SEO Checklist

The WebConfs website has a very useful list of “Best and Worst Practices for Designing a High Traffic Website.” Basically they collected all the major factors that might affect the search optimization of your site, attributing a score to them. The score ranges from -3, which is very bad for your site, to +3, which is very good. Below you will find a summary of the most important factors:

Keywords

Keyword in title tag (+3)
Keyword in URL (+3)
Keyword density in document (+3)
Keyword in H1 and H2 headings (+3)
Keyword in the beginning of document (+2)
Keyword in ALT tags (+2)
Keyword in Meta tags (+1)
Keyword stuffing (-3)

Meta Tags

Description Meta Tag (+1)
Keywords Meta Tag (+1)
Refresh Meta Tag (-1)

Content

Unique content (+3)
Frequent updates (+3)
Age of content (+2)
Poor coding or design (-2)
Invisible text (-3)
Doorway pages (-3)
Duplicate content (-3)

Other factors

Site accessibility (+3)
Sitemap (+2)
Site size (+2)
Site age (+2)
Top-level domain (+1)
URL length (0)
Hosting downtime (-1)
Flash (-2)
Misused Redirects (-3)

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Daniel Scocco on May 17, 2007 | Filed Under SEO

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46 Responses to “SEO Checklist”

Raj on May 17th, 2007 9:02 am

Thanks For this Post. This will help me so Much. Thanks Again

Regards

Raj
http://www.technobuzz.net
Daniel on May 17th, 2007 9:50 am

Yeah the list is pretty useful. Most of the factors are well known, but being able to grasp all of them with scores is handy.
Leftblank on May 17th, 2007 9:57 am

Nice article, though I disagree on the ‘flash -3′, using flash doesn’t have to be bad. It’s fairly simply to redirect robots and human readers without flash support to a HTML version with the same content, which doesn’t necessarily make it evil.
Phil Van Treuren on May 17th, 2007 10:04 am

Great list, man, thanks for posting it. SEO is definitely a tricky subject . . . I’m trying to rank on in the top ten for “romantic ideas” for my blog, and it’s been a long road!
Daniel on May 17th, 2007 10:04 am

Most robots have issues with Flash. I guess if you use it only for some features its OK. The problem is sites completely based on Flash.
Amanda on May 17th, 2007 10:33 am

There were things on there I knew about but never got around to it but looking at that I should get off my lazy butt and do it.
Ponn Sabra on May 17th, 2007 10:53 am

Thanks for this extremely informative list. I’ve been running a beginners SEO Tips Marathon [specially made for computer-dummies like me ] and the biggest questions I’m faced with are: where do I focus my time and energy first, second…

Meta tags are definitely a big issue, I need to focus my attention on…thanks to this list. Wow! I’ve read recently, its not as important as it was before…and this list totally discredits those views.

I have a couple of questions:

- Is cross-linking another phase for link-exchanging? If not, what is it?

I really don’t know how to ask the question, so I’ll just share my experience.

My home page, an ezine subscription page for all my free gifts has PR4. I just moved my blog to WP in March, and with the new algorithms have a blog home has a PR3, and certain static pages PR4-5.

I just installed a link directory yesterday, haven’t promoted it yet. It has a reciprocal-link-back checker component. Should they be linking my blog home or my homepage?

Thanks so much Daniel. I truly love reading your highly informative blog.
Daniel on May 17th, 2007 10:58 am

Link exchanges should not be bad under a SEO point of view. What Google does not like is when you try to mask that.

Cross-linking therefore refers to site A linking to site B, site B linking to site C and site C linking to site A.
Brad Shorr on May 17th, 2007 11:01 am

Thanks for the post–it’s helpful to have a checklist like this when developing content.
Ponn Sabra on May 17th, 2007 11:01 am

Because I’m such a non-techie chick, I could never think of all these slick, sly, and hateful masking, cross-linking, etc. jazz.

Thanks for helping me understand everything better.
Dana Mark on May 17th, 2007 11:07 am

Thanks for the helpful list. It is good to see a complete list like this along with the scores. The scores help so it is not just a list of important things to watch for, but a way to see which are actually helpful and which can hurt.
Shane on May 17th, 2007 11:49 am

This isn’t a good list. Much of the information is misleading or just plain wrong. For instance, keywords in the URL are as important as keywords in the Title? Meta Keywords just as important as Meta Description? No way.

This is the list you need to be looking at: http://www.seomoz.org/article/.....ng-factors
Seo Best Practices on May 17th, 2007 11:50 am

Hi fellow seo comrade, very complete list, I would give different scores to some of the points on your list mentioned above, of course every one has different appreciation of the whole SEO picture.

SEO is a permanent changing field and each of us must build our own experience. I have an article on my blog that can complement yours, is a list of seo practices to have in mind when thinking of doing seo to a site, some of them are already in your article:

http://www.seopractices.com/20.....ticioners/
Daniel on May 17th, 2007 12:04 pm

Shane, yeah I covered that list from SEOMoz on this post:

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/s.....g-factors/

However I don’t think the one of this post is misleading. Yeah I agree that Meta Keywords is not as important as Meta Description.

Still, for the average blogger those points and scores are pretty useful for a quick checklist. If someone wants to dig deeper than for sure check other lists and SEO resources.

Thanks for sharing though.
Daniel on May 17th, 2007 2:46 pm

Thanks for sharing that man. Yeah SEO is a field that is always changing, in fact I believe those guys update that table and the scored every couple of months of so.
Melt du Plooy on May 18th, 2007 3:04 am

Hi Daniel, I agree, aspects of SEO change often and I am sure that the scores change as well.

I have taken your post and expanded on it a bit, see my site
Daniel on May 18th, 2007 3:07 am

Good one Melt, quite useful comments.

From his site:
“Comments: Much can be said about poor coding or design, which could include bloated HTML (too many extra tags), broken HTML (not closing tags) and non-validated code. Flash, previously not crawlable (Search Engines could not read the content in the Flash object), is now readable, at least to a degree. Although I am not all for Flash, I think that flash can really add value to your site when using it sparingly.”
Pallab on May 18th, 2007 4:27 am

I actually perform rather well
My only big mistake is using font tag instead of h2 and h3.
vijay on June 1st, 2007 8:24 am

Now it will be very useful for us if you take one by one topic of +3 and explain it how to implement it!!

Thanks for the aggrigation anywa!
serdar5 on September 12th, 2007 8:39 pm

thanks.goood working!
http://www.more-tech.com
Dave on September 28th, 2007 4:06 am

Thanks for this it should help out with my SEO
Ron on January 10th, 2008 4:45 pm

This is a nice short list of search engine optimization do’s and don’ts. However, there are so many more tips and techniques that affect search engine optimization. There is a thorough seo cheatsheet containing about every known tip or technique to search engine optimization that is worth checking out from EXPERT Webmasters.
SEO Updates on January 19th, 2008 5:02 pm

Thanks for the post–it’s helpful to have a checklist like this when developing content.
ckalpaxidis on February 21st, 2008 3:45 am

thanks for the help
Satish Gandham on March 3rd, 2008 8:05 am

Can you tell a decent total?????
Jennine Estes on March 23rd, 2008 4:19 pm

Thanks for the well put together seo list. This is very helpful.
IT outsourcing on April 9th, 2008 7:54 am

Checklist is wonderful, and it give some priority preferences to work

thanks
James Zhao on April 11th, 2008 1:12 pm

Good stuff!
What about website structure? For my clients, I usually recommend a flat structure for their site.
SEO Checklist on April 24th, 2008 6:38 pm

Good post. I just started my site http://www.seochecklist.nl and I find your approch interesting. I agree with James about the web structure.