Search Engine Optimization Checklist

Bronze

1. Research your websites competition by carrying out competitor analysis tasks. 2. Compile key word & key phrase lists which are relevant to your specific website and industry. 3. Incorporate the key words and phrases into the following areas of your websites     • URL's     • Domain Name     • Page Titles     • Page Descriptions     • Page Headings     • Page Content (text)     • Link text However these items (with the exception of page content) should be brief. Also Google encourages these items to be unique, accurate, descriptive, well structured and organized. 4. Creation of a sitemap if needed; this will help search engines and users find there way through your website easily. 5. Create robot txt file; by doing this you can stop search engines crawling the parts of your website you don't want crawled.

Silver

6. Verification of your website with various search engines such as Google and Yahoo. 7. Analysis and improvement of page content, this needs to be of a high standard whilst remaining easy to read and relevant to the websites topic. It also should incorporate your keywords and phrases into the text. 8. Analysis and correction of the websites keyword density. This is number of times a keyword is used on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page; expressed as a percentage, usually between 2-6%. 9. Creation of a links page - Quality links to and from your website is the key, making sure they are good reputable websites and have relevance to your sites theme. A good way to aid this process is by installing a reciprocal links system on your website. 10. Analysis and modification of website structure if needed.

Gold

11. Analysis and adjustment of the websites navigation structure if needed, are the links organized? Can you find where you want to go? 12. Creating RSS feeds - Make use of the media, particularly articles and news feeds relating to your industry. 13. Creating a forum or blog to discuss various topics relating to your industry; this also provides good opportunity to link. 14. Submission of well written applicable articles to online article directories with a link back to your site. 15. Submission of your website to good quality online business directories. There are additional fees involved with this.