SEO Checklist
Know what's important
1. Website Content (10 out of 10 for Importance)
Website content is an overlooked factor as many new SEO's or webmasters focus more on the on page elements. When putting this into perspective, it is a shame to see this vital factor go to waste. Search engines actually parse HTML, meaning that they look for text based content within your website, it is this content that will have a large impact on your websites performance in search engines. The on page factors simply help promote the pages theme and the conveyance of relativity. Good content isn't about the volume of keywords you can fit in the content, nor is it about keyword density. Good content is content that covers the subject in great detail and clear english and makes perfect sense to the end user. Search engines have become far more advanced over the past few years, using multiple factors in the algorithms to decipher the quality content from the keyword stuffed content.
Google, will use a pattern of relativity to understand if the content is good, this comes from indexing millions of websites, and then looking for characteristics associated with the theme, it is a combination of these factors that gives search engines like Google the ability to understand good content.
So, right good, clear content that is spell checked, and makes good sense.
2. Website Backlinks (10 out of 10 for Importance)
Backlinks play a massive part in search engine optimisation, because they contribute value due in part to the relation to lots of links = good popularity, and lots of links = valuable resource. If a website accumulates lots of links from other websites, it shows to search engines that the document is popular, which re-enforces that the website is a good selection for end users. Backlinks act in the same way that a voting system works, and many factors come into play with backlinks including the quality of the linking website, the relevance between websites that link and the anchor text used by the 3rd party links.
Its not all about quantity, its a balance of quantity and quality, get good links from giving the public something back. If you create a resource or an article that people find useful, insightful or interesting, than it is likely to acquire links naturally, it is a combination of these factors that contribute towards a websites performance.
When getting backlinks, get anchor text (clickable link text) that is relevant to the destination page. Also, don’t just focus on the homepage, get deep links into your website which will help drive the creation of sitelinks from Google, and allow for internal pages to rank independently for keywords rather than having the home page returned for every query. Websites that have a good internal link structure and a good external backlink profile will have better search engine success as the internal pages will be returned for keywords relative to them, driving higher click through rates and conversions.
3. Website Linking Structure (9 out of 10 for Importance)
This is another overlooked factor within search engine optimisation as many just take an easy approach and follow the paths of content management systems or fancy dynamic URLs. Your website should have a good and solid navigation system that remains consistent throughout every page on the website. The websites navigation should be easily crawled by making sure that a text based version is available in the instances where javascript or flash maybe used. Links within pages and content should link on the basis of relevance. Try not to have excessive internal linking, as this can dilute the pages PR and relevance.
Each link from a page to another page in the website will be a crawled path for search engines, if some pages have more references than others, Google and other search engines will place more emphasis on these pages. Think of it as, the more a page is referenced, the more important it will be in the eyes of search engines. When linking between pages, make sure you use the same anchor text, do not link to a page with variants of anchor text as this will dilute the pages connection with the utilised keywords.
4. Website URL Structure (9 out of 10 for Importance)
This is often given a lower level of importance, however we have seen consistently that websites using a good URL structure benefit from enhanced search positions. A good URL structure will be based upon the separation of information. Good URL structures in general are URL's that are not excessively long, not stuffed with keywords and are not full of query strings. A consideration to bare in mind is that search engines can class dynamic URL's as unstable results as dynamic URL's are often assigned to pages with dynamic content that is likely to change frequently, this principle reduces the likelihood that the page will be returned in a prominent position. Search engines will return results that are and have more consistency, dynamic URLs with query strings are less likely to provide this. Create a clean and simple URL structure that maybe utilises one or two keywords per URL, being careful not too utilise too many directory levels. Keep all your content within 5 directory levels from the home page to minimise the chance of a page becoming supplemental.
Also, remember canonicalisation, do not have inconsistent URL structure patterns i.e. some URL's ending with a trailing slash and some without. This can create multiple problems when trying to rank pages throughout a website.
5. Website Domain Age (9 out of 10 for Importance)
Domain age is important as newly created domains can take a while to have a trusted establishment within search engines. Remember that search engines need to know that your website isn't living on the principle of here today gone tommorow. To provide quality search results, search engines will evaluate your websites update frequency, content deliverance and more over a period of time. Although new websites can well they can take time before they rank well for competitive keywords. Let your domain mature by maintaining your website and keeping it fresh, make sure everything works and build an external social profile to boost traffic and visitor levels.
6. Site HTTP Header Status (9 out of 10 for Importance)
This is critical, make sure that your website does not return broken pages, or incorrect header setups. We have seen many websites that have the wrong header attribute assigned to them causing a massive loss in rankings. Make sure that your homepage returns a HTTP200 code, or a 301 Header code, if you are having anything else returned than resolve it immediately. Search engines can devalue websites that have prolonger header statuses such as 302 (temporary redirects).
7. Domain TLD and Hosting Geographics (8 out of 10 for Importance)
Its a fairly new rule, but a good one at that. To prevent foreign versions of search returning inappropriate results, search engines will now seperate sites that are not relative to the search region. For example, if a user is based in the UK and searches for CARS, it would be a little pointless to return car dealerships in new york, or car trips in dubai. Search engines have an obligation to return results relevant to the region/country.
This is done by top level domain extension and geographics. No doubt you have come across .co.uk and .com websites, well what about .ie websites, or .com.au?. There are hundreds of different domain extensions, and hosting locations. Search engines will look at your domain, and where the website is hosted, if you have a .co.uk domain make sure it is hosted in Europe or the UK, if you have a .com domain, and you only focus on the US market, than make sure your hosting is in the UK. This system helps filter out results depending on the search region used i.e. Google.co.uk > UK Websites, Google.fr > French Websites.
8. Website Title Tags (8 out of 10 for Importance)
Website title tags are vital towards search engine optimisation because they act as an index factor for search engine results. The title tag is the leading representative for the documents content. When a search engine indexes a document, it will utilise the title tag to see how well it relates to the content of the page, and how well the title tag has been written for the end user. Not only is this an important SEO factor, this is also a usability factor because it can be the leading attribute on click through rates from search results.
Title tags should be well written, and should engage with the user from the minute they come across the result within search results. Search engines will score based on the title tags keyword utilisation and structure. Avoid using excessive keyword repetition, special characters and excessive length. Make sure your title tags are more focused on the theme of the page rather than site wide theme.
9. Canonicalisation (8 out of 10 for Importance)
Canonicalisation is another overlooked factor as this can be the main and leading cause behind supplemental results and ranking failures. Canonicalisation is the issue whereby a page can be accessed from variants of a URL, typically URLs that are followed by a trailing slash and non trailing slash. If you can access a page by using a trailing slash and non trailing slash than it means your website suffers from canonicalisation. To resolve this, simply redirect the URL that you do not want to adopt as the leading URL to the URL that is to become the leading URL. Make sure the redirect implemented is a 301 redirect and nothing else.
10. Anchor Text (8 out of 10 for Importance)
Anchor text is the clickable link text that is used to represent a link. Anchor text is used on all links, wether it is specified anchor text or default anchor text. Anchor text is important because it is an evaluation factor and a usability factor that search engines monitor. References within anchor text are important as they provide an overview of what the linked page is about. All anchor text references should be relevant to the destination page, and consistency should remain between pages.
This applies to on site and off site factors, websites should keep anchor text both the same for the on site and off site process.
11. Website Semantics (7 out of 10 for Importance)
This is the process whereby content is connected within the website in an appropriate manor.
