THE SEO Checklist

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Here is my SEO checklist.

This is my list of ten tips in SEO that I have discovered over the Internet. Search engine optimization has been a great help in doing online marketing. And since most, if not all, marketers are doing SEO, many of them failed while losing a huge amount of money and time by following on fad that do not work most of the time.There are so many ways you can use in order to get a lot of traffic using SEO without the help of those “Pay-per-Click” Campaigns. But with those many ways, here are the top ten SEO tips that I think are the most effective, thus I wrote it here on my SEO checklist.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 1 : Do you search for the best keywords?

- You do not really have to spend a lot of money in registering in organizations just to get you the best keywords to use. You just have to research thoroughly. And don’t push on that lazy button because you are bound to not going anywhere if you do not hunt for it and help optimize your site.

Here is a good keyword tracking site that you can use for free.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 2: Do you use Title and ALT Attributes?

- URLs or web addresses, almost all of the time, do not give you the exact topic of the page. So in order for your site to be more specific, consider using  Title and ALT attributes in which you can include your keywords in.

By utilizing Title Attributes, it sends off signal to search engines the relevance of your link. Title attributes also standardizes in making your page known to disabled people, meaning people without sight can still reach your page. Here is a recommended syntax to your Title Attributes:

<a href=”http://www.top10seotips.com/seo_software.htm” title=”SEO Software”>SEO Software</a>

ALT attributes are pretty much the same thing, although it uses images instead, that still can be reached by disabled people. Here is the standard syntax:

<img src=”http://top10seotips.com/img/image01.jpg” alt=”Top 10 SEO Tips”>

SEO Checklist Tip No. 3: Do you utilize nomenclatures?

- I know. Big word. But according to this site, the definition of nomenclature is “A system of names used in an art or science”. Therefore, you must organize your keywords in a system. To apply this, if you are going to use “travel bags” as keyword for example, you should use your keyword even to the image (travelbag-01.jpg). This tip has not really confirmed, but many saw a good improvement after using this tip.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 4: Do you know your competitors?

- It is inevitable, even in the realms of non-online marketing, that you should know who are your competitors and what are their ways. But in SEO, competition derived from who are the ones that are using the same keywords as you do. By knowing the number of incoming links that they use, you will have a better advantage. But you should not forget that you have to know who they are before you can start applying some strategies.

Luckily for you, here is a site which helps you getting ahead of your competitors.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 5: Have you created a Site Map Page?

- Easily considered by many as the best SEO tip out there. Using Pagerank is a necessity itself and it used throughout a website by a voting system created by Google. It gives your site a better exposure and everyone can easily navigate throughout your site. This also allows web crawlers to get into your site and check your content, since every pages on your site will be linked to the sitemap.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 6: Have you optimized your title?

- You can choose from different theories when it comes to cooking up your title. But here is one I consider “good enough”: limit your title to 66 characters. Since Google only shows 66 characters when it is included in the search results. With this, try to make your title relevant to the content.

But this is a better tip, since the tips included in this SEO Checklist revolve around how you use keywords. Never fail to include you keywords in the Title Tag. And much better if it comes first before any other words. You do not want to repeat your keywords in the Title, as this will be considered as spam by Google.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 7: Have you included a robots.txt File?

- Of all the tips included in this list, this is the easiest one to execute. All you have to do is to is to include a robots.txt file at the root of your website. Simply write the code I provide below in a text editor (Notepad e.g.) and load it up to your root directory that is found on your domain. This file simply sends off a message to webcrawlers to “please take your time in crawling on my website”. Here is a good example of a robots.txt file:

User agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /css/
Disallow: /img/

SEO Checklist Tip No. 8: Have you optimized your META Tags?

- For those who does know what META tag means, these are so-called hidden codes that can only be reached by webcrawlers (also known as spiders). These creepy crawlers can be found underneath, in the HEAD section of the webpage. When you do your META tags, you need to consider two things in optimizing them: description and keywords. META tags, despite some controversies, are still very useful when it comes to meta-based search engines.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 9: Have you installed a sitemap.xml for Google?

- Even though you may think it is impossible to be listed on the first page of Google search results, please do know that is not its reasons. Google’s reason why they filter out sites is because they want to give the viewers the most relevant ones. That is why they created a program called Google Sitemap. This tool can help you locate new linking tools that can help you discover who are linking to your websites. This program is also to make you rest assured that your pages can be cached ASAP.

Here is a link that will guide you on how to create a Sitemap File.

SEO Checklist Tip No. 10: Do you use Headings?

- Headings have a great role when it comes to piling up your information. Using H1 to H3 at least can make your page more appealing. Here is a good code which you can use in doing your headings, but I remind you to not overdo it by making a big pile of heading for a page:

<style type=”text/css”>

h1 font-size: 18px;       h2 font-size: 16px;       h3 font-size: 14px;

</style>