In this appendix we will be looking into the complete process of building a demo web site through a case study. In this case study I will show you the steps I took to get a web site up and running with all the SEO options in place.
Is it a real live web site? Well, the answer is yes. But it is not for a real company, which limits to local search options using Google maps. Does it rank? Yes, but it needs to grow in content (once I finish writing this book!).
So, here are the steps we need to take, listed in chronological order:
- Pick the niche to build the site in
- Brainstorm for ideas and choose a domain name
- Buy the domain and arrange some hosting
- Set up the Joomla! 1.5 base installation
- Install the SEF patch and sh404SEF component
- Install a good Joomla! SEO template
- Name the sections and categories
- Build the menus
- Install and configure the sitemap
- Write the content
- Use Google webmaster tools
- Analyze your results, rinse, and repeat
This involves finding a good niche to place and optimize the web site. This is not always easy to do.
Ideas such as digital photography and credit cards are just too saturated to even think about getting a new web site to rank well, especially in the time plan I wanted to use; you can try to rank for those words, but you will have to work long and hard to get there.
So, I came up with "landscape gardening" in the "Los Banos" CA area. I took a trip to Los Banos in 2001 to visit a family. I also needed a company name to go with the site and there the Beez theme came in and the idea was complete—"The Crazy Beez Landscape Gardening Company" was born.
With the niche, name, and location chosen, it was time to find a fitting URL in which it would be nice to have the main keywords. You can imagine that these names were already taken:
Then I included the name of the company into the ideas, but that was getting too long.
Also, there was some concern about people typing "crazybees" instead of "crazybeez". So, at the end, the domain www.cblandscapegardening.com was registered and put in place as a second domain on a hosting package that I already owned.
In retrospect I think it would have been better to host it with a USA-based hosting provider instead of a Dutch web hosting company. For the target audience this would have been a better choice as it would get an IP address in the USA and with that it would rank better based on Google's geotargeted search results.