SEO Checklist - Forget at your own peril

Search Engine Optimization is wide field which encompasses a variety of activities. Though, every SEO Company may have follow its own set of activities to promote a website on search engine, there are few fundamentals that must never be forgotten. This basic SEO checklist must be adhered to and religiously followed to ensure that a website is optimized properly to ensure top listing on search engines.


1. Choose relevant keywords for your site: It must be ensured that keywords chosen reflect the site's purpose and content. Keywords and phrases which your target audience searches for should be selected. There is no point in using keywords or key phrases which nobody searches for. Any site needs targeted traffic and thus make sure that only relevant audience which may benefit or buy products from your site visits. So choose your keywords wisely. There are various keyword research tools - both free and paid which may help you in selecting the best keywords for you.


2. Keyword rich relevant content: A website should have excellent content reflecting the sites purpose and intentions. Care should be taken that keywords and phrases are not stuffed in the content. Keyword stuffing maybe construed as spamming by search engines.


3. Proper use of Title tags: Any webpage should have title tag with the keywords that you have chosen. This is single most important aspect of search engine optimization.


4. H1 tags with keywords for content titles: Content titles should have targeted keywords using H1 tags.


5. Link optimization: Placing targeted keywords into the links is an important factor because search engine robots read the links as they crawl the webpage. Their algorithms understand the association between the anchor text and the page that has been linked.


6. Image Optimization: A SEO Consultant must also ensure that images used in the website have descriptive, keyword-rich alternative attributes (alt) that are useful for visitors and search engines alike.


7. Sitemap: Sitemap with text links to all the pages of a website is very important to ensure that search engines bots crawl every webpage.


8. Directory structure: A SEO specialist should ensure that website should have a flat directory structure.


9. A website should be listed in open directory. And as part of regular site SEO maintenance a site submitted to trusted, human-reviewed online directories.


10. Meta tags: All the web pages in a site should have keyword-rich Meta descriptions. Though, their importance has decreased in last few years, using them appropriately is advisable.


Author: Aniruddha Badola