Multimedia Designs .NET

SEO Checklist

There are so many things you can do to optimize your web pages that often times many items are overlooked or forgotten about until after the web page has been published to the web (especially when more than one person is providing content for the page!)  This SEO Checklist does not get into all of the reasonswhy you should implement these guidelines, there are numerous other sites that provide that information. This page is simply a "checklist" that web developers can use during their final review of a web page before it gets published.

 

Overall Web Site

Sitemaps

• Create a search engine friendly sitemap: sitemap.xml at the root directory and upload to Google Webmaster Tools.
• Update your sitemap.xml file at least once a week noting the date of new content
• Create a navigational sitemap: web.sitemap (if using ASP.NET) to aid in the development of your navigational structure. (also used with SiteMapPath user control)
• Create a user sitemap: sitemap.aspx (or sitemap.html) web page for your visitors that provides the full list of pages available on your site but maybe presented in a different order than your menu navigation.

Robots

• Create a robots.txt that all search engines will read and know which pages to follow and which pages to avoid.
• If you do NOT want a page indexed (read) by the search engines, add it to your robot.txt
• Add a meta tag for robots if you don't want the page to be followed

Site Navigation

• Make as many items "global" as possible to enable quick re-designs.
• Consider registering user controls in the web.config file to avoid registering them on each page.
• Use Textual hyperlinks in your navigational menus instead of buttons or images with text.

HTML Tags

• Make all html tags lower case so they become XHTML compliant.
• Create a stylesheet for screen, print and other media making your site visible by the largest audience.
• Hide the navigation in the print stylesheet.

 

Individual Web Pages

SEO is important from the very beginning of how you name your file. You also need to consider SEO in how you link other files to your web pages.

Files

•  All pages should follow a canonical rule (consistant casing; use the canonical tag when necessary.)
• Name your files using the desired keywords as far to the left as possible.
• Once you name your page avoid changing the name or use a 301 redirect to avoid losing traffic rankings of that page.
•  Static pages will always rank higher than dynamic pages and pages with querystring attached. (use canonical tag where necessary).

External Files

• Use external cascading style sheets.
• Use external javaScript when possible.
• Try not to use more than 2-3 javaScript files per page.
• Try to use as few lines of javaScript as possible.

Page Titles

Many SEO gurus are now saying that Page Titles are more important than keywords! Google will give more weight to a page title than keywords because this tag is used to describe what the page is about. Not only do you want your page title to be rich in keywords, you want to name your page in such a way that you believe your users would type a search term in the search box on Google. Therefore, it would be more beneficial to name your page with a generic name of your product than a less commonly known "brand" name and your company name in the page title is in most cases not necessary or beneficial.

The page title should not be empty!
The page title should describe the content on the page.
The page title should not contain dashes to separate words (appears as a spam site)
The page title should include a selected keyword selected specifically for that page.
The page title should be unique (no two pages should have the exact same title.
The page title should include your product, not necessarily your company name.
The page title must be somewhat different than the description

Meta Tags

Every page must have a unique description and must not be an exacty duplication of the title tag. The meta description should be between 25-150 characters and humanly readable.  All pages should have at least the following tags completed with your specific data:

• <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
• <meta name="CLASSIFICATION" content="Web Designers and Web Developers" />
• <meta name="description" content = "" />
• <meta name="keywords" content = "" />
• <link href="mystyles.css" content="type/css" />

These meta tags are optional but recommended:

• <meta name="verify-v1" content="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" /> (Google verfication code for Webmaster)
• <meta name="ROBOTS" content="index,follow" />
• <meta name="REVISIT-AFTER" content="5 days" />
• <link rel="canonical" src="http://www.multimediadesigns.net/SEO/checklist" />
• <meta name="robots" content="noodp">   (use if you don't want description coming from ODP)
• <meta name="robots" content="noydir"> (only supported by Yahoo)

If your site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! search results will display information about your site taken from their directory instead of the contents of your description meta tag. Force Yahoo! to ignore the directory information by including this robots meta tag: <meta name="robots" content="noydir">.

Information on ODP - Open Directory Project can be found here.

Meta Description

The meta description should be unique (no two pages have the exact description.
The meta description should be 25-150 characthers that summarize the content of the page.
The description should include at least 1, but preferrably 2-3, keyword(s), and these words MUST be on the web page!
The description cannot be exactly the same as your page title.

Meta Keywords

The meta keywords should be designed specifically for this page.
The meta keywords should be 2-6 words.
The meta keywords used MUST be included in the content of the web page!
Do not use the same keywords on every page of your website!
You must have relavant keywords to get credit for this optimizing opportunity.

Header Tags < h1>

This is one of the most important tags on your web page! A <h1> tag is the heaviest weighted html tag on the page so make sure every page has one, and only one. The only exception to this rule is your home page.

 

There should only be one < h1> tag on a web page.
H1 tags are often used for the website name or the page name
You can assign an ID to your h1 tag then assign it properties in your CSS.
You can assign a title to your h1 tag then assign it properties in your CSS.

 

Image Tags <img> or <asp:image ..>

Every image should have an ALT tag that describes in detail the image. Name your images using the desired keywords as far to the left as possible. Name your image so that anyone reading the name of the image could imagine the contents in the image.

 

All image files should have a descriptive file name using keywords when possible. (garage-door-insulated-steel.jpg)
All html images should have an alt tag that describes the image.
All asp.net image controls should have an Alternative Text tag that describes the image.
Use keywords when possible in the description of the image.
Place the keywords in the description as close to the beginning of the description as possible. It is better to use: 'Garage Door Opener branded Silent Max' than to use 'SilentMax Garage Door Opener'
Add an ID to the image and give it a keyword rich description.
Add an title to the image and give it a keyword rich description.
Use Photoshop or other graphics program to optimize your images which will provide a quicker downloads.

 

Hyperlinks <a href> or <asp:hyperlink..>

Both internal links and external links should have keywords relevant to the content of the page you are linking to. You can add a ID attribute and a TITLE attribute to your hyperlink tag to give it more weight.

 

All hyperlinks should have an ID with a keyword rich description
Assign a class to your hyperlinks to provide user feedback on rollovers.
The Text attribute should be descriptive of the content the link will go to. (NEVER use click here!)
Use nofollow if you do not want the link to count as a vote for that web page.
Never have more than 100 hyperlinks on your web page.
Make sure you have more internal links (to other pages on your site) than you do external links (to other web sites).
Invite others to link to your web site via AddMe, ShareThis or other means of social networking. (Let the little guys link to you but don't link to the little guys.
Only link to web pages that are in the same category (or industry) as your web site. Solicit webmasters of other similiar related web content to exchange links with you.
Monitor your site regularly for broken links and repair them promptly.

 

Web Content

Use your keywords as close to the beginning of the paragraph as possible to give it more weight.
Every keyword listed in the meta tag of the page MUST be in the web content inr order for the keyword to have any weight in the ranking of the page.

 

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