A previous article listed the SEO basics as the place to start your search optimisation efforts.

So once you've mastered them, then (or rather now) what?

So you do all those things already...What can you do that other people might not be doing?

Get your house in order

Use:

• custom error pages
• a directory structure (and file names) that included keywords
• textual navigation (not graphical)
• flat file structure
• a site map
• clean, valid code
• permanent (301) vs temp (302) redirects.
• internal links.
• alt text on your images
• content in text, not flash or image format

And some extras:

• use robots.txt file to control how search bots crawl your site
• an HTML web page with no images should be under 150 KB (according to Bing).

Why are we recommending these?

Because this collection represents a bunch of things that many people don't worry or care about .

It's possibly because some are put in place or controlled by technology. Believe it or not, some big content management systems have constraints that make these things harder.

Or it could be that your IT team, developers or CMS vendor doesn't understand how important search results are, how competitive your market is and that these things can make a difference.

Many SEO'ers will tell you that you only need to worry about getting back links and social shares. This may - or may not - be true for your industry and competitive environment. We just think it's better to have all your bases covered.

Recommendation

Make sure your relationship with your IT guy/girl/team or web developer is great.

Then you can have a discussion about them putting these 'other' bits in place.

Make it clear that you need their expertise and how it contributes to the success of your business.

If you are using an outsourced/hosted technical solution, you may need to put the hard word on the provider!