A lot of people have asked me for my “blue print” when building a site.  I have written below some tips to get you started.  Understand these tips and you will be able to build a site that is both visitor and search engine friendly. 

1. Domain Name 
   While the success of your site does not depend on your domain name, this does not mean that you should not take time to choose a good domain name.  While I do not advise that you put your keywords in your domain name, I would highly recommend that you choose a domain name that is easy to remember and can be easily branded. 
    
   
2. Site Design  
   When it comes to web design, simple is always better.  Take a look at Google’s design.  It is simple, clean and effective. 
   
   And even when search engines have improved a lot and can now crawl things that they couldn’t crawl before, I would still advise against using Flash, Java and complex JavaScript.  Doing this will allow the search engines to crawl your site without the risk of hanging and the eventual termination of the crawling process.   This is commonly called as the “Spider Trap.”  
   
   
3. Site Speed 
   The speed by which your pages load is a very important factor which can spell the difference between success and failure.  Keep in mind that a delay of even three to four seconds can already cost you to lose a potential client.  Even the best sales letter and the best marketing plan will fail if your site does not respond instantly to a request. 
   
   Keep your file sizes small.  Remember that large files cause a longer loading time as well as a longer crawling time.
   

4. Content Pages 
   I would recommend that you add at least one page per day to your site.  When writing content, use keywords as the basis for your pages.  An article between 200 to 500 words is ideal. 
   

5. Timely topics 
   Stay on top of your market and post articles as they occur or even before they occur.  Monitor developments in your keyword sector.  If major site “Z” is coming out with product “A” by the end of the year, it would be good thinking on your part to build a page and have it ready by October.  This way, the search engines get it by the time site “Z” releases it on December.  
   
   
6. Keyword Density 
   Ensure that your Keyword Density is properly used as this is the backbone of SEO.  It is recommended that your Keyword Density should be in the 3-5% range and that you use the keyword once in the following areas: 
   

• Title Tag
• Description Meta Tag
• Heading (preferably in H1)
• URL (http://www.yourdomain.com/keyword-phrase.html)
• Bold text
• Italic text
• High on the page (as high as you can get) 
  

7. Font and Graphics 
   Use easy to read fonts like Arial and Verdana so that it will be easier for your visitor to read your text.  It is a fact that while Times New Roman causes the less stress and eye fatigue on printed pages, this is not true for online pages as it causes high levels of eye fatigue online.  
   
   Summarize your font code changes in a CSS file to reduce the file size of your pages.  You can also use CSS to make the heading codes more attractive. 
   
   Optimize your images so that all unused colors are stripped out.  Doing this will result to a much lower file size while retaining the same quality of graphics.  This will greatly lessen your download time.  ALT text is beneficial to your visitors so make sure to use them too.  
   

8. Links 
   Pay attention to both your internal and external linking practices.  Link to authoritative pages on your topic and be careful of who you link to.  Always manually approve links before posting them on your site.  The last thing you’d want is to link to “bad neighborhoods.” 
   
   Use a solid linking strategy that internally links the same topics together.  Doing this will help you raise the level of your site by sharing PageRank among your pages. 
    
   
9. Good quality web host 
   When choosing a web host, choose one that offers a good quality service that is reliable and trustworthy.  The worst you can do is to get a cheap host that offers very little support and whose server is always down.  This is not an area where you should try to cut down on your budget.   
   
   
10. Web Logs 
    Always track your visitors.  Know their full details, where they came from, what pages they visited on your site and how long they stayed.  It will be to your benefit to get a quality web log tracking system that provides you with more than just the basic details.  Trust me, you want to know everything. 
    
    Study these logs as the search engines will tell you exactly what they want.