SEO is huge, and the rules continually change. We’ve created a series of pointers to help you along the SEO path, with the first in the series being a checklist. Starting with a checklist is a great way to review the things that need improvement. Since there’s no exact formula for these things, the following list is presented in a VERY ROUGH order according to importance (which varies based on many other factors):
Basic SEO Checklist
- My front page includes all of the terms I’d like to show up in searches for, presented in clear well formatted text (bonus for repetition of terms).
- My front page includes geographic landmarks that relate to your location (neighborhood names, local landmarks, parks, etc).
- My site has completed listings on getlisted.org for the major search engines (bonus for more).
- My site has page titles that include a concise and keyword-rich description of my site (no more than 70 characters).
- My site’s pages include a keyword-rich, page specific description.
- My Google+ page features multiple reviews and is claimed, maintained, and linked to by my website.
- My website features an actively maintained blog and includes excerpts of my blogs on my front page.
- My website is regularly updated with new content such as blogs, events, updated page content, new pages, etc.
- My website pages have ONE and only ONE main headline (h1) on each page that describes the page’s content (multiple smaller headlines are ok).
OKAY I GET IT, LET’S ROCK!!!
Now I know you’re excited to get started but there’s one crucial step here that is not in the list above, but is crucial to assist you through this process. If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account go get one now. I’ll still be here. You’re done and back? Great! Now wait a week and come back. No, you can keep reading, but it’s going to take a while for Google to collect enough data to be useful to you. If you already have a Google account, that’s excellent. You may want to open it up and look at some of your search statistics and mull over them while you read this. Now back to our regularly scheduled content….