gitter-badger/search-engine-optimization

A helpful checklist / collection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and technics.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A helpful checklist / collection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and technics.

Table of Contents

• URL
• Accessibility
• Meta Information
• Keywords
• Content
• Images
• Links
• Mobile
• Sitemap
• Social Media
• Tools & Services

URL

• Descriptive URLs: use a descriptive page url, which should reflect your targeted keyword
• Subdomain or subfolder: subdomains are seen as separate domains
• Hyphens: split words using hyphens
• 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
• URL builder: Use this tool to add custom compaign parameters to your URLs
• File extension: do not strip out the file extension on URLs

Accessibility

• 403: provide a 403 - Access denied page
• 404: provide a 404 - Page not found page
• Robots: block pages which should not be indexed via the robots.txt file or
  <meta name="robots" content="">
• File not found: avoid 404 FILE_NOT_FOUND errors
• Redirects: Avoid redirects if possible. Use 301 redirect instead of 302
• Pagination: implement the rel="next" and rel="prev" attributes to links
• Moving a website: redirect all your links to the new location via .htaccess
• Performance: performance and loading time is important
• Validation: write valid code (HTML Validator CSS Validator)
• WAI-Aria: use WAI-Aria tags to help machines understanding your code
• RichSnippets: markup your code with rich snippets, they show up on the search results page
• Custom Search: with sitelink Google Sitelink search box, people can reach your content more quickly

Meta Information

• Title: each page shound have a unique speaking title (60 - 100 characters)
  <title>Website Title</title>
• Description: each page should have a unique description (max. 160 characters)
  <meta name="description" content="">

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

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
• Uniqueness: 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

• File name: use a short descriptive name
• Alt tag: add an alt-tag this a description of the image (60 - 70 characters)
• Dimentions: add the width="" and height="" attributes to the image
• Responsive Images: serve the most optimized image corresponding to the window size
• Size: keep the filesize as low as possible
• Optimization: Optimize images by removing some meta information

Links

• Title: add a descriptive title to links
• Backlinks: Only add external links if you got a backlink to your site
• nofollow: add rel="nofollow" attribute to external links only to prevent spam and bad links
• Internal links: add ~3 internal links to your content

Mobile

• Viewport: tell browsers how to adjust the page's dimension and scaling to suit the device
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1.0">
• mobile friendly: mobile optimized sites are marked in search results. Test for mobile friendly site
• AppLinks: apps that link to your content can then use this metadata to deep-link into your app
• Tap targets: clickable links should not be too small

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

Social Media

• Social Shares: provide sharing options for your site
• Social Profiles: add social profiles to your Google search results
• OpenGraph: The Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph.
• Facebook: Sharing Best Practices for Websites & Mobile Apps
• Twitter: with Twitter cards, you can attach photos, videos and media experience to you Tweets
• Authorship information
• Google+ Authorship: add Google+ authorship information to your page
  <link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]"> or
  <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]" rel=author">Google+ Profile</a> or
  <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]" rel=me">Google+ Profile</a> or
  <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/[GOOGLE+ ID]" rel=publisher">Google+ Profile</a>

Tools & Services

Webmasters

• Google Webmasters: allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility ot their websites
• Bing Webmasters: allows webmasters to add their websites to the Bing index crawler.

Analytics

• Google Analytics: generate detailed statistics about a website's traffic
• Piwik: is an open analytics platform
• Yahoo Web Analytics: is Yahoo!’s alternative to the dominant Google Analytics.

Optimization

• PageSpeed Insights: Page Speed Insights measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices.
• feedthebot seo tool: displays: domain strength, links, image seo, social counts & mentions, page/technical seo, pagespeed and more.

Keywords

• AdWords Keyword Tool: plan your Search Network campaigns and learn what your customers are looking for
• Google Trends: explore Google trending search topics with Google Trends.

Structured Data

• Google+ Snippet Creator: customize the snippet people see when your page is shared.
• Structured Data Testing Tool: past in you rich snippets or url to test it
• Twitter card validator: Enter the URL of the page with the meta tags to validate
• Facebook Debugger: Enter the URL you want to scrape to see how the page's markup appears to Facebook.