In response to Rachel’s comment from a post on July 17, 2008 titled Axis’ Own SEO Campaign here is some food for thought when planning your website and/or SEO campaign.

1. Content
   1. Relavant Content: Write good copy that is relative to your site. When writing the content keep your customer, viewers, ideal market in mind - write copy they want to read. Write copy they will link to. 
   2. Professional Copywriter: We recommend (of course) that you use a professional seo copywriter to write the copy for your website. Writing copy for your website is not as simple as putting words together to form a sentence. First, you must research your keywords - we recommend using Google’s Keyword Analysis Tool. After researching the phrases that best fit your goals incorporate the site-wide phrases at a rate of 1-3% and the deep phrases at a rate of 2-4%. Although it’s not a complete science thats a good rule of thumb. Don’t forget your audience is still a human - NOT Google. First and foremost your copy must read well and make sense to us humans - Google comes second.
   3. Update Often: through the use of blogs, press releases, dynamic database-driven systems, and content management systems, you should update your site as often as possible. Get yourself into a routine of updating your site on a regular schedule - maybe every day or every week at the same time. With modern content management systems and blogs you can add a post or update content in literally minutes. This will keep viewers coming back for more. Don’t be afraid to share information with your websites’ users - after all you are considered a professional and expert in their eyes.

 

2. Structure & Usability
   
   1. User-Friendly: I don’t like going to the grocery store and walking down the produce aisle for cleaning supplies - do you? Organize your website in a logical sequence. If you have different product categories; widgets, gidgets and gadgets, arrange them within a single products page. Add links to each category page, from the products page, which will link to each individual product within that category. Each page should have UNIQUE copy and content relevant to that product. Make it easy for your users to get back to the main page or to another categories page. Consult with usability experts if you already have a website that you fear is not user-friendly.
   2. Page Names: Search engines like to know what the page is about. For example if you have a page about how to install a gadget into your gidget name the file; gidget-installation-into-gadget.html - again, this is not a science but sometimes it helps.
   3. Functional & Accurate Sitemap: Make a sitemap for your users and link to it on each page. List all pages of your site in a logical structure.
      
      SITEMAP EXAMPLE: 
      • Home
      • About Us
        • History
        • Press Releases
        • Management
      • Products
        • Gidgets
          • Blue
          • Black
          • Purple
        • Gadgets
          • Hot
            • Medium
            • Large
          • Cold
        • Widgets
          • Gold
          • Silver
          • Bronze
      • Contact Us

 

3. Link Building & Directories
   1. Directories: Subscribe to, or sign up for directories that relate to your field or product. These generally have the most relevant information about your field. It’s a one-stop-site for Internet users to get information about that product genre. For many fields and industries when searches are conducted these sites come up first. And, depending on the searh it might feature the page you are listed on, or, even better it might feature your listing.
   2. Social Networking: Social networking in terms of SEO can be fun. Go on sites like myspace.com, youtube.com, facebook.com, linkedin.com and others. Register yourself and your business.
   3. Get Involved: In general, you want to get involved with the Internet community that is internal and external of your field or industry. Share information, posts messages on forums, blog, answer message board posts and have fun doing it. You’ll learn a lot - I have.