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The SEO checklist is a “do it quick” method of determining if your website is “ready” to shoot up in the search results for prominent keywords and phrases.

The checklist includes list of freely available tools to ensure that your website is free from logical and technical mistakes, that can prevent your website from achieving top ranks in search engines.

The intended audience of this article includes

• SEO specialists
• Website owners
• Freelance search engine marketeers
• Students

Checklist for individual pages

SEO using Page URL

Page URL(Universal Resource Location) is the address of a page. An internet user can access a page only through the page URL. This includes the following methods

• By typing the URL in the web browser
• By clicking the URL link on another page

Both of the above methods are the recognized by search engines directly of indirectly.

By typing the URL in the web browser directly

This page visit by a user might be recognized by search engines only if

• A tool bar of the search engine is installed in the browser. Such as Google tool bar, Yahoo tool bar or Alexa tool bar
• You use a tool that is provided by a search engine such as Google Desktop, Google web accelerator, Yahoo Messenger or Gtalk.

If any of the above tools require you to login, the search engine might use your identity to match it against the information that you have been accessing.

• The web page itself as an embedded link to a search engine analytical tool such as Google Analytics , Yahoo Badge or Zitku tracker.

SEO on Page URL Do’s

• Include keywords in URL domain
• Include keywords in URL path
• Separate multiple keywords using “-” hyphen character.
• Phrases in paths and URLs are better than individual keywords put together.

SEO on Page URL Dont’s

• Do not over use keywords in the URL or path.
• Do not use too many “-” hyphens to avoid being marked as spam.

Page Title SEO guidelines

Page title is the text that appears on the header bar of the web browser. The following is a checklist of page titles.

Page title SEO Do’s

• Page title should include keywords.
• Keywords should NOT be over present in the title.
• Each page of the website should have a unique title most appropriate for that page.

Page title SEO Dont’s

• Don’t over use keywords in title. Too many keywords diminish the importance of real keywords.
• Don’t repeat keywords in title. Keep title “readable” for humans.

Page Meta tags

Page meta is the internal code of the website that includes two important tags Keyword tag and Description tag. Even though some search engines DO NOT use these tags, many still do.

Page meta tags guidelines

• Keyword Meta: Keyword meta is your opportunity to write important keywords of your webpage in this attribute. Important to note that adding too many keywords in this meta is likely to reduce their importance. Include only significant keywords in this attribute.
• Description Meta: Description meta is a tag that should be added to the page to include a description of the page in less than 200 characters.
  * Important to note that the description is a description of the page and not the entire website.

Page Content SEO guidelines

Page content is the actual webpage which is shown on the web browser and is visible to the visitor. The page content is the most important section of a page and should be dealt with care.

SEO for Page Content Do’s

• Write original text.
• Keyword density should not be less than 5% of the total text.
• Keywords/keyphrases should appear in <h1>, <h2> and<h3> tags.
• Use important keywords near the top of the page(in html).
• Try to anticipate the phrase that the search engine user is likely to search for use the phrase in the same order in your text.

SEO for Page Content Dont’s

• Don’t use too much javascript.
• Don’t use “large” images on the top of a page.
• Don’t use animations.
• Don’t use Flash for the entire content. Flash is mostly unreadable.
• Don’t use text in the form of images.

SEO for Images on the website Do’s

• Always use “Alt text” as well as “title” attribute to describe the photograph. “Alt text” alone is not sufficient.
• Image file names should be descriptive (apply Page URL + Path do’s and don’ts)

SEO for Images on the website Don’ts

• Do not use too much text or important keywords in images. They cant be read by search engines.
• Do not use images to make text invisible such as “plain” black background with black text.