What strict requirements my website must meet & what I should do before I submit it to the Search Engines?

I need to know what web and especially SEO standards(step-by-step) I must meet before I release my website to the public. This will be a Social Forum website and it'll be great if I have the chance to see your precious professional opinions and tips.


Thank you.

What strict requirements my website must meet %26amp; what I should do before I submit it to the Search Engines?
SEO (search engine optimization) is a very complex subject, with dozens of factors and practices required. There are dozens of quality web sites that outline "best SEO practices," and hundreds of other sites that are helpful but less clear or concise. There are also some good books and some bad books about SEO, but with rapid changes in the search engines' algorithms and policies, most books are out-of-date before they're printed.





You should either spend a lot of time studying SEO and website design issues, OR hire a consultant, before trying to create an "optimal" site.





BUT it's important to recognize that there are no "strict requirements," and most search engines (certainly Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) will index your site even if it has HTML coding errors, broken images, etc. -- the search engines are very tolerant of "errors."





Over the past 12+ years, I've created web pages in 10 minutes, with no thought about SEO, sometimes with unmatched HTML tags and spelling errors and no meta tags, and still had the pages indexed and displayed in favorable positions for relevant keywords. I've also had sites and pages where I strategized and optimized the site, expending lots of time and effort, and "doing everything right," without ever appearing in the top 100 results for relevant search terms.





Search engines are much less tolerant of "trickery" such as keyword spamming, cloaking, and dozens of other sleazy tactics which, when detected, can quickly cause your site to disappear from search results. There are some practices that are definitely "black hat" or prohibited and evil; there are also some practices which some folks defend as "gray hat" but which are still prohibited and evil (often the difference is merely the likelihood of getting caught).





In fact, the number one rule for SEO, in my opinion, is to design your web site and pages to be useful to human beings. The search engines aren't perfect, but over time they adapt to tricks but gradually become better and better at recognizing pages that are actually useful for human beings, and excluding pages that are not actually useful for human beings.





Do some homework. There is no "quick and dirty" strategy, and there are no guarantees that are worth anything.





Good luck.
Reply:I agree with Mark. I would add do not submit your website to the search engines. It will take longer to get indexed. You can request to trade links with a site already indexed or placed an ad on craigslist to get indexed quickly.