I used the "Must use this SEO tips!" and you?!

So I used each of one of the things Simple-Biz mentioned:

A - Own your-domain-name-dot-com
B - Host your site on a reliable server

1 - Shorten the title to 55 chars
2 - Add the robots tag
3 - Place the robots.txt in your root on your server
4 - Get rid of the js in the code and put it in an external file
5 - Use css instead of color, size and font tags
5 - Change the link buttons or js links in to text links
6 - Make sure to have a site map page
7 - Make sure you have 404 page
8 - At the bottom of each page use menus as text links
9 - Make sure your page code is not bigger than 100 K
10 - Submit your site to ODP and Yahoo Dir, make sure to select the right cat
11 - Pay special attention to your content
12 - Try to get as much as relevant links you can
13 - Read each search engines guide lines and follow them strictly
14 - Don't spam
15 - Don't use doorway pages
16 - Don't cloak
17 - Always come and ask for advice on this board
18 - And pray hard that the big G appreciates all your efforts

That was a few weeks ago. What is the next level?
Do I need to maintance it somehow now?
How many links should I get in other sites?
What else I have to do?

Thnks!

Hehe, the next step is to place more emphasis on some of these rules (they're all good - mind you). For day-to-day seo, put #12 on top of your list, followed directly by #11. By doing this, you can progress steadily. Nice path to take.

But to get to the next level you might actually need to break some of these rules. Just be subtle about it.

I for one haven't felt the need for that, but it's a competition thing. It's like speeding on the motorway: if you can refrain from overtaking them all, and stay behind the most excessive speeding lunatics, chances are the cops will chase them instead of you. Of course the official advice would be to not speed at all

How do I follow rule #12?
I built a website to a construction company so I'm really not sure where can I ask to link to their website from.

How many links is a "good" amount?
What do you think is the minimum?

I'm not sure how to apply rule #11.
Any ideas?

Thanks for your help Wit

If you have a good on-page optimization, you can allways get better SERPs with more backlinks, never stop getting them, they will help you climb the lists.

What is a good "on-page optimization"?
How can I tell that is good?

The thing is that I'm trying to figure out the number of links I should get to the website. I have no idea how to push it... should it be 10 or 250... I don't know.

Is it OK as well to post my link inside a forum/message board or it has to be on special "links" page inside a website?

(Free) directory links are also relevant. There's an active thread around here listing lots of free - quality - directories. But in general, all the sites showing up on the serps for your keywords are potential link partners. It helps if they're not direct competitors, because in that case you can easily trade links via a polite email request...

The minimum of links to get is double the amount of your competitors' Remember that Google doesn't show all the links to your pages (=backlinks) if you use the Google link: command... That goes for you AND your competitors...

On-page optimisation is all the stuff like: good content, title, header tags, internal link structure etc. It's the stuff you can control directly, using notepad if you will...

P.S.: don't get too many forum message links. Rumour has it that "themed" links are much more effective...

So I should build a links page in my website for them as well?

My competitor got 9,800 links... (I used the "link:" command) - I'm dommed!
I can't get that amount of links. What can I do?

What's the defenition of "good content"?
What's internal link structure?

Thanks for your help guys! I'm such a newbi

You only have one competitor? How many links do the other 9 (out of the top 10) have? If all of the competitors have more links than you think you can compete with, then you may need a different strategy. Perhaps you need to optimize and strive for a different set of keywords. Maybe something less generic (and less competitive). Look at the entire picture and then decide what is best for you to do.

Well, of course I have more then one but they all appear to be very big.
The least one on the list got 800 links - I assume it's a lot.

The truth is that I didn't checked it by keywords. I just check how many backlinks my competitors got. The website went live only a few weeks ago (so you can't see it in none of the search engines yet). Is there something I can do against 800 links?

What other "different strategy" I can use?

Wee:


You have a lot of questions and if your site is new you will run into a problem at google called sandboxing which will require patience.

On page optimization is making sure that the content on your pages reflects the important keywords that people search for to find companies like yours. You need to have titles and content that emphasize those terms. You need to do keyword research. I would start by analyzing the competition. Read the code in their sites and see what terms they emphasize as keywords. Do a few searches and find out if they rank high for those phrases. If so do some keyword research in Overture and Wordtracker. Look at the main phrases and less important phrases. Keep doing searches for those phrases, you may find less competition on some of the less important phrases that will drive traffic to your site.

The two second most used search engines are yahoo and msn. They are less dependant on links and more dependant on on-page optimazation. Get good at that and you will see traffic.

While link building is extremely important for ranking in google because your site is new and because of the sandbox it won't gain high google ranking for a while. Frankly you will have the time to build links.

Most construction companies are pretty regional or local. You can pick up local links. You can pick up industry links, directory links, links from vendors, etc.

Keep coming back here. We will help.

Dave

I'll try optimize my main page a little bit better. But I'm not sure I know how to analyze the competion and the right keywords.

Thasnk for a great answer!

Dave is right, work on local and regional keywords.
Things like new construction tampa (whatever city you are in) roofers tampa, framers tampa.

For back links target some of the construction or builders associations, most should have a decent ranking already.

From there find others that are in the construction business in your area that you do not compete with. If you are a framer, then you could talk to roofers, drywall guys, electricans, etc.

The key for you is really going to be targeting your local or geographically area, for example, I live 45 minutes north of Tampa in a little town on the Gulf of Mexico that most people never heard of, so I focus on targeting areas (keywords) people are going to search.

The Tampa Bay area is made of of 9 counties and over 100 cites. The reality is that we consider anyone in those 9 counties to be local customers or potential customers.

I started out by focusing on the big cities or the cities that everyone is fimilar with, cities like Tampa, Clearwater and St Petersburg.

I used to work on a caterers site in Tampa that I took to the next level. His geographically area is a little smaller than mine, since he wants to stay more localized.

So we pulled out a map, looked at all of the cities in Tampa Bay that he wanted to get more business from.

We then went back and optimized his site to target 64 cities in the Tampa Bay area.

It worked beautifully, he was #1 or #2 for each of the cities we targeted.

Not only did his traffic increase, he's sales revenue increased by over 300% the first year!

Just a few ideas that I thought could help.

Ray Gonzalez

Weee:

On the keyword side, look at the code in the competition(s) sites and see what they have in their for Keywords.

Next look at their sites and try and figure out what are the keywords they are emphasizing in their titles and content that have to do with construction.

Run some searches on those keywords (keyword phrases) to see how the competition is doing on those terms. (Basically you are trying to figure out why or how customers would look up construction companies. Sort of like the web yellow pages.

Next use overture or wordtracker to learn how often the phrases are searched on and also alternative phrases that people may search on for construction. You can also consider googles adsense tool which will also describe your keyword phrases and many similar ones.

Then start competing.

Good luck.

Dave

I understand.

Thank you all guys for your help!