Checklist for Search Engine Optimization
Henry Norris
Copyright 2004 Fountainhead Technology Services LLC
Do you know what this image means?
This image presents the places the average person looks when they've done a Google search. The hotter the color, the more people look there.
As you can see the top four results on the left side in a google query are the places most people look, in addition to the top two advertisements on the right. The solid bar represents the "fold'. If your website lies above the fold, then people are finding it. Otherwise...
Search engine optimization tries to achieve a favorable ranking for the right keywords, to produce a steady stream of targeted traffic to a site. The key to good search engine rankings is spider friendly web site content that matches your keywords.
Use this checklist to ensure your Website can be located, spidered (indexed) and ranked accordingly:
Use a theme for your website that is identifiable from the text on the home page and reinforced by all the other pages. The individual Web pages must relate to each other and with the central theme. Your text should be clear and concise.
Ensure you have relevant content of good quality. Content is king - the spiders come looking for it and they check to see that it matches your website title and description. Search engines love lots of quality content as content is what Web searchers are looking for.
A website needs a basic flat navigational structure - you do not wnat pages buried inside your website where they cannot be found, or that it takes several clicks to get there. Search engines will typically index the home page first, then gradually index other pages on a site over time. Spiders are often only going to go three layers deep, so if your content is buried deeper, it may never be found.
Ensure that you have a unique "Title" tag for each page. The title is one of the most important aspects of any Web page from an SEO standpoint. Using a generic title for all your pages is not a good idea - use the keywords your targeting for that page and keep it short and descriptive.
Also use the "Description" meta tag. This contains a highly descriptive sentence about the content and purpose of a particular page, and needs to contain the most important keyword phrase early in the sentence.
Use the "Keywords" meta tag to provide a short list of the keywords you've targeted with the content for each page. The keyword tage should contain targeted keyword phrases and variations, misspellings and related terms. Your keywords must relate to the content and fit in with the theme of your site.
Include the keyword phrases a number of times within your text, but not by "keyword stuffing". Work the keywords into the text so that it reads naturally. Incorporate keywords into any element that is viewable by site visitors - header text, link text and titles, table captions, the "Alt" attribute of the image tag, the "title" attribute of the link tag and so on.
Ensure that every page can be reached by search engine spiders. If your pages can't be found, they can't be indexed and included in search results. Every page must be accessible by following simple text links.
Unless your site is small, it's good to create a site map with text links that you link to the site map from your home page and include descriptive text for containing the relevant keywords for each page.
Link to your important pages from other pages on your site. Internal links help determine page rank since they show which pages of your site are important. The more links you have to have to a page, relative to other pages, the more importance a spider will assign to it.
Use keywords in your link text. When you create a text link to another page on your site, use that page's targeted keywords as the text for the link, making it as descriptive as possible.
Do not use frames on any page you want to get indexed by search engines.
Do not use automatic page redirects.
Your content should be in plain text and not contained in images. Search engines can't "read" content in image files.
Your important content should not be in Flash files. Search engines don't have the required "plugin" to view Flash files.
Links and keywords must not be hidden inside JavaScript code, as are many dynamic drop down menus.
Optimize every important page of your website individually to be focused on very specific keyword phrases.
Each page should have unique content of its own. Having pages that are only slightly different might be seen as "search engine spamming".
Provide linking instructions for those who want to link to your site.
Use plain text links for important hyperlinks, as spiders can't read text from an image file. If you feel you really must use a graphic as a link, at least include a text description by using the "title" attribute of the link tag.
Ensure that your website is free of coding errors and broken links.
If you'd like more information on this subject, please feel free to use our Contact page to send us an email. If you have a specific project in mind, please use our Quote Request page.
Contact Information
Henry Norris, Founding Partner
hjnorris(at)fhtechnology.com
Phone - 919.341.1238
Henry Norris is the founding partner of Fountainhead Technology Services LLC, a Raleigh based provider of affordable search engine optimization and internet marketing solutions that enable businesses to leverage and position their internet presence.
