U) Study those logs.
After 30-60 days you will start to see a few referrals from places
you've gotten listed. Look for the keywords people are using.
See any bizarre combinations? Why are people using those to find
your site? If there is something you have over looked, then build
a page around that topic. Retro engineer your site to feed the
search engine what it wants.
If your site is about "oranges", but your referrals
are all about "orange citrus fruit", then you can get
busy building articles around "citrus" and "fruit"
instead of the generic "oranges".
The search engines will tell you exactly what they want to be
fed - listen closely, there is gold in referral logs, it's just
a matter of panning for it.
V) Timely Topics
Nothing breeds success like success. Stay abreast of developments
in your keyword sector. If big site "Z" is coming out
with product "A" at the end of the year, then build
a page and have it ready in October so that search engines get
it by December. eg: go look at all the Xbox and XP sites in Google
right now - those are sites that were on the ball last summer.
W) Friends and Family
Networking is critical to the success of a site. This is where
all that time you spend in forums will pay off. pssst: Here's
the catch-22 about forums: lurking is almost useless. The value
of a forum is in the interaction with your fellow colleagues and
cohorts. You learn long term by the interaction - not by just
reading.
Networking will pay off in link backs, tips, email exchanges,
and it will put you "in the loop" of your keyword sector.
X) Notes, Notes, Notes
If you build one page per day, you will find that brain storm
like inspiration will hit you in the head at some magic point.
Whether it is in the shower (dry off first), driving down the
road (please pull over), or just parked at your desk, write it
down! 10 minutes of work later, you will have forgotten all about
that great idea you just had. Write it down, and get detailed
about what you are thinking. When the inspirational juices are
no longer flowing, come back to those content ideas. It sounds
simple, but it's a life saver when the ideas stop coming.
Y) Submission check at six months
Walk back through your submissions and see if you got listed in
all the search engines you submitted to after six months. If not,
then resubmit and forget again. Try those freebie directories
again too.
Z) Build one page of quality content per day.
Starting to see a theme here? Google loves content, lots of quality
content. Broad based over a wide range of keywords. At the end
of a years time, you should have around 400 pages of content.
That will get you good placement under a wide range of keywords,
generate recip links, and overall position your site to stand
on it's own two feet.
Do those 26 things, and I guarantee you that in ones years time
you will call your site a success. It will be drawing between
500 and 2000 referrals a day from search engines. If you build
a good site with an average of 4 to 5 pages per user, you should
be in the 10-15k page views per day range in one years time. What
you do with that traffic is up to you, but that is more than enough
to "do something" with.
http://www.searchengineworld.com/misc/guide.htm "
