There are plenty of basic improvements you can do yourself when it comes to search engine optimizing your website. A lot of the work is (or should be if not!)simple “best practice” when it comes to website management.
Good organization and planning is half the job done. So therefore I’ve created a checklist for you to use as a guide to your SEO empowerment and improvements!
Before you start, you may want to use WebsiteGrader to give you a heads start on what needs to be improved on your website.
CHECKLIST:
1. Get your keywords right:
I advice that you put on your thinking cap and start evaluating the keywords and/or phrases you want your website to rank higher for. To achieve this, this is your online tools:
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Insight for Search
Thesaurus.com
Your competitors source code
- Create a document of your keywords/phrases, and make sure this is included in your online marketing strategy.
- Geo-targeting – if your company only supply a service within a specific geographical region, make sure to consider to include geographical location/s
2. Finding out if your website is indexed:
- Go to Google.com (or whatever suffix is relevant for you)-
- Type in “site:yourdomainname.com”
- In my case: site:veronicastenberg.se
gave me on the 14/08/2011
663 results
or use your Google Webmaster Tools, if you have this for your domain to get an indication if and what pages of your website is indexed.
3. Your pages
For each page make sure vital keywords are present in:
- Page titles
- Meta description
- Meta keywords
- URLs generated – should reflect your keywords in them (where relevant and logical)
4. Code
- CSS files should should be placed externally and linked in
- JavaScript files should be placed externally and linked in
- Image mapping code, should preferably be placed in the bottom of the HTML if possible
- Cookies – try to use an alternative solution or don’t use cookies on content pages
5. Content
Make sure to use your keywords in and for the following:
- HTML files
- Images
- Alt text on images and links
- Internal link text
- Use keywords in Heading tags, especially H1
- Bold keywords if possible and within reason
6. Copy
- Should contain your keywords where relevant
- Use important keywords in the beginning of your copy is possible
- Re-use your keywords, within reason
- Product headings – i.e if you sell pregnancy clothes, your tops should for example all be named “maternity jersey top” and not just “jersey top”
- Product descriptions – look at the copy, apply the same logic as above, where relevant!
- Don’t over stuff your descriptions with keywords, only where relevant is key. Remember that the end of the day we create website for humans.
7. URLs
- For dynamic URLs with parameters in them, use a URL re-write tool for this, if possible
- Make sure the URLs that are generated follow a neat structure like for example: domain.com/category/product_name.htm
8. Various
- Have you created a sitemap?
- Have you submitted your website to google through webmaster tools?
- Have you duplicated your navigation with simple text links in the footer?
- Do you look at the data in Google Analytics on a regular basis to track any progress?
9. Links
- Do you have a link building strategy for external websites?
- Make sure your keywords are included in the link text
- Make sure you have considered if other pages are more relevant to build links to, then just your root domain
- Internal links, within your website, linking to other pages, the same rules for keywords in the link text apply for these
- Tool: MajesticSEO – for checking out your competitions link building activities, next to yours
That’s it, some basic hints on what you can improve yourself. I will continue to update this, but this should not be to complicated to start out with.
