Where do I start?

As you probably guessed from the title, I am brand new to this business.

I am hoping that some kind soul can point me in the right direction...

I've heard claims that there are those out there who more or less know what the Google alg is after every dance. Is this true? Possible? Or is it just all smoke & mirrors?

I've read up on the basics of SEO, but I'm really searching for that 5% of knowledge that will bring it all together.

If anyone has any tips, tricks, advice, bad puns, whatever... I'm all ears.

-Nate

Nobody except _a few_ google staff knows the actual algorithm. SEO professionals learn each the new tweaks each month by doing hardcore analysis of the stats for their sites with several thousand pages.

Noticing things like pages with keywords in the h1 heading are getting much more hits for those search terms than last month, might suggest h1 headings getting more weighting. That was harder to explain than I thought. I hope u get the idea.

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I think so...

Is the idea that you make changes every month and see how your ranking is affected, or do you wait to see what happened during the dance and scramble to make changes if you dropped?

Thanks,
Nate

Actually in many cases it has nothing to do with this. Let me explain:

G is all about "user experience" and "usability". Not all of G but IMHO this should be viewed as the foundation which must be in place before the tweaks. Perhaps your site design and usability is already great so please excuse me. Next, is this design tweaked for x number of keywords.

Can you post your URL so we can have a look?

Sure, but bear in mind that this is the old site design, and what little SEO has been done was not by me. So it won't really give you a good idea of where to start. We are in the process of re-designing the site, which will adhere to the rules of SEO, content, usability, etc. etc.

Having researched the mechanics of site optimization, my question is not really related to how I should modify the existing site. I am more interested in defining the process by which one analyzes and tweaks a site once the preliminaries are complete.

So, unless I'm missing something, the question still stands: Do I, within the first 24 hours of the dance, attempt to figure out what has changed and modify my pages appropriately so they are immediately picked up by the deep crawl, or do I attempt to figure it out over the course of the month and wait for them to be picked up by the next deep crawl?

Of course, comments are welcome with regards to the site design. Like I said, I am all ears and eager to learn. Here's the URL I am taking over:

http://www.invoicedealers.com

Thanks again,
Nate

Wait for a month for it to shake out. Chances are without alot of experience, you are not going to figure out little tweaks by the time the crawl starts. So unless you are hiring someone with the experience, take your time and get it good



You need some text on this page. Something for the visitor to read and understand what you are all about. Feed the visitor well, and Google will be happy. It is all about the content. Use stylesheets and get the formatting off the page. Since this is not the page you are going to use, make the new page content rich.. get 250 words on it, and have it keyword rich. Make it understandable to the viewer and the results will follow.

zen

Ditto to what zen said

1. Get your new site published yesterday

2. This should create a new friend called "freshie" or freshbot who visits your site often. In many cases, ever single day.

3. If all goes well and freshie has visited your site, "Dr. Deep/Dance" will show up neaar the end of the month or the beginning of the next month.

HTH

Thanks for the advice everyone!

-Nate