The steps to building a site and optimizing it can pretty much be classified into eight different categories: choosing you product, picking a domain name, registering and hosting your domain, choosing keywords, page optimization, site optimization, registering with directories, and building links. Using shopping cart software like Zen Cart SEO, Miva Merchant or OS Commerce can actually help smooth out many steps to this process. Zen Cart SEO and Miva Merchant are SEO friendly right out of the box and have many other functions, so these may be products that you want to look into for your site.

Choosing a product is the foundation for your site and often determines how successful it will be in the market. When you decide on a product it is important that you analyze the product and the market that it will be competing in; you want to avoid creating something that already has an oversaturated market because you will have trouble coming out ahead. Picking your domain name is important, but it should not be something that you spend too much time on. You should try to pick something that can be branded easily or use your site keywords in the domain name. You can also think about buying multiple domain names so you can target a bunch of niche markets.

After you choose your domain name it is important to register it right away, especially if it is a .com one. There are many different ways to register a domain, but be sure to use an accredited one.

After your domain is registered you should spend some time picking out relative keywords to target. This is a very important step in building a successful site because it will help determine your rankings on search engines. Typically, you want to look for words that have a lot of traffic, but do not have a lot of competition. This is easier for older and established websites so you may need to start slowly and pay your dues. One of the best ways to get your site on the first page of search engines is to write articles that use these keywords, but are also relevant to your site in some way.

You should generate articles that are informational or general how to articles because these will get picked up better than sales articles. The all you have to do is submit the articles with anchor texts and link backs to your site homepages and sub pages and you will see your traffic skyrocket.