caine - 12:21 am on Jun 7, 2002 (gmt 0)

excellant question James,

if i could start from the basic's

1. Content distribution over structure, only on the web initially does one feel compelled, due to lack of knowledge to load up pages with a multivariate of keyterms and spam. If you were going to write a book, then thats the last thing you would do, obviously websites, from all perspective of the SEO front, are to provide the quickest and most precise presentaion of information in the least complex format. Theme's, great for the user, great for the search engines.

2. Design, full principles of W3C validated XHTML, CSS, HTML, XML, etc. in laymens terms, browser compatibilities, user bandwidth realities, simplicity of use and accessibility. Graphic.extensions, various propreitry code and not using it if SEO is the major consideration.

3. Submission (part 1: directories and search engines)
section A: on a shoe string budget. Excellant cat and listing in ODP, google, fast, altavista, hotbot, northern light, hand submissions once.
section B: $2K per annum, listing in yahoo.com, and regional yahoo. LS.com partners, ink, teoma, any money left a few pages translated, and some overture listings (highly targetted). As well as A.
section C: Just want the #1 on them all. Get an experienced SEO, or submit 5 times to Yahoo, different sections or subdomains, working on theming principle, 5 * LS.com, or a mixture of general / regional listings, massive overture expenditure, Google adwords. specific industry related portals and directories, as well as A and B not mentioned.

4. Linking. Hunt links at least pr>5, and / or at the top of the ODP, Yahoo, Fast, Ink and whatever directory or search engine that is in the searchers demands, and get the links in, good for ever regular crawls and updates, highly specific, and try not let the outgoing links, work against incoming, either do it all to the main page or to subsections, with them linking out.

5. Find a home to learn at, i would suggest here, this is a pretty knowledgable and constantly expanding area of the internet, this place is slowly becoming the water fountain of knowledge concerning all things website, search engine, and SEO orientated.

6. A little bit of luck, any body that thinks they know all there is too know is chatting rubbish, the reality is that we all learn by mistakes, and they can be the most valuable of lessons.