SEO Checklist

SEO Checklist

On Page Optimization
1. Use domain names which includes brand or money keywords (www.fancybakers.com, www.cheesecake-experts.com, )
2. Use keyword at the beginning of the domain: www.cheesecake-experts.com instead
of www.experts-in-cheesecake.com
3. Use keywords in subdomains: cheesecake.fancy-bakers.com
4. Host your site at local internet service providers
5. Use top level domains which match your tarket market, e.g. .co.uk for the UK. For
.com or .org domains there is no local limitation
6. Integrate keywords in file paths and file names: www.fancybakers.com/products/cakes.html
7. Avoid too long file paths! See further information.
8. Use hyphens as delimiters in filenames: cheese-cake-2.html instead of
cheese_cake_2.html
9. Add keywords to the title tag in the header section of your page: use built-in
features of your Content Management System
10. Do not exceed 60 characters for the title tag
11. Use keyword at the beginning of the title tag, e.g. cheesecake experts instead of
experts in cheesecake. Read more about page titles
12. Add keywords to the meta description tag in the header section of your page: use
built-in features of your Content Management System
13. Use about max. 130-155 characters for meta description
14. Do not use the field meta keywords. They are no longer regarded as being relevant
for search engines. More information
15. Use h1 and h2 tags for headlines
16. Use the h1 tag only once per page.
17. Create a well-formed structure for your page body: alternating headlines and text.

18. Content is King! - Take care of high quality! The content shall be well researched
and valuable for the reader. A good indication for quality is that you might want to
read your text in a magazin or newspaper.
19. Use correct spelling and grammar.
20. Include references and sources for citations.
21. Make people stay on your site! For example, place a how to video on the top of a
page. This kind of eye catchers increases the average stay of your websites
visitors.
22. The ideal length for the content of a page is about 2,000-2,500 words, see See
further information.
23. Do not copy + paste whole passages from other pages. Search engines know which
content came first.
24. Repeat your keywords in the page content. However, do not repeat it too often! It
might be punished by the Search Engines (keyword stuffing). Design your text as if
there were no search engines to judge your ranking!
25. Use synonyms for your keywords within the content so that the topic gets
emphasized.
26. Take care that the content of your page refers to the title. If the title says How to
bake a cake, the Search Engines expect keywords like cake, bake, oven
instead of tennis, buy here or latest news. See See further information.
27. Keep your content up to date! Replace outdated content by new one.
28. Add supplementary content to your site, e.g. a page presenting a recipe might
provide printable features, reviews, nutritional information or a related video. See
further information.
29. If referring to other webpages add in citations. Cite all relevant references in your
articles and add links to the source pages. This will increase the trust and authority
of your published content. See further information.
30. Implement a responsive design: optimize your page for mobile access.
31. Many Ads = Low Quality! Do not exagerate with ads. Do not place
advertisements at the top, which require scrolling to see the content. Avoid

advertising which looks like navigation or secondary content. See further

information.

32. Add keywords to alt texts, captions and file names of images and videos. Use buildin functions of your Content Management System. Add a detailed description of the
video - search engines cannot evaluate the content of a video.
33. Use HTML5 instead of Flash to add animated content to your website
34. Outbound Links to Authority Pages are beneficial
35. Link to pages of a related topic! If you host a page about boats do not link to pages
about tennis.
36. Do not use too many Outbound Links! Make people stay on your page, do not
provide too many options to leave.
37. The number of Internal Links might push the relevance of a certain page within
your website
38. Internal Links from a prominent page of your website might push the relevance of
the linked page
39. Avoid broken links since it lets the website look like being poorly maintained. You
can use free tools like http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com
40. Strengthen your Brand both by Offline and Online Marketing Campaigns
41. Add About us Pages to increase the trustworthyness of your site and strengthen
your brand
42. Add Terms and Conditions / Privacy Conditions / Terms of Use to your Website if
appropriate
43. For brainstorming of keywords use Tools like Free Mind to create mind maps
44. Use tools like the Google Keyword Planner, Answer the Public, or one of 25 further
tools to research for keywords
45. Use tools like Sistrix to analyse the progress of your SEO initiatives

Off-Page Optimization
46. Install Browser Plugins like Open SEO Stats, Power*Trust (Link Research Tools) or
MozRank for a quick access to the search metrics of sites you look up in the web
47. Look out for link partnerships with sites related to your topic, or with your suppliers
or business partners. For further details have a look on the Hilltop Algorithm.
48. Avoid excessive link exchange. See Google Link Schemes.

49. Avoid backlinks from social bookmark sites and web directories unless they have
high power and trust (e.g. delicious, Yellow pages, Yelp or Dmoz)
50. Avoid blacklinks from article directories, free blogs or free websites
51. When leaving comments with links to your site in forums, blogs, FAQ or social
media sites: take care to post valuable content for the users, and link to your page
for further information
52. Look for a good mixture of backlinks from different sites. Avoid too many backlinks
from one single site
53. Links integrated into the content of a site are more valuable than links from a blank
page or links being part of a link list.
54. Take care of a good mixture of anchor texts from your backlink partners, e.g. 60%
brand keywords, 30% money keywords and 10% long tail keywords
55. Adjust your link profile (= composition of brand, money and compound keywords)
to comparable sites of your industry. You might use tools like the Competitive
Landscape Analyzer by Link Research Tool.
56. Avoid anchor texts like look here, this website
57. Be aware of Co-Occurrence: The keywords nearby your anchor texts are important
with regards to the semantic algorithms of search engines.
58. Avoid hamful links, e.g. links from sites which are not listed in the Google index, or
which do not have any backlinks themselves, or are suspected to carry malware or
virusses. A suitable tool is e.g. Link Detox by Link Research Tools
59. Upload a disavow file to Google to make Google know which links to your site shall
be ignored by the search engine
60. Use tools like Link Research Tools to analyze your backlink profile and to compare it
with those of your competitors

Index Ability
61. Add a tree-like User Sitemap to your website
62. Add an XML Sitemap to your website. See Google Help Page. You might use one of
many freeware and paid tools available on the market.
63. Submit the XML Sitemap to Google, Bing and Yahoo.
64. Implement a Breadcrumb Navigation.

65. Implement a robots.txt file to define which sections of your website shall be
indexed by the search engines and which sections shall be excluded from the
index. Please refer tothis tutorial and the Google Help Page on robots.txt
66. Avoid duplicate content! In case of duplicate content, use canonical links indicate
the original content. If you use Wordpress, Drupal or Joomla there are extensions
which support canonical links.
67. Pagination: if you include lists that are spread over various pages (item 1-10, 1120, 21-30 etc.) link them with each other using
the ref=prev and ref=next parameters
68. Implement 301 redirects for pages which became obsolete or moved to a new URL
69. Use 302 redirects if pages are temporarily moved to a different URL
70. An SSL Certificate increases the trustworthyness of your site
71. Take care of a high availability of your web server
72. Use Server Side Caching to speed up your site
73. Use well formed, valid HTML ( = standard feature of Content Management
Systems)

Social
74. Add a comment function to your blog
75. Make your content popular by linking it from posts of others. Make sure that you do
not perform link spamming. Add valuable information to others articles and place a
link to your site for more details
76. Strengthen your brand by creating pages in Facebook, Google+ etc. - especially in
LinkedIn
77. Motivate your employees to create personal LinkedIn accounts promoting their
personal skills and trustworthyness
78. Keep your social channels alive. Take care to have an appropriate relation between
articles, comments and likes
79. Create valuable content. Keep your content up to date: review in regular intervals,
correct outdated content or enrich it by new aspects
80. Facebook Shares of your page count more than Facebook comments or likes

81. Facebook Shares, Twitter Links etc. have more influence on your ranking if they
come from authority sites or popular pages
82. Build relationships on Google+, Facebook etc. with authorities on your subject
83. Build up a community: Set up circles, divide circles by fields of interest, share your
circles publicly
84. Start producing particular content for specific circles, get you users involved. By
time, you can get more general involving multiple circles at a time
85. Dont start right away with your main article. Build up a fundament with several
articles and a user community first.
86. Use Content Discovery Tools in order to find trending content which you might
share on your website, blog or through your social channels.

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