Here are a few bullet points on what you should do before you start building a website. Before I start building I like to draw the entire design on a piece of paper and build it from there. That way you can you can save time instead of editing in the computer. Here is a simple checklist I follow when building a website.

Layout

-Consistent navigation bar and main logo.

-Page footer that includes copyright information and a contact email address.

-Remember that most people use an 800 x 600 resolution so you should design your pages to be no less than 750 pixels wide.

-Make sure the text on the page is easy to read. If you use a black background it is best to use white text so that people can read it.

-Grab attention with the homepage. Put as much relevant information on the main page as you can

-Check Browser Compatibility

Navigation

-If you are using buttons as your text, add links to the bottom of your page. Some people use text browsers and search bots only look at text not pictures.

-Make sure the homepage is under 50 kb for fast loading

-Navigation should be big and simple and easy to find

-Check Links to ensure they are not broken

Search Engine Optimization

-Make sure your meta tags are defined (title, keywords, description)

-Make sure all your alt tags are filled in

-Make sure there are plenty of links and they are not broken

-Preview you pages in a text browsers

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I started this website you are on November 15th which was only 11 days ago. And I have to say that I am pretty proud of myself. My goal was to try and build this site up, not to make money, but to prove to myself that I really knew what I was doing. I have these other sites that I am trying to make successful but this one is blowing past the others. Granted my other sites are seasonal and this is clearly not the season but I am glad to have all these visitors to my site. I wanted to show you my Google analytics because I am really surprised by it. Almost no traffic to my website comes from any search engines. Again I know this site is only 11 days old but it’s amazing to me how fast it’s grown using just twitter, stumbleupon and MyblogLog. Take a look below at my main page in my Google Analytics.

I think it’s pretty awesome that search engines don’t play a part in my site traffic. In 11 days this site has grown faster than all my other sites. Here are some of the factors that I think are contributing to my traffic.

- On Twitter I like to connect to people that share my interest, which is blogging and SEO. So buy sharing that interest my blog offers insight to what I am trying to do and gives SEO experts an outlet to share and to teach me about my websites.

- On Stumbleupon I connect with people who again share my interest.

- Anything that interest me, any widgets,any links I share. I post immediatly on Twitter or I link to it on my blog.

- All I do is read other blogs, for my own learning purposes and to see what other bloggers are doing and to try to get influenced. Not only do I read them but I also comment on them which provides a link to my site.

All of these factors and more are what I think plays a major role in this websites development. I just can’t wait to see what the search engines will bring me. I probably don’t even show up right now.

Thanks Everyone!

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I have been slowly compiling this list for 3 days. These are all tips that I used to build my websites and even this one.

1. Redirect 404 Page
2. Use Header Tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3>
3. Make your links the color blue, so that visitors know that it’s a link
4. Use CSS, for site wide customization and website speed
5. Use short meta data. Every page has to have a title, about 5 Keywords and a brief description
6. Use Google Analytics to track visitors on your website. It’s free.
7. Start a blog using wordpress (it’s the most SEO-Friendly)
8. Use a robot.txt to blog google from going into useless folders on your server.
9. Create an xml sitemap and submit it to Google’s Webmaster Tools.
10. Use large text.
11. Create great content. Content is King!
12. Twitter!!!!
13. Sign up for Stumble Upon
14. Sign Up for Delcious
15. Use flash animation sparingly. Google doesn’t read flash…yet.
16.Choose an easy to spell domain name
17. Get a .com screen name. All the others in my opiniion are worthless.
18. Be consistent in your design across all your pages.
19. Use alt tags on all your images.
20. Check your spelling
21. Create an about us page
22. make sure your webpage works on every browser.
23. Do not play music on your site. If you do make sure it’s the users choice to play it
24. Stay away from intro pages.
25. Add Search function to your website
26. Animated Gifs are tacky, don’t use them
27. Intralink within your website. If there is relevant content related to a page, link it
28. Less images = Faster load times
29. make sure every page has a different page title, keywords and description to match the content
30. Have someone else proofread your work
31. Do not submit to crappy directories that mean nothing
32. Review your website every week and make changes

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A fellow twitterer was nice enough to review my websites out of the kindness of her heart. She has brought something to my attention with one of my websites which forced me to look at my other ones. My one website PoolPuppy.com is a swimming pool company directory. It has a slim amount of content but I really haven’t promoted it that much or have added the features to it that I want to yet. But she told me that if you typed in “Puppy Swimming Pool” in Google, that PoolPuppy.com was the first one to appear. I was shocked and felt like a freaking idiot. How did I miss that? I don’t sell Puppy Swimming Pools but the name alone pulled the wrong information. She told me to go back and re-evaluate my alt tags and meta tags which I will do tonight. I think I am going to completely remove the word puppy as much as I can. It’s just a brand I came up with.

That also brings me to my other site which is called SwimUniversity.com. I think with this site I am going to have to get rid of all my meta tags and alt tags that have to do with a University. I do not run a college, I run a swimming pool care website, but I can see where Google can get confused and not give me the ranking my websites deserved. So again thank you for the tip @yuyudin. What a big help she was today. See this is how Twitter can impact your life.

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I am using Google analytics and webmaster tools to track my websites and I have been using it for about a month. The problem that I’m having is that my page rank is still at 0. That’s not helping me at all. I posted a question on Twitter this morning -

“I just cannot get my page rank up, what’s with me. It’s taking forever.”

@yuyudin responded to me with some really helpful tips on trying to get my page rank up. She mentioned at one point that page rank was overrated but still helped me out anyway. Here are some of the tips she gave me about this site.

Increasing Your Google Page rank Tips
- If you are using WordPress to host your blog make sure you create different more specific link categories. Which I implemented. She mentioned to split it into categories like SEO Tips and so forth. You can see how I did it on the right hand side of this site.

- If you have articles on your website or blog posts, you should like to other posts in your blog or website that are relevant. So for instance on SwimUniversity.com I have a blog post about Killing Swimming Pool Algae. In that post I mention that one way of killing algae is by using pool shock. I have another article called The Right Way To Shock Your Pool. So anytime I see pool shock in the Algae Article, I like that Pool Shock word in the Algae Article to the Shock Article. Because when Google scans your website it picks up links faster than all other text.

- The quickest way to get inbound links to your website is by signing up for Social Media sites and using links to that site to your site.

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