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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A helpful checklist / collection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and technics.
Table of Contents
- URL
- Title
- Keywords
- Description
- Content
- Images
- Links
- Social Media
- Sitemap
- Errors and access
- Performance
- UX
- Mobile
- Validation and accessibility
- Search
- Analytics
- Tools
URL
- Descriptive URLs: use a descriptive page url, which should reflect your targeted keyword
- Subdomain or subfolder: subdomains are seen as separate domains
- Hyphans: split words using hyphans
- www or no-www: provide both domains, but set a prefered version in Google Webmaster Tools
- Localisation: chookse a country-specific domain, for better local search results
- HTTPS: Security is a top priority for Google
Title
- every page shound have a unique speaking title (60 - 100 characters)
<title>Website Title goes here</title>
Keywords
- Single: every page shound have a single unique targeted keyword
- Research: rank for keywords with high traffic and less competition
- URL: Keyword should appear in URL name
- Title: Keyword should appear in page title
- Heading: Keyword should appear in headings
- Content: Keyword should apear in ~3% of article length
- Meta Tag: You can ommit the
<meta name="keywords" content="">
, search engines do not use this meta tag
Description
- every page shound have a unique description
- max. 160 characters
<meta name="description" content="max 160 Chars">
Content
- Content: Content matters the most in SEO
- Headings: Clear structure
H1
-H6
max. 70 characters long - Strong: use
strong
tag to highlight your targeted keyword - Unique: do not provide duplicated content, use unique content types
- Length: article should be at least 300 words
- Freshness: new content is important. Updating pages or regulary posting is recommended
Images
- Alt tag (60 - 70 characters)
- Use a CDN or a subdomain to allow parallal http-requests
Links
- add meaningful title
- Only add external links if you got a backlink to your site
- add
rel="nofollow"
attribute to external links - add ~ 3 internal links to your content
Social Media
-
Social link rank up your site
-
Authorship information
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]">
<a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]?rel=author">Google</a>
-
<span itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> <link itemprop="url" href="http://www.your-company-site.com"> <a itemprop="sameAs" href="http://www.facebook.com/your-company">Facebook</a> <a itemprop="sameAs" href="http://www.twitter.com/YourCompany">Twitter</a> </span>
Sitemap
- HTML sitemap: An HTML sitemap allows site visitors to easily navigate a website.
- XML sitemap: Help search engines to index your pages
- Image sitemap: Increase that your images can be found in Image Search results
- Video sitemap: Make sure, search engines know about all the video content on your site
- Mobile sitemap: For feature phones, you can create a mobile sitemap
Errors and access
- provide 403 - Acced denied page
- provide 404 - Page not found page
- add a
robots.txt
file - Avoid
FILE_NOT_FOUND
errors
Performance
- Performance and loading time matters
- only serve concatenated and minified files
- if possible no redirects
- compress images (ImageOptim)
UX
- User friendly site
- clickable links should not be too small
Mobile
- add viewport tag
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1.0">
- create a mobile-friendly site (shown in search results)
- Mobile-Friendly Test
- AppLinks
Validation and accessibility
- Write valid markup (HTML Validator CSS Validator)
- use WAI-Aria tags
- use RichSnippets