The Ultimate Google FAQ - Part Two

I posted The Ultimate Google FAQ back in June which is a good resource for those with questions about Google.

I found an even better one.

I’m calling this one The Ultimate Google FAQ - Part Two. It’s hosted at the SitePoint Forums and covers all the interesting questions about search engine optimisation including the basics and some more complex stuff like:

• What is anchor text? Why is it important?
• How do I get a lot of backlinks to point to my site?
• Why does Google show less backlinks then Yahoo and MSN? Why doesn’t Google show all of my backlinks?
• Do pages with .php extensions rank as well as pages with .html extensions?
• Should I use relative links or absolute links?

And this was such a nice summary I thought it deserved a direct quote:

What would be a good SEO strategy?

Before you launch your site, you should have done the following:
- Optimized your title tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
- Create unique Meta Tags for each page
- Used appropriate markup where necessary (h1, em, etc.)
- Used keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
- Designed the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)
- Used Search Engine Friendly URLs (if necessary)
- Created a complete website with plenty of quality content
- Used keywords in your domain and url (http://www.keyword1.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:
- Submit your site, by hand, to all major search engines
- Submit your site to all free directories (dmoz, yahoo (if applicable), etc..)
- Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the reciprocal link anchor text)

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:
- Continually update your website with quality content
- Continually seek free and reciprocal links preferably from sites in your genre.

Note that you shouldn’t take this information as gospel, things change over time and the people that write these FAQs are not necessarily 100% accurate. However they give you a great foundation of knowledge which you can further develop over time with your own testing and research.