SEO Check List table
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Head title
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The <title> should be derived from the
description and body content and comprise up to about 10 words or 60
characters. Keep anything important within the first 40 characters and
make the first word a keyword starting with a capital letter. Make it appeal
to the human reader. |
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Head description
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The "description" should relate to the body
content of the page and be up to about 20 words or 120 characters. Write in
good sentences and make it appeal to the human reader. If you use less than about 8 words, Google webmaster tools will give you an alert warning that you have a short description.
Do use words that match the page. Do start the first word with a capital
letter. Do use a noun or 'big meaning' word as the first word. Don't
use words like just the company name, unless it is so well known that people
search for it. Don't use the same title or description for more than one
page. Don't repeat anything over and over again that it makes bad reading.
You can use a word twice in the title and twice in the description provider
both title and description are of reasonable length. |
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Head keywords
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Keywords should be extracted from the body
text, in accordance with importance. Put in only the important words.
If the page is about two topics put in two keywords, if the page is vague,
put in more. If you use as many as 10 keywords, the value of each will
be less than if you used fewer keywords. See pages about
keywords and
keywords meta |
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Body text
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Optimisation for page content quality is the
most sound approach to search engine
optimisation. This means making it such that it satisfies the searchers
needs. Use proper sentences with verbs, good grammar, spelling
and punctuation.
Word frequency count: For large pages keep the two most significant
words to 7% maximum and the next most frequent word under 3.5%. Larger
percentages are acceptable with small pages. |
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Body links
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Check that all outgoing links from the page
work correctly and that each link has good anchor text properly referring
the content of the destination page. Put links to help your visitors,
regardless of other considerations.
If there are links to new unpublished pages, they will not work, so load a
group of your pages to the server very quickly together so there is no
danger of a high level page being read and the links failing in the time it
takes to load up all the pages.
Don't put any outgoing link to a link-farm or other dubious bad
neighbourhood area - it will count against you. Don't link to a site
with zero PR unless you know that the site is new - and reputable. An
old site with PR=0 may well
be in the bad neighbourhood category.
If you link to your home page do something like http://www.example.com/
rather than http://www.example.com/index.htm . Don't ask me why;
it is too complicated to explain. |
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File names
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If possible, avoid pages with file names like:
http://www.satsig.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=ivsat-eu;action=display;num=1096621697
Search engines may not be able to deal with all the possible extension
varieties or even any at all. If you have to do this kind of thing,
then at least make sure you have some references to the root page
http://www.satsig.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl as the extension pages are
treated specially as sub-parts of the root page. Do not use session
id's that change the file name extensions every time they are accessed.
The search engine may attempt to index the page hundreds of times with
different names and then penalise you for duplicate content. Don't use ?id=
as search engine may think this introduces a session id. Use some other name
like ?option= |
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No hidden text
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If you are using a black background or image
background with white text be careful that all text, including spaces is
visible. The text colour must significantly differ from the
background. Using the red, green, blue scale FF, FF, FF the difference
must be such that at least one of these three must differ by more than 16
for example: FF, FF, EE. |
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Headings
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Use <h1>,<h2> and <h3> headings, with
appropriate text. |
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Images
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Don't stuff alt text on images that are single
pixels, lines or similar graphical constructions of little information
value. If you do, you are spamming and you may have your page removed from
the index. Do put alt text on any image that is worth it and also on
any images that are used as clickable link buttons. Make all image files as
small as possible - if larger images are needed put as "click here to
enlarge" |
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html Validation
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Check your page with a validator. It may
detect real errors which need fixing. |
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Fancy sites
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If you are starting a new site, prepare the
entire site in text form only with no graphics at all. This will be
excellent for the search engines to follow and so fast then even your
visitors will be most impressed. Unless your site really needs to show
off fancy pictures the process of adding the pictures will simply degrade
its speed. Most visitors want instant access direct to the single page that
tells them the answer to what they are looking for. Don't use flash
screens unless that is what you are demonstrating. Don't use pop-ups at all.
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Screen size, dial up and browser compatibility
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Check that your page looks acceptable and is
still usable on all screen resolutions and with a slow dial up line.
It is surprising how may serious business sites are unusable for people with
dial up lines and small screen resolutions. Test your site on a
640 x 480 screen resolution on a slow dial up line and ancient computer and
make sure it works satisfactorily. Test with different browsers if
possible. |
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If you find the above check list helpful, please tell me. If you find
the check list unhelpful I would still be interested in any constructive advice.
I am not an expert on this and don't claim that my guesses are better than those
from anyone else.
Content Copyright Reserved (c) Satellite Signals Ltd. Page last
amended 24 June 2008.
