Complete SEO Checklist

In my previous entry, I wrote about the myths of search engine optimization. As I’ve said and as discussed by the related reference, SEO is not the complete solution to successful websites — content is. This time though, we take this useful SitePoint article for our discussion. We’ve said that SEO is not everything, but it can be very helpful in getting good content to those who seek them. If you have the content that you think is of value to other web users, you can get it where it should be through SEO.

This article discusses the many details involved in optimizing your pages for search engines. The ones I find really important are:

• Plan your web site’s SEO before you create the site. Though this is debatable, it pays to have a focused outline for your site, especially for determining what you want to do with it. You can’t have a site with no clear goals, especially if you’re putting a significant amount of effort into it.
• Target keyphrases rather than single keywords. You have to do this because users do not always search for keywords, but specific keyphrases as well.
• Include keywords and keyphrases in your site’s information architecture. If your site is about bananas, it has every right to have banana written all over it.
• Use focused keyphrases within each web page’s <title> element. The title element defines the content of the whole page and should contain the relevant details.
• Use your focused keyphrases within the page’s <heading> elements, beginning with the <h1> element. Break up your content into subheadings to enhance readability, and label your subsections with the appropriate title using the right heading tags.
• Avoid the use of splash pages. You should’ve known this many years ago, and if you just learned it now you should do something about it. Now.
• Create search-engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross-links. Cross–linking your site’s content is your way of pointing search engines and users to relevant pages within your site. Strive to keep your users reading your content.
• Use structural markup, and separate content from presentation as much as possible. This is the only right way to go. Good markup looks good to search engines, and your users benefit.

Read on for more, and consider these tips for your site. Good SEO can only help you.