Simple SEO Checklist
SEO for File Directory & File Names
- use primary keyword in directory, and secondary keyword in file name
e.g.:
http://mysite.com/widgets/red-widget.html - best to separate words with a hyphen: -
- try not to use more than 3 hyphens in the filename, or the link may appear spammy
- the URL should not be more than 3 folders deep
- the HTML file size should be no larger than 150kb
SEO for HTML Head Section
<title>tag<title>tag should contain primary keywords, secondary keywords, a pipe and the brand name (or alternatively: brand name, a pipe, and then primary and secondary keywords)<title>tag should be no longer than 70 characters- (See Character Count Tool if in doubt)
<meta name = "description">tag- meta description tag should contain the primary keywords (twice, if possible)
- meta description tag may include "calls to action", if appropriate
- meta description tag should be no longer than
160156 characters (155 for certain!) - (See Character Count Tool if in doubt)
- may sometimes omit this tag altogether (if targetting long-tail keywords)
<meta name = "keywords">tag- meta keywords tag is apparently no longer used
- e-commerce sites should omit these entirely (they allow rivals to perform opposition keyword analysis more easily)
SEO for Body Section
-
<h>,<p>,<strong>,<img alt="...">,<a>tags- keywords should be included 3 times within these tags for the first 100 words (and possibly once for each additional 100 words after that)
- (See Word Count Tool to discover total word count, and Word Counter tool to find # of keyword occurances)
<strong>tags- a keyword should be within ONE
<strong>tag once per viewing screen
- a keyword should be within ONE
<img>tags- use the
alt="..."attribute to describe the picture for the visually-impaired. - keywords, when appropriate, should be within the
alttext - use the
title="..."attribute as a picture title (as if the picture were appearing in a gallery
e.g.:
<img src="pictures/hawaii.jpg" title="Hawaiian volcano" alt="Lava flow in Haleakala volcano, Maui" />
- use the
<a>tags- keywords, when appropriate, should be within the anchor text
- no more than 150 links per page
- use the
title="..."attribute to provide extra information to the user when needed
e.g.:
<a href="https://www.chou-seh-fu.com/sitemap.html" title="Links to all the main pages of chou-seh-fu.com" target="_self" rel="follow">Site Map</a>
Text Length
- the text on a page should be at least 250 words long (and ideally, 500 or more words long)
- (See Word Count Tool if in doubt)
Sitemaps & SEO
HTML Sitemap
- create a single page with links to all pages of the site
- place the file in the root directory, and name it: 'sitemap.html'
XML Sitemap
- create an XML sitemap (named 'sitemap.xml') according to the following format:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://sitename/path/filename</loc> <lastmod>yyyy-mm-dd</lastmod> <changefreq>Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly</changefreq> <priority>a number between 0.1 and 1.0</priority> </url>
[add more URL tags for all important pages on the site]
</urlset>
- save the file as 'sitemap.xml' 'in the site's root directory, using the UTF-8 format
- submit 'sitemap.xml' to Google and Bing
- create an XML sitemap (named 'sitemap.xml') according to the following format:
Valid HTML Markup and SEO
- search engine spiders sometimes cease indexing a page if it contains broken tags and other forms of incorrect markup
- validate HTML markup with W3C Validator