SEO pointers if possible

Hi

Hello to you all. I have a site that I am trying to put together which at the moment consists of around 10 pages. I have read and done a little research on SEO but am by no means anywhere near fully understanding it.

The site will grow to be quite or even very large as time progresses and I would rather make any changes that may help SEO now so I dont have to go back through everything

Would it be possible for someone to take a look and point out anything you would change or improve at this stage please.

the url is h**p//www.tilesofstone.com

Thank you

Tiler

The very first thing to mention is to SEO from the start.

Sit down and do the research as to what you want your keyword to be, and then build your pages for the 1) user 2) search engine.

The keywords might change later on with the age of the site, but you are going to have much harder time going back and SEO'ing a large site later on.

Checklist of things to do when you get to launching to site.
!) Get into DMOZ, Yahoo! directories.
This step will at least let the search enginge world know you are there. DMOZ - [http://www.dmoz.com/help/submit.html#add]

Yahoo! dir - [https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro/]

2) Start early tracking your movement so you can see where changes can be made. - digital point solutions [http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/]

3) Get links for other site, that have similar content as your own, and link to other sites that have similar content.
--- this will help you get more 'PR' and while you shouldn't worry about getting to a certian PR rank quickly, the mroe backlinks that you create will help you later on.

4) Create a good robots.txt [http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots/robots_tutorial.htm]

5) Check the amount of pages google and Yahoo have index on a constant basid, using a site:URL to check amount indexed, link:URL to check backlinks (more consistant in Yahoo!)

6) Create a good site map. Search Engines will use this to link hop around your site. google's link about site maps [https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login]

7) Creat a 404 page that has links to other pages of you site (don't spam the custom 404 page with a crazy amount of links, but a few that explain where the user can go is a good bet)


8) Realize that google will 'sandbox' you, for a while, and that if you do the above you will get better listings faster.


9) Be patient, and talk to other about SEO topics.
This field changes all the time, and you need to have the foot ahead to get the top listings.


Well this is really general overview of what you can do. There is a lot more that can happen, like using keyword in alt tags, proper use of <H1><H2> and <H3> tags ect...
but the steps above are the foundation to the code work you'll need to do.

Hope that helps!

Kris

Thank you Kris looks like a good platform to begin off. I am aware of some of what you have said but comprhention of how the actual steps are taken are a little shaky. Good or bad I can be a genius but only when I am shown, I have trouble transfereing directions from a page to action eg the site is put together by systematically breaking it down and rebuilding it that way I can see what I am doing. With all the things you mentioned in mind can I ask

There seem to be conflicting ideas about submission, do you submit or do you let the bots find you

I am aware that google has visited though what or why is not part of my genius

Currently my page url's are in jobloggs-wife-smiles format can this be bettered before I build further to aid seo.

Keywords/ phrases are a pig for my subject as stone has/is becoming extremely available and thus keywords becoming difficult (i think)

Back links in this sector are a bit like rocking horse sh*t there is a lot of stone (uk) but the sites (prospective links)are few when looking at relivance. I am aware of the ability to conjour up links from every which way but my thinkkin is that relivance is a bots middle name at the moment and getting more so. I have this week run backlink checks on the market leaders and am concentrating on getting into the directories used and other useful backlink sites.

Internal links how important are they.

Last one now, anchor text I need a good example i can see it is probably very easy but i cant see it. I see somewhere that using your hyphenated url in anchor text can be an advantage is there anything in this.


Run out of breath now they are not direct questions just ones that pop up. God I wish I could understand by reading like normal people LOL

Tiler

Submit to the directories, and let the search engines find you. This way you are not sending your link to link farms. Once you submit to the big dogs, the search engine robots will come to you.

Internal backlinks are important as long as you have a good path. If you have all links going to all pages, you will descrease your PR, which might lower your overall standings.

(just thought about this, my doing a search in google/yahoo for you last night might have told google to look for you)

anchor text,

<a href="url">Keywords here would be the achor text you would want to optimize</a>

Finding the right keywords can be a large help, and I do understand that finding the right ones can be hard.

If you can pick a major one, then a few smaller that you can jump to #1 with, sometime it ends up helping more than SEO'ing for the larger term.

Questions are welcome I've been there before

Ok

can we start here ?

Internal backlinks are important as long as you have a good path. If you have all links going to all pages, you will descrease your PR, which might lower your overall standings.

Good path??

all links to all pages ? is the way I am going from the home page outward and returning the same path correct

tiler