17 replies to this topic

[Gary Bagshawe]

Hiya all, just thought I would post a basic seo checklist to help any newbies out. It is by no means a complete list but might just help.

1. Url containing keyword
2. naming of pages to contain keywords
3. Keyword/s in title tag of page
4. Keyword/s in description tag of page
5. Keyword/s in meta tags
6. Include robot index and follow tags
7. Call javascript from a seperate file to clean up the head of the document
8. Make a site map
9. MAKE SURE THAT YOU HAVE TEXT ON THE PAGE. ( readable text that is not just there for the search engine, search engines dont buy your products or services!!) Try not to keyword stuff the text and I personally try to keep to 200-300 words a page. Dont forget to include keywords and phrases in the visible text and if you can use these in conjunction with the Heading tag or bold tag.
10. Where appropriate use the Heading tag and bold tag.
11. Where images are present use appropriate alt tags.

I have not included things such as keyword density as this is just a quick reference list, hope any newbies find it useful.

[Denyse]

Don't forget external CSS Gary

Denyse

[Scottie]

Nice on-page optimization list Gary!

Personally, I would not recommend #1. Having a keyword in your URL is OK if you are building a new site, but I wouldn't change an existing page to add it. I would definitely NOT change URL's or buy a keyword-keyword-keyword.com domain- it just doesn't look professional.

It's more important IMO to have a URL that is easy to remember, such as your business name.

Same thing with #2- if you are building a site from scratch, you can name your files using keywords but I wouldn't go back and change them on an existing site. It's just not worth it IMHO.

12. Optimize your internal navigation structure. Use descriptive links where possible and use a logical navigation path, making sure everything is easy to find.

[qwerty]

I have to question the need for #6. I believe "index, follow" is the default for all spiders, so the tag only needs to be there if you're putting something else in it. Besides, I normally prefer to use the robots.txt to allow/disallow spiders to/from a given directory or file. It allows you to be more specific (that is, allowing some spiders and disallowing others) and it saves a few bytes on each page.

[Jill]

I rarely use #1 and #2. For most sites it's not necessary.

In fact, I'd change those to say

1. Do keyword phrase research to make sure you choose phrases (not words) that people are actually searching for.

2. Choose two or three keyword phrases for each page of the site and base your optimization around these.



Jill

[Mel]

Make sure that your server is set up properly (especially if you are using dynamic pages)

Make sure your site architecture is optimal from a spiders viewpoint

[websage]

Hello from a newcomer here.

Mel, could you elaborate on setting up the information architecture and server setup for search engine optimization?

Thanks,
Mitko

[Gary Bagshawe]

The above list is a very basic list of things to do and the response for things to add to the list is great. I agree with the all your comments and it's always nice to see how other people do things. "I am going to watch this space" so please add any more suggestions and I will gather it all together and post it somewhere (don't know where yet)

[Herbert]

@Gary & All others:
Its a great idea to listen here as much as possible "seo-do´s" for beginners in seo-work!
DONT stop that listing, ladies and gentleman -it will help to build more good working sites in the "inter(esting) net"....
What abt a "seo-donts"-listing? In a separate thread here....?

[Herbert]

Gary, u could start a web-blog for that all at blogger.com or anywhere else...

[Gary Bagshawe]

I dont have enough experience of web blogs etc to do that but I am in the process of totally re-designing my site as I havn't touched it for about a year. There will be a section on search engine optimisation so I will probably post it in there somewhere and let you know. I have been meaning to re-design the site for ages but just havn't got round to it. (spend too much time in forums like this)

[glengara]

Validate to W3C.

[Big Bill]

Validate to W3C.

I agree regarding validation but in my experience opinions vary as to what are the definitive criterion. I personally use Dave raggett's TIDY which I have incorporated into HTML kit (along with most others, I suspect, although I note provision for its inclusion seems to be popping up in more and more 3rd party programs lately).
Changing tack a little, it may be that Gary took this to be axiomatic but with a new generation of browser wars on the horizon judicious use of CSS for replacing interminably repeated font declarations is more or less mandatory these days.
Lordy me, I'm wordy today!

BB

[Mel]

Hello from a newcomer here. 

Mel, could you elaborate on setting up the information architecture and server setup for search engine optimization?

Thanks,
Mitko

Hi Mitko:
Well the detail depends on the server you are using and if your pages are static or dynamic but...

Things to check for in General on server setup:
Make sure your server returns a last modified response and a 304 if appropriate when Googlebot or anyone else requests it. This is pretty much automatic on Apache servers, but on IIS servers you have to do a bit to get it working right. The added benefit to the webmaster is that you will save bandwidth, cpu time and your viewers will see their pages load faster. You can view your header response with the Server header checker.

Make sure you have a robots.txt file set up the way you want it.


On site architecture, run a check with something like the SimSpider to see your site as a spider sees it. Them make the necessary mods so that you get the best spidering possible. A common problem is to have the spider see the menu system before the page text, but there can be other problems that the SimSpider will let you see.

[Scottie]

CLBridges-

Your post was split off to a new topic on Google Image Search.

Thanks!