Search Engine Optimization Checklist

Below is a comprehensive SEO Checklist of core components any new or current website should take into consideration when thinking about organic search engine rankings. This SEO Checklist covers all the core elements and gives a few high-level guidelines / hints.  The SEO Checklist is meant as a starting point, a truly comprehensive SEO strategy involves a great deal more detail and involvement.

Domain: When possible use a domain that has a search engine presence and contains relevant keywords.

Search Friendly URL’s: Avoid dynamic URL’s, URL’s should contain keywords when relevant and have a consistent flow, use hyphens instead of underscores. For example: example.com/music/artist/artist-name.php

Robots.txt: A robots.txt file should be used to tell search engine crawlers what content you do not want crawled.

Title Tag Optimization: Avoid continuous repetition, limit yourself to no more than 120 characters, order keywords by importance.

Meta Keywords: Don’t use more than a dozen keywords, keywords should revolve around page content, avoid continuous repetition.

Meta Description: Don’t use more than 225 characters, avoid continuous repetition of keywords, describe content on page.

Header Tags: Use keywords in header tags (<h1>, <h2>) to show importance and theme of a page – <h1> is the most relevant keyword, <h2> is the next…etc.

Code: Avoid heavy use of JavaScript, I-Frames, AJAX and other non-SEO friendly code.

Images: Image file name should describe what image is (e.g. cape-cod-beach.jpg), use image ALT tags for relevant keywords.

On-Page Content: More content on a page the better but use at least 300 words, content should contain relevant keywords, but do not overdue it. Limit the use of Flash. The is no content in a Flash-only site so the search engines wont know what your site is about. 

HTML Sitemap: Link to from footer, add links for primary and secondary content pages.

XML Sitemap: submit directly to search engines.

Redirects: use 301 redirect on old / unused domains.

Linking: Linking, both internal and inbound, are core to SEO success. Develop a comprehensive linking strategy that focuses on cross-linking within a website, within a network of websites and from external relevant websites. Link using keywords related to the page within the anchor text. In regards to inbound links it is quality over quantity.

Who are the Social Media Marketing Professionals?

Although Social Media has been in existence since the beginning of the Internet, it is only recently businesses have been utilizing Social Media Marketing to communicate with consumers and promote their businesses.

Social Media Marketing has most definitely become a “Buzz Term”. The ever increasing popularity of Twitter and Facebook ensure mention of Social Media often in the main stream media, bringing it to the attention of all business owners and managers.

Importance of Backlinks

If you have gained an insight into the SEO world, you would have come across the word “backlinks” several times. For those new to the SEO industry, you might wonder what backlinks are and how essential they are for the success of websites.

In short, a Backlink indicates a link from another site to your website. These are also known as inbound links and their number indicates the popularity of the website. Backlinks are considered as votes by search engines: more the number of votes (backlinks) your website has, and based on the importance of websites linking back to yours, your site is assigned a trust rank.