• SEO is not an overnight process, once a website is optimized it may take some time before you can see an improvement in your rankings. This is because search engines have their own re-crawl rates depending on the website itself.
• If your website is not indexed in Google, do not try and submit it through the URL submission form. Instead, build a few backlinks to your website from other websites. Google finds more new websites through this process. Also, create an XML sitemap (www.xml-sitemaps.com) and register for a Google Webmaster Central account (www.google.co.uk/webmasters/) then once you have added your website to your new account, submit an XML sitemap, it will notify Google.
• Ensure you install an analytics platform, these are covered later on in the document. We recommend Google analytics as a free, quick and easy solution.
• If your website rankings decline, don't panic. Your optimized pages will mean that your rankings increase either after a small decline or after a short period of time. Ranking fluctuations are expected, especially if the website has remained in an un-optimised state for a long period of time.
• When building backlinks to your website, you should expect to wait a few months before these links are recognized. When checking your backlink status, use Yahoo site explorer instead of the backlink check in Google, Google does not release all backlink information, even in the webmaster central panel.
• If you make a mistake during your optimization, even after you have uploaded the pages, you can make amends without too much impact.
• When optimizing for a search engine, focus on Google, other search engines including Yahoo and MSN will tend to follow suit. Each search engine has its own ranking criteria.
• Once you have completed the optimization on your website, get straight into social bookmarking, article submissions and resource development, maybe even a little PR. Boost popularity by letting the world know that your website is there and ready to be browsed.
• Depending on the nature of your website, you could also join forums and communities, create some articles and point users of the website in the direction of those articles, do not be misleading in anyway, and do not plaster your websites URL's all over the forum, just one URL every couple of days will do.
• Check your websites hosting, geographics of your website are important, if your website is hosted in a different country to its origin or target market, consider a change of host. This is covered later in the guide.
• Download and install a ranking report client, so you can keep track of a websites performance in natural search listings. We recommend Caphyon Advanced Web Ranking, you can download this from www.advancedwebranking.com
• Keep monitoring your website in Google webmaster central, look for any items that need attention such as broken links etc.