Another good SEO Checklist

[Adam Dicker]

Are you doing enough to keep your site properly indexed with external search engines? To prepare you for the next level of optimization, review the following checklist:

1. Are you creating Web pages with content your target audience is genuinely interested in reading?
2. Does your content contain highly focused keyword phrases rather than phrases that are too general and competitive?
3. Are you optimizing your Web pages for at least three to five keywords at a time?
4. Are you using regionally specific keywords, when applicable?
5. Are you using the most commonly used variations of your keywords, based on your keyword research?
6. Does each optimized page contain a unique title?
7. Are you using multiple keywords in your title tags when appropriate?
8. Are your most important keywords appearing above the fold and throughout each optimized page?
9. Are you using keywords in hypertext links, whenever possible?
10. Does each optimized page have at least one call to action?
11. Does each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag description?
12. Do your meta-tag descriptions contain both targeted keyword phrases and a call to action?
13. Does each optimized page contain a unique meta-tag keyword list?
14. Does each set of meta-tag keywords contain words and phrases that you actually use within the visible body text?
15. Do you place common misspellings of your keywords within your meta-tag keywords?
16. Do your graphic images contain descriptive keywords within the alternative text attribute, when appropriate?
17. Do you provide at least two means of navigating your site: one for your visitors, and one for search engines?
18. Does your site have a site map, to assist both your visitors and the search engine spiders?
19. If your site uses frames, is your site navigable with and without the framesets?
20. If you are using JavaScript on your site, did you place the JavaScript in an external .js file and place the Robots Exclusion Protocol on that file?
21. If you are using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on your site, did you place the style sheets in an external.css file?
22. Do you have any redirects on your site? If so, have you placed the Robot Exclusion Protocol on pages that use redirects?
23. Are your optimized pages placed in the root directory (along with your home page) on your Web server?
24. Is your robots.txt file placed in the root directory on your Web server? Did you remember to transfer your robots.txt file before you transferred any other Web pages to your server?
25. Are you using subdomains instead of subdirectories if you find that your subdomains contain unique and substantial content?
26. If you are submitting pages to non-U.S. search engines, are you writing your pages in the appropriate language?
27. If it is within your budget, did you submit your optimized pages to pay-for-inclusion programs?
28. If you use Pay-For-Placement advertising, are your purchases based on detailed keyword research and selection?
29. If you use Pay-For-Placement advertising, do you carefully monitor your bids to get the best search engine visibility at the most reasonable cost?
30. Did you name your Web pages something that your target audience can remember and spell easily, using keywords whenever possible?
31. Did you design or select a series of landing pages for your Pay-For-Placement advertising? If the landing pages do not contain substantially unique content, did you place the Robots Exclusion Protocol on those pages?
32. Do the search engines and your site visitors view the same page? (The only exception to this rule is sites that participate in XML-feed programs).
33. Do you submit the maximum allowable number of pages per day for each of the major search engines?
34. Do you avoid submitting the same pages twice within a 24-hour period?
35. Do you resubmit to a search engine only if a page has dropped from the index or if a page's content has changed significantly?

77% of internet users employ search engines first to find a new web site

80% of internet users don't go beyond the first three pages of search engine results

[lz83ny]

Great article, worth a read.

[Dr. Domaining]

Yes, another great article. I printed this article as well and am keeping it near by.

[dotNetKing]

Thanks for the tips and reminders. Always useful to read.

[cwsteam.com]

Great Post DotComGod. Thanks.

[gatorgrad]

gosh...i've gotta lot of things to check off on my site

[Lampwize]

33. Do you submit the maximum allowable number of pages per day for each of the major search engines?

Good article, except this one. This is really close to spamming. I would recommend not submitting to the search engines at all. They will find you through links. Focus on getting links instead of plastering the search engines with your site.

"The best way to ensure Google finds your site is for your page to be linked from lots of pages on other sites." - Google
http://www.google.com/webmasters/1.html#A2

"You don't actually need to submit your site at all to search engines -- neither manually nor in an automated fashion. They all have spiders that "crawl" the Web and find all pages that exist, as long as there is a link to them from a page they already know about."
-Jill Whalen
http://www.highrankings.com/issue127.htm#seo

And many search engines consider most the submitted URLs to be spam. So it is really a waste of time.

[gdubz]

Do search engines discipline you for using redirects to you site??
I use a redirect and lately i have noticed a decrease in search engine traffic.
How would you use the Robot Exclusion Protocol for a domain that doesnt have Hosting?

[Lampwize]

Do search engines discipline you for using redirects to you site??
I use a redirect and lately i have noticed a decrease in search engine traffic.

Search engines penalize you if you do not use the correct type of redirect. Here is a good article explaining good and bad redirects along with ways of implementing them.
Article

[mole]

Does anyone know if eNom does 302 redirect?

Most domain registrars offer a feature called URL Forwarding. With this feature, you can register a new domain, such as 'mydomain.net', and have it point to mydomain.com (or to any other URL). The problem, however, is that registrars usually do this by implementing a 302 redirect (page moved temporarily). While Google handles 302 redirects very well, passing link popularity from the additional domain to the main one, other search engines don't do this well, diluting link popularity by splitting it between the two domains, and negatively affecting rankings. Therefore, it is better not to use this method, and implement a 301 redirect instead.

[lilian]

Thanks for sharing

[colorteck]

Nice always looking for better peformance from our web site.