Search engine optimisation is pretty much part and parcel of creating websites these days. Getting the basics right don’t require a large amount of work, but can make all the difference. Many of these also improve the general usability and accessibility of your site too – so you get three major benefits rolled into one.
The points below are just a few basics I’ve picked up along the way; roughly in order of my own priority, relating specifically to technical changes you can make on your own site, regardless of any incoming links, frequency of page updates, or link building you may do; I’m not claiming this is a comprehensive list BY to, keyword, you, to, “Find, navigational, a,in,I’ve, high, possible. descriptions
These are often displayed in search engines if the keywords have matched a page title rather than its content – so they’re worth including even for this – and they still seem to be used for picking up relevant keywords too. Once again, the same points apply as in #1 – don’t just re-use the same standard page description across the entire site.
7. Deep linking
This is harking back to point #2. If you publish articles, press releases, or the like on your site, and it mentions a product, or another article on the site, then make sure it links to it! This increases the number of contextually relevant links and possible keywords that a search engine might associate your pages with, even if these links are just internal.
8. Use URL rewriting
There are loads of URL rewriting techniques out there. Sensible use of URLs increase the usability of your site, and also allows the search engines to pick up on keywords in your URL too. In order of improvement:
http://www.mycompany.com/page.aspx?id=29&page=ingredients (worst case)
http://www.mycompany.com/product-information.aspx?id=29&page=ingredients (at least give the page a meaningful name!)
http://www.mycompany.com/product-information/29/ingredients/ (search engines still don’t like query strings all that much)
http://www.mycompany.com/products/chips/french-fries/ingredients/
The final example is logical, “hackable” (the user can guess that /products/chips/ will take them back to a sensible page), and keyword rich. Note that the URL of this blog entry follows these lines too!
9. Unknowns…
Things I’m not 100% sure about.
– Keywords meta tag. I’ve deliberately not mentioned this here, as I’ve seen no sign that these are being used any more.
– Order of content on the page. I always try to ensure that the main body of the content appears as high up the page as possible. This has accessibility benefits (so a screen reader doesn’t read the same set of navigation at the start every time a page loads), but I’m not sure how much weight a search engine places on this order, or how large the page has to be for this to make a difference.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has suggestions of other must-do’s that I’ve missed.
4 replies on “Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Checklist”
Make sure that you use either the:
http://domain.com
or
http://www.domain.com
And redirect to the one with the highest page rank.
Or else the google juice will be shared between both.
Use H1 and H2 tags wisely.
Keywords are beginning to be used a little bit again from what i”ve read.
#1 is actually to realise that optimization is generally spelt optimisation in the UK 😉
In UK/Australia everything with a “Z” (zation) is replaced by an S (sation)… so Optimzation becomes optimisation.
Good list jamesy:-)
Semantic markup is important too – you touched on it with H1 and so on, but clean, semantic markup will help maintain the site, and help search engines too.