SEO Checklist for Web Designing

By Julie Botts

Domain Name - Your web site name should be brandable (example: Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, for example.), easy to assert, and even easier to remember. Don't worry too much about stuffing keywords into your domain name. Keywords in domain names no longer have the punch they used to.

www or not www - The choice is yours, http://www.KomailNoori.com/or http://mysite.com /, pick one and keep it up. I suggest using the www as the basic Joe Schmoe Server has a tendency to type in www, anyway.

Simple Design - Don't re-invent the wheel. If your design is complex, probabilities are it will impede your visitors ' capability to navigate and view the site plus it will slow down development. The simpler the better. You can even utilise Google Places now Google Plus Local.

Don't create directories further than 3 levels down from the root directory - The closer pages are to the home page in the directory structure the better. Keep things organised but do not overorganize. If you have one file or sub-directory in a catalog there ought to be a Particularly acceptable reason.

File/List Names Using Keywords - Your filenames and catalog names should feature keyphrases. If your page is about Idaho potatoes then the filename should be idaho-potatoes.

Static URLs - Static URLs are URLs that aren't dynamically generated. A static URL looks like http://www.EXAMPLE.com/directory/file-name.htm and dynamic URLs look like http://www.EXAMPLE/index.htm?page-name=. You can make dynamic URLs spiderable by search engines but it is a lot easier to get things indexed with static URLs.

Think Tiny - The smaller your Web pages are, the speedier they load. A single page should be less than 15K (unless positively required) and the whole page including graphics should be less than 50K (unless absolutely mandatory). Remember, not everyone is on a high-speed Internet connection; there are still people without a 56K modem.

Hyphens - Use hyphens (-) and not underlines (_) to separate words in index and file names. Most search websites parse a hyphen like a reader would parse a space. Using underlines makes what_would_you_do look like whatwouldyoudo to most search engines. You must definitely separate words in your URLs.

Navigation on Every Page - You need to place consistent navigation on every page of your Site. Your navigation should link to the major sections of your Site. It would also make sense for each page on your Site to link back to the home page.

Site Map - You need to make a site map that links to the major sections and sub-sections of your Web site. The site map should be linked to from your Web site's default page at the very least. Ideally the site map should be linked to from every page. Recommend file names for your website map are "sitemap.html" or "site-map.html."

Title - The title of the page should be employed in the TITLE tag and at the top of each page. The title should be keyword-rich (containing a max of 7 to 10 words) and descriptive.

Outline META Tag - A few people say META tags are dead but some search engines will really use them underneath a pages title on search website result pages (SERPs). Use less than 150 characters including spaces and punctuation. Your outline should be a keyword rich, complete sentence.

Keyword META Tag - A listing of keywords that pop up in the page. Use a space to split keywords (not a comma). Arrange keywords how they would be searched for or as close to a complete sentence as practical. This tag is essentially dead but by making it when you create the page it lets you come back ages later and realize what keywords you were particularly targetting. If the keyword doesn't appear at least twice in the page then it should not go in the Keyword META Tag. Additionally , try to limit the number of total keywords to under twenty.

Androids META Tag - Some search site crawlers agree to the Androids META Tag. This gives you some control over what appears in a search website and what does not. This isn't an essential aspect of search engine optimisation nonetheless it doesn't hurt to add it in.

Heading Tags - Heading tags should be used when feasible and should be structured reasonably (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6). You should not start a page with an H2 tag. If H1 by default is too large then use CSS to style it effectively. Remember that most search sites like to see a heading tag then text or graphics; not H1 followed immediately by H2.

TITLE Attribute . - Use the A HREF TITLE attribute. The TITLE attribute improves utility/accessibility. Be certain to include keywords as you see fit but remember it should tell your visitors where they will go when they click the link.

ALT Tags - Every image ought to have an ALT tag. Employ a keyword-rich outline of what the image is. If the image contains text use the text in the image. This is also a practicality/accessibility tool.

More text than HTML - A page should have more text content than markup language. Anchor Text - Anchor text is the text used to link to a page. Using keywords in anchor text is a very good idea and will improve a page's performance in SERPs.

Use Text Links, Not Photographs - If you are going to link to something use text. Text in pictures can not be read by search websites. The only time this rule does not apply is when you're linking to something with a widely known brand. Even then it's still better to utilize a text link. If you've got to use an image as a link then ensure you give it a good ALT tag.

Gobs of Content - The more content, the better. Having pages upon pages of original, topical content is the best kind of SEO.

Add New Content Often - If you can add a brand new page of content each day then your site will stay fresh and give search engine crawlers an incentive to continue coming back day in and day out.

Word Density - This is a touchy subject among Web development experts and search site optimizers. Some say 5% is much more than enough. Chris Short says your main keywords should not have a density of more than 30% and should be higher than the densities of other terms and phrases.

Build It, Put It Online - Your website should be built and in "update mode" once it's uploaded to your Web server. Don't add a page at a time to your Web server when you are first building your Web site. Build your Site first then upload it. Add new content as required.

Use a robots.txt File - Every good crawler looks for a robots.txt file in your root directory. I'd highly recommend making a valid robots.txt solely to pacify these search websites and at the least eliminate 404 inaccuracies from building up in your log files.

Verification - Each page on your Internet site should stick to W3C standards as closely as possible. Some say page verification can help your ranking in SERPs (the jury is still out on that one). standards compliant Web pages do help with cross browser compatibility.

Link Acclaim - Once your Site has been well established, it's time to build up your link recognition. The more relevant inbound links a Site has, the more satisfactory that its rankings will be.

Research Traffic - Read your log files often. Make sure you're not getting traffic you don't want and getting traffic you do desire. Keeping a heart beat on your traffic allows you to better optimise your pages.

NO TRICKS - If it doesn't seem moral, then it isn't an excellent idea. If it does not help your visitors, then don't do it.

NO FRAMES - Don't use frames, ever.

NO Damaged LINKS - Linking to pages that don't exist is an especially bad thing. Search sites and folk alike hate that.

 

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