In November the much-maligned latest Google Pagerank was released, taken from an October snapshot. My site was granted a PR4, after only 2 months in existence.

I can’t give you a guaranteed way to start a site and attain a decent pagerank in only two months. I can tell you the things that I did and didn’t do in an effort to make my site attractive to both my targeted traffic and the search engines.

I have a hobby I am passionate about. It’s really more of an obsession. I love music. I love film. I’m really entranced by the equipment that reproduces both. My wife was never terribly understanding of all the time I spent on web forums and elsewhere in pursuit of my fixation. She was even less understanding when a new piece of equipment would arrive at the house, especially since there are always projects around the home that need attention (and money).

It just kind of popped into my head one day that I could take all that obsessive energy and direct it into something creative. It sounded great; I could funnel all that time spent into making my own audiophile/home theater website. It certainly sounded like it would both fulfill my obsession and turn that time into something productive. The possibility that it may even someday produce income might even get my wife off my back about the time I spent on the computer.

So, on August 5 of this year AV Enthusiast went live. Initially a Wordpress blog, I made the transition to another CMS back in October in favor of a layout that is hopefully a little more magazine-like.

From day one I knew that if I wanted this site to amount to something someday I would have to do more than just make it available. Once I got my initial Wordpress theme laid out the way I wanted it and started producing articles, I sat down to figure out what I needed to do next.

Build Links- How does a website with little to no content build natural links? It doesn’t. Links will come as you build content. It takes time. You may be able to cheat a little in the beginning however…

• I hit the dofollow blogs in earnest. This is cheating, but you can at least get yourself started until your site is building natural links by getting some comment links on dofollow blogs. Be a good citizen and actually take the time to find an article you have something to say about. You’re getting a link out of the deal, pay for it by contributing something useful to the discussion. Some dofollow blogs will surprise you with how much referral traffic they send to your site. Keep your name out there by revisiting and commenting on blogs who are sending you decent traffic to keep it coming.
• If you can get .edu or .gov links, by all means take them.
• Another area that can really help you in links, and how Google perceives your site, is to get listed on DMOZ. I was fortunate, I got a DMOZ listing really early in the life of my site. It’s not that easy to get a DMOZ listing, but submit your site anyway.
• Forget about web forum .signature links. It seems like Google has completely devalued them. Sig links are still useful for driving traffic and referrals, but they won’t boost your PR. Commenting in the right threads on the right web forums will send a lot of people to your site however.
• Google punishes link schemers. Best not to get into some kind of link exchange or link pyramid shenanigans.
• Run far, far away from text link ads that come in the form of hard, dofollow links on your pages. This is a surefire way to incur Google’s wrath, not to mention that none of these advertisers will be offering product that fits your niche anyway. I know the money is good, but if you are patient the money you will get down the road will be much better for you having ignored the easy money of text link ads. I use Joomla, which has an internal mechanism for dealing with ads. Ads are internally redirected, for example, an ad pointing to filthylucre.com appears as mysite.com/banners/click3 to the rest of the world. A) this allows me to audit my links internally so I know how they are performing, and B) if an advertiser is really only concerned with getting targeted traffic to their destination they won’t care about the link. If you’re using Wordpress there are free services that will do the same thing for you. ClickAudit is one.
• Get a writing gig producing content on the side for a large, established website.
• I never saw any results in the way of links or traffic from submitting to social bookmarking sites. YMMV.
• Put your site out there so people can find it. Claim your site on Alexa and Compete. Register on Technorati, Bumpzee and MyBlogLog.
• Content. Content. Content. Content is king. Don’t neglect producing content while you’re trying to figure out how to jumpstart your site. Content builds links. Be patient.

Design

• Adhering to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is the best way for you to get your site off the ground and have Google view you in a favorable light. These guidelines will also help you produce a site that is user and machine friendly.
• Keep a text-based web browser on hand to see how your site looks to the crawlers. Crawlers can’t read a lot of the things you and I can. Make sure your site is compensating for anything you are doing that isn’t readable by the robots. This includes flash, java, graphics with no alt tags, etc..
• Generate and submit an XML sitemap of your content to the search engines.
• Keep the size of your pages down to a realistic number.
• Keep the number of links on any given page at 100 or less.
• Use search engine friendly urls on your site. Machines and people both prefer yoursite.com/seo/pagerank-update to yoursite.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=57
• Use nofollow. I almost left this out as I’m sure it will ruffle the feathers of the dofollow adherents who feel that all links should be dofollow. Use nofollow on links in content. Chances are you’re linking to some big fish that doesn’t need your link love anyway.
• Hunt down and fix broken links on your site. Google’s Webmaster Tools or a service like LinkTiger can help you here. Don’t send your readers or the crawlers to someone else’s 404 page.

SERPS- Google is a bottomless well of traffic. Since my site’s inception Google has accounted for over 2/3 of my total visitors. Direct traffic and referrals are nice, but don’t neglect your biggest source of new visitors. You need to land some decent SERPS to see some of that flood however.

• Don’t be shy about repeating your keywords.
• Don’t be surprised if the keywords you get good SERPS for aren’t what you are shooting for. You’re much more likely to corner the market on terms that everyone isn’t already gunning for. Take ‘em!
• First page results are first page results. Cultivate keywords that will land traffic on your site. Don’t bash your head against a brick wall going for keywords you don’t have a prayer of scoring good SERPS for.

Developing a website that will attract traffic, make money, and stand the test of time requires hard work and patience. No one goes from nothing to 1000 uniques a day in two months. You can however carefully manipulate your site’s authority to give yourself a jumpstart until your content starts accumulating and the site is developing links naturally. Just take care not to do things that will alienate Google or repel your traffic.

It’s a big web, and there is always room for one more quality website. Good luck!

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