New website - testing please

[Gamerprinter]

Everything, Turgenev mentioned exists on the Gamer-Printshop.com site as well, didn't mention it, as its been so long since I applied them to the site. I did all that at site creation and pretty much haven't touched the site since (notice those broken links...)

Strange, but once I placed the keyword-optimized pages up, the Robots.txt and the XML file, in 24 hours gamer-printshop.com was at the top of the search engines and have stayed there ever since, with no post-build optimization applied at all.

So its probably wise to do all the TG says, it worked for my site!

GP

[Turgenev]

Everything, Turgenev mentioned exists on the Gamer-Printshop.com site as well, didn't mention it, as its been so long since I applied them to the site. I did all that at site creation and pretty much haven't touched the site since (notice those broken links...)

Strange, but once I placed the keyword-optimized pages up, the Robots.txt and the XML file, in 24 hours gamer-printshop.com was at the top of the search engines and have stayed there ever since, with no post-build optimization applied at all.

So its probably wise to do all the TG says, it worked for my site!

Glad to hear it worked for you. That fact that it worked in 24 hours is amazing! That is outstanding results! I wish some of my sites had that turnover rate. The thing about the search engine game is it is best played as a long term one. The longer your site is online, the better your results should become. Time (as in how long your site has been active) is one of the factors that search engines take into account.

I recommend getting webstats for any site so one can see who is visiting, where they are coming, what browsers they are using, what links referred them to one's site, and so on. This info is interesting to see but it also lets you to who is talking about your site (through the referral links). The real good ones will show you what keywords people used to get to your site. You can then use this info to pinpoint your own keywords and your internet marketing strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with their websites is they put them up and then they never add any new content - basically the sites remain static. This can hurt you in search engine results because the search engine might think your site is no longer active (aka alive) and they might start to de-list your site in the ratings. This won't be a problem for torstan's or GP's sites since they will be adding new content as they produce/accept it (as the case may be). I've seen too many business sites that do this.

In this case, I recommend one should always keep their sitemap.xml file up to date with the latest changes (make changes to the date on the pages you've changed) because search engines will pick up on this. Google and Yahoo allow you to make an account there and upload the sitemap.xml file directly tyo them to help your site get indexed quicker/kept up to date.

The other nice thing about the robot.txt file (combined with info from webstats) is if you're getting hit by robots from dubious sites, you can ban those robots from accessing your site.

I've only touch the tip of the iceberg about SEO. I'm available for consultations (when I'm not mapping or writing xHTML). That's enough SEO stuff from me. I've got some mapping to do.

[torstan]

Well that will certainly keep me going for now I have some reading up to do about css and html errors.

[Turgenev]

Well that will certainly keep me going for now I have some reading up to do about css and html errors.

To give you a head's up... try the following code after your title tag and then see how things validate.

<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />

[Nomadic]

The other nice thing about the robot.txt file (combined with info from webstats) is if you're getting hit by robots from dubious sites, you can ban those robots from accessing your site.

Bad bots tend to ignore the robots.txt file. The best way to block bad bots is to IP ban them. If however it is a bunch of copies on different IPs you might have to contact your host about setting a limit on how many pages can be accessed by one IP in a given time period (bad bots like to spam page requests really fast).

[Turgenev]

Bad bots tend to ignore the robots.txt file. The best way to block bad bots is to IP ban them. If however it is a bunch of copies on different IPs you might have to contact your host about setting a limit on how many pages can be accessed by one IP in a given time period (bad bots like to spam page requests really fast).

Very true. I was going to mention about bad bots ignoring the robots.txt file but I figured I covered the basics and didn't want to get bogged down by technicalities. One can use the htaccess file to ban bots, IP addresses, and hot-linking (to name the top three) but that is probably getting a bit too technical for here.