SEO Checklist for Initial Site Optimization

Posted on | August 17, 2008 |

So you’ve been told that Search Engine Optimization is extremely important. It goes a long way to ensure good organic rankings in the search engines (allowing your site to be found). SEO is also not just a once off excersize but should be an ongoing effort aimed at improving your site’s ranking over time.

If you’ve never done any SEO on your site before and are wondering where to start, here’s a handy checklist that will go a long way in getting your site ranked. It’ll also come in handy if you’ve outsourced you SEO and would like to monitor what’s been done on your site

SEO On-Page Optimization

Content

• The website doesn’t just have sales information but includes variable content useful to the target market. “Content is King”
• You provide a white paper, article, free report or other resource on your site that is of interest to your target market
• You have provided telephone and address information at the top of the site. If it’s not a local site you should provide at least a telephone number
• Provide an RSS Feed or Blog for fresh content on the site.

Title Tags

• Your title tag has a maximum of 63 characters
• Your keyword phrase starts the title tag (keyword importance decreases from left to right)
• Each page on your website has its own relevant title tag. Don’t start many title tags with the same words like “Welcome to…”

Keywords

• Only optimize for ONE keyword phrase at a time!
• The most important keywords appear early and often in the content. Ideally each page should have between 400 to 600 words.
• The important and relevant keywords are included in your domain. Example: www.mysite.com/OurServices
• All images have descriptive keywords as part of their ALT tags
• Keyword density for important phrases is 2-5%
• A page uses Headline tags: H1 once, H2, H3 etc. instead of larger font to denote importance. Your keyword phrase should be in your header tags.
• Keywords should be emphasized in various ways, bulleted, bold, italicized etc.

Site Structure

• No page on the site is more than 2 to 3 clicks from the homepage
• A sitemap is at the bottom of the web page with static links. Descriptive keywords are used in the link text to describe what the page is about
• Submit your site map to Google

Internal Links

• All links should include relevant keywords instead of generic terms like “click here”
• The navigation links also include specific keywords.
• Your internal links point to your 2 or 3 most important pages to help funnel traffic and search engines this way.

Meta Description

• The meta description contains your most important keywords near the beginning and persuasive copy to compel people to click. A call to action or benefit statement is important.

Meta Keywords

• Add the top 6 to 12 keyword phrases that are important to that page.

SEO Off-Page Optimization

• The quality, reputation and number os sites linking to your site is high. When possible have authoritative sites link to you (.edu or .gov are great)
• Submit a press release or article that is relevant, interesting and links back to your site.
• Publish an article on a content sharing network that if used will link back to your site

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