The Best SEO Guy in the World

Here’s a checklist of the basic things you should have in place for your web site from an organic SEO perspective.

1. In order to create the specific “webmaster tools” type accounts mentioned below, you will need to set up accounts at Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live (for MSN/Bing) if you don’t already have them. These webmaster tools accounts are separate services and you will first need to have the master accounts at these 3 major search engines.
2. Make sure your site has Google Analytics installed
   1. Use the new Google Asynchronous Snippet.
   2. Create a filter in the Analytics Settings to exclude all traffic from any IP addresses you want to exclude from your site stats. This would include internal traffic from your corporate locations, the IP address of your web development/seo company, etc. You don’t want to inflate your stats with visits from people working on the site, or your own employees visiting the site. Also, if you have goals set up that are measured by analytics, you don’t want to artificially inflate those numbers when you are doing any testing.
3. Make sure site has an XML sitemap
   1. If not, and the site is a small, uncomplicated site, there is a good, free XML Sitemap Generator.
      1. Select “weekly” as Change Frequency (unless you change your content more or less frequently)
      2. Choose “Use server’s response” for Last modification
      3. Select “Automatic Priority” for Priority
   2. If not, and it’s a large and/or complicated site (such as a shopping cart or other application) there are 2 other tools that Über Web recommends to create site maps. We have the paid, unlimited version of the XML Sitemap Generator which runs as an application on the web site. There is an installation process to deploy this and you will need some technical prowess to make it work. The other tool we use is another paid tool called Inspyder Sitemap Creator. It runs on a local machine and spiders the site. I actually prefer this tool because it is easier to use and it does not require a complicated installation process in the web hosting directory.
   3. If there is an XML sitemap present. try to determine if it is recent and if it is updated frequently. If it is, great, if it’s not, go to step 2a or 2b above.
4. Create a Google Webmaster Tools account if you don’t already have one and add your site to it.
   1. Verify “ownership” of the site, just follow the directions. You will need to have access to the web hosting directory via ftp and a little HTML knowledge to do this.
   2. Submit the XML sitemap if there is not one submitted (or resubmit if you’ve updated an old one). You’ll find the link where you add your sitemap under the Site Configuration menu in the Webmaster Tools.
5. Create a Yahoo! Site Explorer account if you don’t already have one and add your site to it.
   1. Verify “ownership” of the site, just follow the directions.
   2. Submit the XML sitemap if there is not one submitted (or resubmit if you’ve updated an old one)
   3. The procedures for a & b above are very similar to the procedure described for the Google Webmaster Tools)
6. Create a Bing Webmaster Toolbox account if you don’t already have one and add your site to it.
   1. Verify “ownership” of the site, just follow the directions.
   2. Submit the XML sitemap if there is not one submitted (or resubmit if you’ve updated an old one)
7. Submit your site to the Open Directory Project if it is not already included. Make sure to read their guidelines on how to go about submitting your site. It takes forever for them to list sites so it’s a good idea to check back every few weeks to see if your site has been included. If you can get listed, this is just a good, free, backlink to your site.

If you follow all of these steps, your site will be more search engine compliant than probably 90% of all web sites! This will NOT be enough to get you page 1 rankings for competitive keywords but you need to have this stuff in place to start working on getting there. This is just the foundation.

Of course, if you need help, please don’t hesitate to contact Über Web, we’ll be glad to help you out!