Prepare the work and begin building contents. Long before the domain name is settled on, start putting together notes to build at least a 100 or more page site. That's just for openers. That's 100 or more pages of "real content", as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright/tos...etc fluff pages.
Choose easily brandable domain name. You want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains are out - branding and name recognition are in - big time in. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to search engines. Learn the lesson of "goto.com" becomes "Overture.com" and why they did it. It's one of the powerful gut check calls I've ever seen on the internet. That took resolve and nerve to blow away several years of branding. (that's a whole 'nuther article, but learn the lesson as it applies to all of us).
Makes the simple site design, cause more simple more better. Stay away from heavy: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit. You can also go the other route and just throw everything in root. Don't clutter and don't spam your site with frivolous links like "best viewed" or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability. Speed isn't everything, it's almost the only thing. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until "something happens" in the browser, you are in long term trouble. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request. Longer than that, and you'll lose 10% of your audience for every second. That 10% could be the difference between success and not at adsense.
Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren't sure what you need for content, start with the Overture keyword suggestor and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.
More small page size that you have would be better. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can - I trust you are getting the idea here. Over 5k and under 10k. It works for search engines, and it works for surfers. Although no one knows for sure, and the data is sketchy, it is estimated that 50% (circa jan 2005) of your surfers will be at 56k or even less. This figure will increase dramatically if you target countries outside the US.
Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it). Use good sentences and spell check it ;-) Spell checking is becoming important as searchengines are moving to auto correction during searches. There is no longer a reason to look like you can't spell (unless you really are phonetically challenged).
Make outbound links, from every page, link to one or two high ranking sites under that particular keyword. Use your keyword in the link text. This is very important for your adsense future from now on.
Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your pr value across your site. You do NOT want an "all star" page that out performs the rest of your site. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily. It's the old share the wealth thing.
Put it Online, don't go with virtual hosting - go with a stand alone IP. Make sure the site is "crawlable" by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main "topic index" pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content). Don't put it online before you have a quality site to put online. You want it flushed out from the start. Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don't have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo (don't hold your breath).
Submit the root to: Google, Fast, Altavista, WiseNut, (write Teoma), DirectHit, and Hotbot. Now comes the hard part - forget about submissions for the next six months. That's right - submit and forget.
Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don't use a lame graphic counter - you need the real deal). If your host doesn't support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can't run a modern site without full referrals available 24x7x365 in real time.
Watch for spiders from se's. Make sure those that are crawling the full site, can do so easily. If not, double check your linking system (use standard hrefs) to make sure the spider found it's way throughout the site. Don't fret if it takes two spiderings to get your whole site done by Google or Fast. Other search engines are pot luck and doubtful that you will be added at all if not within 6 months.
Almost every keyword sector has an authority hub on it's topic. Go submit within the guidelines on topic directories to got success way at adsense and another affiliate program.
