How To Prosper In The New Google
By Dan Thies

Fortunately for SEO Fast Start readers, the key strategies for succeeding on the "new" Google are pretty much the same as they were with the "old" Google. Unfortunately, a lot of folks have taken short cuts ? for these folks, and for anyone else out there who isn't familiar with the "fast start" strategy, here's a quick rundown of the important steps you need to take.

Step 1: Keyword Research: Cover Your Bases

Search engine strategy begins with identifying the right mix of keywords and phrases to target your audience. In spite of this, many website owners try to shortcut this part of the process, and focus all of their energy on a few generic search terms.

The main goal of your keyword research should be to identify all of the possible words and phrases that your target audience will use, including "modifiers" like brand names, localities, and adjectives.

Although it's only possible to target a few main keywords and phrases on each page of your web site, the combination of search terms and modifiers leads to far greater coverage in the search engine results.

Many website owners, who have followed an effective keyword strategy, barely noticed Google's November 15 update. By spreading their efforts across a larger number of searches, they may have seen declines in a few generic search terms, but their overall traffic has not suffered.

Focusing on a handful of search terms might seem like a great strategy, if you're able to rank well for all of them. However, when search engines make changes, as Google has done, this kind of inflexible strategy will fail.

Do your homework, cover your bases, and you'll have a solid foundation for your search engine strategy. If you have a copy of SEO Fast Start, go back and read chapter 3 ("Step 1: Keyword Strategy") just to be sure you understand the issues. If you don't have the time or expertise to conduct your own keyword research, SEO Research Labs (http://www.seoresearchlabs.com) offers low-cost keyword research services for you.

Step 2: Effective Site Structure

In order for a broad-based keyword strategy to be effective, you need to organize your website to allow the search engines to "crawl" or "spider" all of your pages. To understand this, let's take a moment to review how search engine spiders crawl your site.

On the first visit, the spider will fetch a file called "robots.txt" (see Chapter 8 of SEO Fast Start, or read the online tutorial at http://www.clockwatchers.com/robots_main.html) to determine if crawling is allowed.

Spiders find your site by following a link on another site. Assuming you haven't made your site off limits with robots.txt, the spider will fetch the page the other site linked to. Sometimes this is your home page, sometimes this is another page.

When the spider reads this page, it will extract some information about the page's content and add that to the search engine's database. It also reads in all of the links on the page, and depending on how important it considers your page, it may add those pages to its list of pages to crawl.

If every page on your site has a set of links ("global navigation links") that point to the main sections of your website, chances are very good that those pages will be crawled next. Assuming that each of these pages, in turn, carries links to your primary content, it will be very easy for the spider to crawl your entire site.

The most effective structure, then, is a "top down" or "pyramid" structure for your web site. For larger sites (more than 10 pages), it's important to have a site map page, linked from every page on your site. According to web usability expert Jakob Nielsen, a site map is one of the most important features of a well-designed website, and he's right! Your visitors will appreciate the site map as much as the spiders, if not more.

A lot of folks would rather have fancy Flash or DHTML menus, and they object to using text links for site navigation. Unfortunately, search engines have a hard time following that kind of navigation system through your site. There's no reason to worry, though. Text navigation can be placed at the bottom of the page, and you can keep your fancy menus. It's the best of both worlds, for you and your site's users.

Having a clear path of text links to all of your content makes it easy for spiders (and people) to crawl your site. Try to keep all of your content within 2-3 clicks of the home page, even if you need to create a site map to tie it all together. For more information and examples, see Chapter 4 of SEO Fast Start (Step 2: Organizing Your Site).

Step 3: Develop Optimized Content

Your site's structure is like a skeleton. Now that you have a good plan for your site's structure, it's time to hang some meat on those bones, and that means content. If you've been following the "fast start" plan, you have clearly defined content sections for your site, and you're ready to put it all together.

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