Birthing a New Web Site

I've had a presence on the web for about 8 years, in one way or another. Even when I was bumped a few years ago for my Flash site, it was easy to get back on track within about 6-8 weeks. I also do okay at making sure no PR is damaged in a redesign.

But, birthing a new site is posing more of a problem than usual. I hear the same from other designers. One major obstacle is getting a site listed in the directory. Also, getting links for a new site can be daunting. I've learned a few tricks, and I was wondering if the experts here can share a few.

Question:
What SEO steps do you feel is critical to birthing a new site?

Mine:
1. An announcement on the highest PR page on my site announcing the site. It'll get picked up fast by the spiders.
2. If possible, a Press Release or get the owner to post a few articles for informative sites with high rankings.
3. Sacrifice chickens before the D M O Z altar -anecdotal advice, I haven't gotten this desperate.
4. A Google PPC campaign gets traffic going
5. When applicable, Froogle works like a charm

Yours: ?

Spiral,

Things are indeed more difficult now for new sites than before. The very reason for this is that more companies now realize the potential of SEO (optimization) and have employed some form of it. Thus, there is a lot more competition.

Getting listed in the Google directory has been impossible since last september as the ODP have not been able to produce a dump (although a ne RDF dump became available 2 days ago so some new sites will show up in Google when they get the new dump onto their servers).

I think all of the items you have listed will help, but nothing the bottom line is that it is very hard to get some quality traffic until you gain some voluntary inbound links and build a reputation.

If a CPC program is in the budget, then that's a good idea.

Submissions to DMOZ and Yahoo are a must, the same for the major search engines: Altavista, Lycos, Hotbot, etc.

What I try to do during the first month is do a search for my major keywords and see if any of the sites have a list of resources similar to mine. I then just go and blatantly ask them for a link, not even a reciprocal link. Of course I do it in a nice way and many, many sites are still willing to put up a link, without exchanging.

Gringo.

God bless those who ain't too familiar with the whole PageRank thing yet, they are like innocent virgins who have remained uncorrupted

Yup, a few sites I aproached told me very rudely that if I didn't have a PR of 6 or above to go elsewhere. Oddly, their PR's where <4 and on closer examination -full of broken links... no wonder they were so desperate!

-cris

Unfortunately, easier said than done. I really hate/dread explaining to a client that they are waiting for a directory listing because there is no editor and they are in the same boat as everyone else... makes me look so competent

True, but at least with DMOZ you can chase things up a little bit at resource-zone.com. And the Yahoo Express service will also get you a quick reply.

Gringo.