SEO Checklist (for Dummies)
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of checklists and after seeing some of the comments or our recent site reviews I thought it would be a good idea to create an SEO checklist. If you have any suggestions on things that we should add to this list please let us know.
I like to break the process of SEO into 3 different parts:
On Page - This is what should be done on individual pages
On Site - These are things that can be done across your entire site to improve overall SEO
Off Page/Site - Influencing factors on other sites
On Page
Titles
Each title should be unique and contain the keywords that you would want to rank for.
Long tail phrases
Don’t just focus on very targeted keywords, including other generic content on the page (further info read about long tail searches).
Keywords
If you want to rank for certain keywords you obviously need them in the main content on the page. I find it’s best to have the keywords in the first sentence and last paragraph of the page and also repeat where appropriate in the text. You need to make sure the page reads well and don’t paste keywords purely for SEO.
Useful Tags
Use tags to emphasise what the page is about, h1, h2 and strong are good way of highlighting key points to your readers and the search engines.
Meta Tags
Not as important in recent years but it’s still worth including a description and less importantly keywords in your pages header.
Alt Tags
All images should have an alt tag and title attribute for links and images, so you can give a text description (with good keywords in) to your links and images. Also, in firefox, the alt attribute of an image doesn’t show up as a tooltip when you hover over an image like it does in IE, but the title attribute does. [Thanks to Garry of ProBlogger Wannabe of adding to this tip]
Keyword Friendly URLs
Filenames are another good place for keywords e.g. example-keywords.html is better than p12345.html [Thanks to Mike for reminding us about this one]
On Site
Don’t index all pages
Most sites have pages that don’t need to be indexed (privacy statement, contact us etc.) so by excluding them from the search engines (noindex tag or prohibit in robots.txt) your other more valuable pages will get more link weight.
Sitemap
Having a sitemap is a good way to tell the engines about all your pages
Site Structure
Structure the site so that you share page rank on around the site. I find having a main page that feeds category pages which in turn feed individual pages works very well. Also if I want to push some individual pages I can link to them as favourite posts.
Lose Duplicate Pages
You don’t want to have the same content on multiple pages as this dilutes their ability to rank. If it makes sense for your site to have duplicate page let the engines know which ones not to index, thus giving as much weight as possible to those that are.
Link out to Other Sites
This may sound counter intuitive but linking out to other related quality pages can help your rankings (as well as that of the competition).
Time
Older established sites often do better in the SERPs, which means even when you take a bit of time off you are working on SEO :). [Tip courtesy of Dave from American Homespun]
Absolute URLs
Use absolute url’s for internal links [Scott]
Consistent Internal URLs
Don’t link to your homepage as index.htm/php ;link to the url e.g. selfmadminds.com and not selfmademinds.com/index.php [Scott]
Rich Copyright Texts
In the copyright footer use keyword rich text rather than copyright yourdomain.com [Scott and Ash]
Varied Internal Anchor Text
Using varied keyword anchor text for internal links is important and effective [Scott]
Off Page SEO
Links
Off page SEO is all about getting links to your website, the more the better. I won’t go into various link building strategies here (possible future post) but if you want to rank you need links.
Varied Anchor Text
Try to get links with different anchor texts on different sites, the exact same link on different sites does not look natural.
Quality Content
Other sites are more likely to link naturally to quality content.
Use Webmaster Central
Sign up to webmaster central so that Google can notify you of any crawl errors or problems.
This is hopefully enough to get our SEO checklist started. I’ve likely missed a few obvious points so if you’d like to leave a comment with any valid points I will happily add them and credit you with the tip.
Related Posts:
*applauds* Damn nice article, better yet change the title to “SEO Checklist (for Don)”, lmao. I just learn something new every time you and Scott publish a new article.Grats!
Very nice. Time is another important factor that should be noted, since the list is for dummies like myself. It can be very easy to get discouraged, while you wait to see results. Although chasing long tail keywords can get results fairly quickly.
what about the title attribute for links and images, so you can give a text description (with good keywords in) to your links and images.
Also, in firefox, the alt attribute of an image doesn’t show up as a tooltip when you hover over an image like it does in IE, but the title attribute does.
Also worth adding is not to use fancy javascript or flash navigation if SEO is important as it make links hard or impossible for spiders etc to follow to index your site.
Thanks guys I’ve added your tips to the original post, any more?
who’s this Darren of ProBlogger Wannabe then Al?
Oops must of been reflex typing when writing ProBlogger, fixed now.
It would probably be easier if you just changed your name Barry
SEO Checklist (for Dummies)…
I’ve mentioned before that I’ma fan of checklists and after seeing some of the comments or our recent site reviews I thought it would be a good idea to create an SEO checklist. If you have any suggestions on things that we should add to ……
I really like your strategy of sharing the Link Love, Al. Actually, I’ve read about it in the early posts here on Self Made Minds, and that’s what caught my attention on this blog.
As for this SEO list, it’s a good reminder for the not so dummy too
If it is an SEO checklist for dummies then a few things that I often find and change if I buy a site would be
—-On Site:
(1)Use absolute url’s for internal links,
–(2) Don’t link to your homepage as index.htm/php ;link to the url
–(3) In the copyright footer use keyword rich text rather than copyright yourdomain.com,
–(4) Using varied keyword anchor text for internal links is important and effective.
—-Off Page SEO: (1) Sign up to webmaster central so that Google can notify you of any crawl errors or problems.
Nice I’ll add those, in hindsight I should of worked more on the title.
About number 3, in the last link in the footer i usually copyright my domain and i use an anchor text that reflects the most important string i want to rank for.
I believe this combines both the aspects, but i never really understood if this tiny trick does have any influence on your SERPs. Cause after all, this text is way at the end of your page’s source, and from my knowledge, the relevance decreases as the text is way further in the source? So, why should you have rich keywords text in your footer after all?
I’ll echo Scott’s suggestion above (–(3) In the copyright footer use keyword rich text rather than copyright yourdomain.com,)
But also say that the ‘Copyright’ link should (and it usually does) appear as the last link on the page and in the code.
I wrote a very quick post about this awhile ago.
http://www.quickwhois.co.uk/last-link-on-a-page/
Can I just say that I’ve been looking for such a consiece post like this forever. And here it is
great work and thanks a lot for that.
Its only these simple things that count
great work again
“Don’t index all pages
Most sites have pages that don’t need to be indexed (privacy statement, contact us etc.) so by excluding them from the search engines (noindex tag or prohibit in robots.txt) your other more valuable pages will get more link weight.”
Would this have the same effect as using nofollow on the links to unimportant pages? i’ve been reading a lot about that lately but i just can’t get myself to nofollow links to my own pages. i don’t even use nofollow on blog comments on my personal blog and made it a dofollow blog because of my dislike of the nofollow tag. if using the noindex tag or robots exclusion achieves the same results than i can see using it in this way.
Preventing the pages being indexed is more reliable than just using the nofollow attribute and is my preferred approach. I do know what you mean about feeling funny doing nofollow to your own pages so an exclusion (robots.txt or noindex meta tag) is the ideal solution IMO.
A no follow tag would allegedly tell the spider not to follow that link, there could still be links either inbound or onsite you miss that link to those pages so it would not have the same effect. Using robots.txt or meta tags to no index is much more effective as no matter the inbound links you specifically state which folders or pages to not index. These can also be checked and confirmed through webmaster central.
Nice to see the list expanding and changing as people chime in! On the sitemap issue, i always use both HTML and XML sitemaps.
Another thing to keep in mind is to link internally to the homepage from every article with the anchor text of the keyword of that article.
This can help your homepage rank for a variety of keywords.
Thanks for preparing that its a great check list covering everything
Love the “don’t index all pages” tip. Seriously, that’s one I never recommend to people, but it makes complete sense.
I wonder, would de-indexing pages that are already indexed have the same effect?
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Excellent article.
Being a complete newbie at SEO this is very helpful.
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Wow! What a great checklist. I’m bookmarking your site and going to send people your way. You broke everything down in a simple, easy to understand format. Bravo!
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