Optimize Your SEO and Be Clean About It:
Make a google account, after this is done, in the search bar, type in "Webmaster Tools", and choose the first link. Verify your account and create a sitemap!
Here are the essential 'keys' in optimizing your SEO on any of your websites with any domain/sub-domain.
Crawlability:
- Create XML sitemaps and upload them to the root of my site
- Ensure navigational structure can be accessed by search crawlers
- Ensure content is not buried inside rich media (Adobe Flash Player, JavaScript, Ajax)
- Ensure a clean down-level experience to expose content when rich media is used
- Ensure a clean, keyword rich URL structure is in place
- Create a robots.txt file and place at the root of my domain
Site Structure for SEO:
- Ensure content is laid out in a logical hierarchy
- Ensure content is well linked to with internal links
- Ensure a clean, keyword rich URL structure is in place
- Ensure URLs contain no extraneous parameters where possible (sessions, tracking, etc.)
- Create both HTML & XML sitemaps for humans and search crawlers respectively
- Ensure JavaScript/Adobe Flash Player/rich media does not hide links from crawlers
On-Page SEO Inside the <head> code:
- Titles should be unique, relevant, and approximately 60 characters long
- Descriptions should be unique, relevant, grammatically correct, and 160 or fewer characters
- Must have only one title and description per page on my site
Inside the <body> code:
- Should have only one <H1> tag - content held in tag should be keyword rich
- <ALT> tags should be available for all content-related images. They should contain content that explains the image and uses targeted keywords
- Ensure the keyword targeted by your page appears within the actual content of the page
- Use targeted keywords in anchor text when pointing links to other internal pages
Content:
- Ensure content is built based on keyword research to match content to what users are searching for
- Ensure a dedicated down-level experience exists to enhance discoverability of content held in rich media
- Ensure as much written content as possible is kept out of rich media and images
- Produce deep, content rich pages; be an authority for users by producing excellent content
- Set a schedule and produce new content frequently
- Be sure content is unique – don't reuse content from other sources
- Use 301 redirects to transfer value to new pages when content is moved or retired
- Use the <rel canonical> tag to help engines understand which duplicated pages should be indexed and have value attributed to them
- Use 404 error pages to help cleanse old pages from search engine indexes
Links:
- Plan for incoming & outgoing links – plan how to encourage users to link to content
- Create a plan to manage internal links ensuring the engines see deeper content
- Create a social media plan to promote content via social spaces
- Be sure to manage anchor text to help define content inside the site
- Avoid buying links in an attempt to influence search rankings
Problems With Page Crawlability:
- Search engines cannot fill out online forms, and thus any content contained behind them will remain hidden.
- Poor link structures can lead to search engines failing to reach all of the content contained on a website, or allow them to spider it, but leave it so minimally exposed that it's deemed "unimportant" by the engines' index.
- Web pages that use Flash, frames, Java applets, plug-in content, audio files & video have content that search engines cannot access.
- Text that is not in HTML format in the parse-able code of a web page is inherently invisible to search engines.
- This can include text in Flash files, images, photos, video, audio & plug-in content.
- Text that is not written in terms that users use to search in the major search engines. For example, writing about refrigerators when people actually search for "fridges". We had a client once who used the phrase "Climate Connections" to refer to Global Warming.
- Language and internationalization subtleties. For example, color vs colour. When in doubt, check what people are searching forand use exact matches in your content.
- Language. For example, writing content in Polish when the majority of the people who would visit your website are from Japan.