important if you are selling a product or offering a service. Having your new blog entries on your home page will also boost your SEO because your website will constantly be hosting new content as you write articles. (This can be link #4.)

Good Luck and Happy Blogging

Indexing your site on Google| Internet Marketing Solutions

If you know of a tool you would like me to review (even if its your own), feel free to comment on a post or send me a tool to review to mark@semtrak.com and I will review it and create a post on this page. I am open to all tools for SEO (free and pay) and any blog software or add-on that will enhance a blogger’s experiences. I am a fan of Wordpress for its amazing SEO resources and will test Wordpress SEO add-ons on this page.