SEO Preparation

Search engine optimization should Ideally be one of the areas taken into account at the initial planning stage of a website. Thoughts on making a website search engine friendly should be made before even the first line of code is written. Careful consideration should be given to your design, site structure, navigation and internal linking structure. Do you REALLY have to use Frames for example. Is it really necessary to use active server pages (.asp) on every page of your website? Search engine friendliness should not be the only topic up for review in the planning of your website, but it is so commonly missed out completely in a websites planning phase. The major corporate websites are the most guilty of all for poor planning.
Let's however take the case that you are going to go for a search engine friendly website. No frames, no or limited use of Flash, Java applets or extensive Javascript etc.The next step is to establish your best search terms (keywords) or better phrases. This is a very important phase of search engine optimization. Just go for what you THINK are your best keywords and you may well regret it afterwards, when you find most searchers do not use the search term you thought was good. Research your keywords properly and you are halfway home. Do you know for example what users are typing into search engine boxes to find sites with similar or the same content your site provides? Do you know what two and three word combinations are most commonly being used and have relevance to your site? Do you know how many competing pages there are for each of your main keywords? Which keywords will bring you the best visit/sale conversions? What keywords your competitors are targeting?
If you don't know ALL the answers to the above then you should not skip this section of the tutorial.
There are essentially 3 main methods you can use to establish the best keywords for a given web site.
1. Send all your friends and colleagues an email or hand them a sheet of paper with the following question on it stating specifically that you need 5 answers:
If you were searching for a web site with content identical to, or of the same theme as www.yourdomain.com, what word, or better word combinations (2-4 words) would you type into the search box? Please give 5 possible search terms or search term phrases that you believe are relevant to www.yourdomain.com content. "
1 _______________
2 _______________
3 _______________
4 _______________
5 _______________

Important: Make sure you actually write a numbered list 1-5 leaving spaces for them to fill in! Otherwise in my experience you will find you generally get just the one or two possible keywords.
You then collate the results from everyone and you can normally see clearly what enters most peoples heads for the keywords relating to your site. This method is particularly useful if you have plenty of people to ask. The more the better really. Ideal for companies with more than a handful of employees. You will commonly see keywords that you would never have thought of yourself and it gives you a great start on your keyword selection process. Studies have shown that 65% of the replies will be 2 words or more combinations. This is good news, I'll tell you why later.