The Ultimate SEO Checklist part one
By Shirley Kaiser
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/ultimate-seo-checklist
Optimizing your web site for search engines should be an integral part of your web site project, from the very beginning to the very end. Search engine optimization (SEO) should be considered, and if possible, implemented, throughout the planning, design, development, and maintenance stages of your web site.
The checklists in this chapter of Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists can be used as a guide to optimize your web site for search engines. You can download this checklist, along with others that cover content management and site testing, for use in your own projects. However, it will definitely pay you to subscribe to some helpful SEO newsletters, visit web sites that cover the latest on SEO, and consider purchasing books by highly regarded SEO/SEM experts, such as The Search Engine Marketing Kit, by Dan Thies (Melbourne: SitePoint Pty. Ltd., 2005).
You will see the results of your work first-hand if you consider SEO right from the start. For example, at the time of this book’s publication, my own site is the number one listing on Google for its keywords, and has consistently remained within the top three (unsponsored) listings on the first page of Google and other search engines for several years. Yes, SEO is important, but more than that, it’s rewarding! Let’s get started.
Successful SEO in a Nutshell
Plan your web site’s SEO before you create the site.
It’s important to create your web site with SEO in mind. Changing a web site, or potentially even redesigning your web site, to optimize it for search engines can end up being an expensive proposition. Plan to create a search engine-friendly web site from the start.
Ensure that every page includes text, links and popularity components that will help boost your search engine rankings. (Shari Thurow, “Before You Build” in Search Engine Visibility (Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing, 2002), 20.)
Employ other means to market your web site.
In addition to SEO, consider paid submission programs, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, reciprocal links campaigns, and advertising your site on others. Depending on your budget, you might consider advertising through traditional media, such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.
Working with Keywords and Keyphrases
Research keywords and keyphrases (multi-word phrases) before you create your web site.
It’s important to create your web site with keywords and keyphrases in mind and to put them in place as you develop the pages and content.
Target keyphrases rather than single keywords.
Single keywords are much more commonly entered by web users, which makes them more difficult to target effectively than multi-word keyphrases. Unless the single keywords are highly unique, your best results will be achieved using keyphrases.
Use longer words and plurals.
If you target plural versions of your keywords or phrases, you’ll get hits from people searching for the singular and plural versions of those words.
Use that Thesaurus!
As part of your brainstorming for appropriate keywords and keyphrases, try using a thesaurus to find similar words. There are helpful thesauri online (you might start at Thesaurus.com), but see also the Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Wordtracker.
Focus on a few specific keyphrases for each web page.
Pages that rank well in search engines tend to focus on specific keyphrases that usually appear in the HTML
Create keyphrase-rich text content, especially for your homepage.
Identify the top two or three keyword phrases that potential visitors would use to find your web site, then write 200–250 words of homepage text that utilizes those keyword phrases—not the other way around. Follow this approach as you create content for other web pages, too. As noted above, keep in mind that titles and headings are considered more important than other content by some search engines, so consider this as you optimize your content. We’ll discuss the topic of optimizing your markup for search engines in just a moment.
Include keyword and keyphrase research in your ongoing web site SEO maintenance plan.
Using Keywords and Keyphrases in your Markup
Search engines use a page’s structural markup as a guide to rank the relative importance of its content. It’s important to include keywords and keyphrases within your web pages—especially your homepage—and to place them within certain markup elements. Providing content that is relevant to your target audience will, naturally, help your search engine rankings, especially if you intentionally make strategic use of appropriate keywords and keyphrases. Use the checklist below to help.
Include keywords and keyphrases in your site’s information architecture.
Keyword and keyphrase research results can play an important role in the words and phrases you use within your web site’s information architecture. For instance, you might use keywords and keyphrases in your global and local navigation, your category labels, page
Using these terms in conjunction with the checklists from Chapter 5, Web Site Usability: Focusing on the User and Chapter 7, Information Architecture not only helps your web site visitors find information more readily-it helps your site achieve good search engine ranking, too!
Use focused keyphrases within each web page’s
Currently, creating keyphrase-rich text for your web page element’s text a lot of weight. Create each page’s
Use your keyphrases within each web page’s element.
Note that many search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, Inktomi, and others, index and use the text within the element; for instance, some use it as description text for display in search results. However, they don’t use the text for search engine rankings at this point. Also, they largely ignore other elements, including the element. While there’s no guarantee that it will help improve your rankings, it’s still worthwhile to include the element in your web pages as shown below. (Jill Whalen, The Meta Description Tag, High Rankings (updated October, 2004).)
Use your focused keyphrases within the page’s
element.
Keep
Close to
The closer that you can locate your keyphrase-loaded
element content to the opening element tag, the better. Some search engines will give a close proximity between the two a higher rating—it appears to the search bot that the content is important enough to earn itself a high-level heading, and that content appears early in the document. In addition, content that’s placed closer to the top of the page is also considered more important by many search engines, so make sure your top 200–250 words are packed with keyphrase-rich content.
Use your focused keyphrases within link URLs and corresponding title attributes.
Here’s an example:
Keywords and Domain Names
Although some Search Engine Marketers believe that placing keywords in domain names can provide a significant boost to sites, others feel it doesn’t really do much. According to SEO expert Jill Whalen, keywords in domain names might be afforded a small amount of weight by the search engines, but only when other site owners link to the web site using its domain name, rather than the web site title. The result is similar to having keyword- or keyphrase-rich links, which is indeed helpful. Another SEO expert, Shari Thurow, also feels that other factors have much more impact than the inclusion of keywords in a domain name, such as keyphrase-rich content, links, and the site’s popularity. (Jill Whalen, Search Engine Marketing Q&A, High Rankings Advisor, Issue 091 (March 24, 2004); Shari Thurow, Search Engine Visibility (Indianapolis: New Riders Publishers, 2002), 20.)
Use relevant keyphrases within your img element alt attributes.
Here’s an example:
jpg" alt="Essential web site
Checklists: Best Practices Made Easy, my kit with essential,
helpful checklists for web site designers and web site
owners" />
Being Search Engine-Friendly
Great keywords, keyphrases, terrific content, and having other web sites linking to yours does nothing for your search ranking if the search engines can’t access your web pages to index them. Use this checklist to help ensure that your web site is based on search crawler-friendly design and markup.
Avoid the use of splash pages.
A splash page is a main entry page that displays either a large graphic image or a Flash animation, usually with a link to Enter a web site or Skip Intro (skip the animated introduction page). Splash pages usually redirect to a new web page after the animation has completed. As you might expect, splash pages typically lack keyword- or keyphrase-rich content, as they contain little or no visible body text other than Enter or Skip Intro links. Given little or no text content, the search crawlers have nothing to index.
Typically, splash pages use redirects to automatically advance the user to the web site’s actual homepage. Currently, search engines tend not to index web sites that use redirects, and they’ll ban web sites that create artificial redirects in an attempt to achieve higher rankings. (Shari Thurow, Top Five SEO Design Mistakes, ClickZ (September 27, 2004).)
So, by using a splash page that contains little or no text content, and uses redirects, you’ll likely have ruined your chances of having your web site indexed—let alone ranked—by search engines.
Balance HTML text and graphics.
Professional, high-quality graphics can help support your credibility, as we discussed in Chapter 3, Preparing Web Site Content. It’s also critically important to provide plenty of keyword- and keyphrase-rich text content for search engine crawlers. There’s no need to avoid using graphics; in fact, avoiding graphics could be detrimental to your web site’s search engine success. Instead, plan your web site design to use graphics that have a purpose, insert meaningful text within each
Create search-engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross-links.
Search engine crawlers follow HTML text links. If you provide good, search engine-friendly internal HTML text links within your site, crawlers will likely follow those links. If any of your web pages’ URLs change, use server-side redirects to send search bots using the old link to the new URL.
Instead of allowing search engine crawlers (or web site visitors!) to find dead links, create server-side redirects, perhaps using .htacess and mod_rewrite techniques, that will automatically take search engines to the new URLs. On the server side, use a 301 code for permanently moved files and a 302 code for temporarily moved files (assuming that your host allows you access to such settings; many do not).
If you’re not able to use server-side redirects, create a web page for each changed URL to inform search engine crawlers and visitors that the web page has moved temporarily or permanently, and provide a link to the new page. If there is no new URL, then be sure to provide a link to your homepage, sitemap, and local search to help your visitors and search engine crawlers (this is especially important in ensuring that the crawlers continue indexing your web site via these links). Don’t use JavaScript redirects on these pages!
Rules for Using Static Redirect Pages
If you’re forced to use static pages to inform people and search engines that a page has moved, be sure to have an inventory—a spreadsheet, perhaps—that you can refer to six to 12 months later. This should be enough time for the search engine crawlers to index the new locations, at which point you can check your search engine listings and consider removing these old holding files if the search engines are listing the new pages. You might consider leaving these static pages longer, though, especially for use by visitors who’ve bookmarked your moved pages. (Ian Lloyd, The Perfect 404, A List Apart (January 16, 2004).)
Use external CSS and JavaScript whenever possible, to maximize relevance.
Search engines will read your markup, beginning at the top of your web page, but they’ll also review embedded CSS and JavaScript between your opening and closing
elements. Generally, search engines tend to give more weight to the text that appears at the top of web pages than to text published further down the page. (Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Placement Tips, Search Engine Watch (October 14, 2002); Danny Sullivan, Hiding JavaScript, Search Engine Watch (June 10, 2003) (subscribers-only area).)Use structural markup, and separate content from presentation as much as possible.
Search engine crawlers use structural markup to understand what your web page content is about, and they give more weight to text within heading elements (
,
,
, etc.).
Content Stuffers will be Penalized!
Don’t try to fool search crawlers by stuffing content into heading elements or elsewhere, as they know about such trickery, and you could be banned from the search engine listings for trying to artificially improve your rankings. Honesty is always the best policy. Creating keyphrase-rich content that visitors will love to read is the best way to go. Other web sites will also link to it, which only helps boost your search engine rankings further.
Provide a web site sitemap, and link to it from your homepage as well as all your other web pages.
Providing a sitemap that links to your main pages will help search engines find your content, as well as being helpful to web site visitors. If your sitemap contains more than about one hundred links, though, break it logically into pages of no more than one hundred links each.
If you use JavaScript links, include element
For example, at my web site, I use DHTML for a show/hide toggle menu, which includes a crawler-friendly JavaScript link with an element
Here, is the element
/inc/arch.shtml page. I had accessibility in mind when I decided on this particular show/hide approach, but it helps search engine crawlers, too.
JavaScript and Popups
Popup windows are another popular way to use JavaScript links. Ian Lloyd of Accessify.com fame wrote an excellent article for SitePoint, titled, The Perfect Pop-Up. Check it out for a helpful approach that’s accessibility-friendly and search-crawler friendly, too.
Avoid dynamic URLs that contain ?, &, $, =, +, and % characters, cgi-bin, session IDs, or cookies.
These URLs are usually the result of query strings on dynamic pages. Some search engine crawlers are wary of such URLs because they could potentially be infinite links that would overload the crawler. As a result, they may not index pages that use these URLs, especially when three or more of these characters are included in the address. As Eytan Seidman, MSN Search Program Manager, states, “The algorithm starts to wonder whether it is going to get stuck in a loop endlessly crawling every single permutation of the query parameters. Thus, URLs with many (definitely more than 5) query parameters have a very low chance of ever being crawled.” (Eytan Seidman, Crawling the Internet…, msnsearch’s WebLog (November 18, 2004).) Here’s an example of the kind of URL Mr Seidman’s talking about:
http://mybyz.com/products/page.aspx?view=14&tab=6&pcid=24B8-100084
9@@@@§ion=586&origin=mybyzsearch&cookie=false
URL Rewriting won’t Eradicate the Endless Loop
Although you can use URL rewriting to eliminate the problem characters and create more human-friendly URLs, you won’t be eliminating much bigger potential problems—it’s critically important to ensure that search engine crawlers won’t get stuck in an endless loop that would overload them.
Use text alternatives to Flash content.
If your site uses Flash to present content that you really want or need search engine crawlers to index, provide text alternatives that they can index. If you use Flash for your entire web site without providing text alternatives, don’t expect search engine crawlers to index your site.
Provide metadata and text alternatives for audio and other rich media files.
Typical metadata information includes the title, author, copyright, and a description of the content. Specialty search tools, such as Singingfish, use this meta data to help users find rich media, including MP3 files. Be sure to include helpful text information about your rich media content within your web pages, too.