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SEO Mistake #2: Waiting Too Long To Think About SEO

Whether you’re setting up a new website or revamping an existing one, you have a million things on your mind. You’re thinking about things like, choosing the right logo, colors and graphics and hiring the right web designer, programmer and writer. Just to name a few.

Each of the professionals you hire will tell you the one thing that is most important for your website – from their perspective. The designer will say that the colors and graphics must be first rate. The programmer will say that the site must function properly and to do so, it must have first rate coding. And, the writer will tell you that nothing matters but what you say. After all, if no one can read your website, no one will buy.

They’re all right, of course. But none of what they say will matter if no one arrives at your website. In order to drive new visitors to your site, you need search engines.

Customer First, SEO Second

Unfortunately, many small business owners find themselves in a situation where they’ve spent thousands of dollars on a site their customers won’t even be able to find. Why? Customers can’t find the site because it can’t be indexed by the search engines.

What does this mean?

Search engines use programs called robots or spiders that “crawl” the Internet. Basically, these automated programs follow links from one web page or website to another. When they find new content or a new website, they index, or save, what they find. Then, when a visitor to the search engine results page (SERP) types in a keyword, the information that is in the search engine’s index, and that is most relevant to the keyword phrase, is displayed to the visitor. The visitor then clicks on the result that he thinks will best meet his needs.

You can make sure your site is easy to index by following these 5 guidelines:

1. Make SEO your first priority. Find a reputable SEO professional who can advise you on what your website needs in order to be search engine friendly.
2. Stay involved in the website building process and make sure you know exactly what methods each professional is using in the construction of your site.
3. Avoid website that are built in Flash or Ajax or that hide your content in a graphic. Spiders can’t read content that is hidden in Flash, Ajax or a graphic. Even worse, these websites can be hard for your customers to use.
4. Avoid using session IDs in addresses to your website. This is particularly important if you have a forum or shopping cart on your site. If you take a look at the address bar of your site as you navigate through it, make sure that the address is not followed by a long string of numbers. This is typically a session ID and they tend to confuse the spiders. A confused spider is not going to index your site properly.
5. Avoid frames. Not only do they hide your content from the spiders if not setup properly -- they are so 1999.

Follow through with SEO

The guidelines above will help you make sure that the site you setup or revamp will be built in a search engine friendly manner. This will go a long way towards making your site indexable.

But, you can’t stop there.

Just like a building contractor can’t stop when the foundation is complete, and a golfer can’t stop his swing the moment his club hits the ball, you need to follow through on your SEO efforts.

Following through with keyword research, onsite and offsite SEO efforts will ensure that your customers can and will find their way to your website for years to come.

Stay tuned for next week's SEO article. Or, stop by the new website of Volition and get a jump with your own personalized site review.