SEO
Quick-Start Checklist
Analyze your product. Are you interested in it yourself?
Analyze your market. Is it oversaturated? Is it growing or
changing?
Is it easy to order your product from
the web? Or are you selling commodity dog food that is expensive to ship?
What can you do to be unique in the market?
What creative and original ideas can you add to your site?
FOR NEW SITES: Ponder your domain name
choice. Depending on your brand strategy, it should either be highly brandable
or have your primary keywords in it. Consider buying different domain names for
each targeted language or niche in your market.
Choose an ICANN accredited registrar. Register a .com as soon as
possible.
Register a country’s top-level domain if your primary market is
local in nature. Choose a host that supports the technology you will be using
(ASP or PHP, etc.).
Use keyword tools and customer feedback
to find the most targeted keyword phrases for your site.
Develop grouped themes of keywords that
reflect the different sections of your site.
Keeping within a grouped theme, choose different keywords to
target each page.
Put your
chosen words for each page in your page title tags. Make sure your page title
tag text is unique to each page.
Write a description for the meta
description tag. Make sure your description is unique to each page.
Use only one H1 header per page, and
target similar keyword phrases as the ones you targeted when writing the page
title.
Use subheaders H2 and H3 on your page when necessary. Use bulleted
lists and bolding to make content easier to read.
Make
sure your text is written for human consumption—not bots.
Make sure your home page builds
credibility and directs consumers to the most important parts of your site.
Target your most competitive keyword on
your home page or a page that is well integrated into your site.
Link to major theme pages from your home page. Link to your home
page from every sub page.
Use text-based navigation.
If you
already have, or insist on using, graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text
on the images, and link to every primary page from your sub pages in the footer
of the sub pages.
Use descriptive keyword breadcrumb
navigation. Make a site map.
Check the text that links pages
of your site to make sure it’s descriptive whenever possible.
Link to resources outside your own site
that improve each user's experience. Deep link to related articles and content
from your page copy.
Rely as little as possible on the site
navigation. Instead, guide your visitor through your site with links in the
active content portion of the site.
Link to, and use, a cascading style sheet from every page.
Avoid duplicate content issues. Ensure
that each page has significantly unique content that does not exist on other
pages on your site or other sites.
Register your site with the major directories.
Register your site with a couple better second-tier directories.
Register with a couple local or niche-specific directories.
