bare bones seo – check list

Thoughts on building a SEO check list?

I thought of a top down approach, off course maintenance and advancement means coming back to certain items and redoing them eg content.

There’s so many cool things you can do, but I thought I’d do a bare bones approach. I’ve added social bookmarking to the list, because these days.. it is a must have.

Be great, if people could add items to the list – eg as 3a, 3b, 4a.

1. Hosting – fast, reliable.
– Why? Website loads quickly, load time important. Also, downtime bad!

2. Domain Name
– Brand-able name, descriptive, topic relevant, no dashes unless premium name.

3. URL Structure
– keyword rich – without being spammy, content related,

4. Page Structure
– while being w3c complaint, make sure html/css structure and layout is SEO friendly. Eg, have secondary menu appear under main content.

5. Content
– Title Tags
– Meta keyword
– Meta description
– H1 title
– content
–> keyword density for term targeted
–> alt tags on images
–> links follow through to your own redirect script, don’t pass on link juice, cloak script if possible. no follow tags pointless.

6. Content linking
– link to other articles on website, by linking via relevant keywords in articles you write. 1 link per 150-250 keywords. eg, Article about US Legislation on Gambling, when the word “online casino” is mentioned, link to an article titled “online casino” on your website.

7. Social bookmarks
– social bookmark links on content pages

8. RSS feed content
– insert advertising or links back to your website in the RSS feed content