Easy SEO Tips Checklist

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is usually something that many new bloggers or website owners will overlook. It’s not because it’s not important. It is because for many of them/you it wasn’t why you started a blog or website. You started your site or blog because you had a cool idea. You had something worth sharing. You had a story to tell. You didn’t get into the game to become an SEO expert.

There was a time when the importance of SEO was, for the most part diluted by a sites content or quality. If you built it, they’d generally come. Those days, for the most part, are long behind us. Today, if you don’t have a good game plan going in, you’re coming out mid period. The sad fact of the matter is that without SEO, your site probably won’t get anywhere near as much attention as it should receive.

We recently published an article on 10 SEO tips for new blogs. Today we’re going to expand on that with 25 Easy SEO Tips.  These simple, easy SEO tips presented as an SEO Checklist of sorts, will assist you in ensuring that you’re doing the easy things to rank your pages well in the major Search Engines. Remember, these are only easy SEO Tips and should not be considered a comprehensive search engine optimization guide.

25 Easy SEO Tips

1. If you use java or flash based drop downs for navigation be sure to also have text links to those same categories the page.
2. If you must include the name of your website in the title, be sure it’s at the end.
3. Use keyword rich titles. Do a search on Google for the type of competition for that phrase. Sometimes, by changing just 1 word, you will have a much better chance at ranking well for the title.
4. When linking to an article, be sure to use the proper anchor text. Do not simply use “click here”. Rather use something link “25 easy SEO Tips”.
5. Content is king when it comes to search engine optimization. Regular updates of fresh content is considered favorable by search engines.
6. Optimize the name of your images. Let’s say, for example your new article is on yellow lamps. If you’re inserting images into the article, name them using your keywords. Ex. Yellow_lamps.jpg rather than a generic image21.jpg.
7. Don’t get too wrapped up in PageRank. It is but one aspect of the algorithm.
8. If you’d like to get your new website Indexed, forget about submitting it to the search engines and focus your attention on building a few quality links to your site. If you need additional information on this, visit our Quick Backlinks For New Blogs article.
9. Remember to include your keywords in the Image Alt tags and in your anchor text.
10. Do not waste your time submitting your site to the thousands upon thousands of low quality, rarely crawled site directories.
11. Check your server for banned proxies or domains. Their negative notoriety can have a negative impact on your rankings.
12. If you’re going to buy links, make sure you buy In-Content links. Meaning not blatantly located in a “sponsored” list. These get you nothing but a few clicks. Focus on getting a link within an article about your keywords.
13. Link baiting is a great way to garner some nice links. Give them something to talk about.
14. Focus on building quality back links. Quality being the keyword here. Remember that a few quality backlinks carry much more weight than many low quality links.
15. Take the time to do some keyword research before writing your article/content. The article will flow much better when you’ve got your choice of keywords clearly defined in your mind before you start writing.
16. Aim to have your keyword density at around 2 – 5% for your majors and about 1-2% for your minors. You can tweak this later, but anything too high will be counterproductive to your efforts.
17. Optimize your headings and subheadings. <h1> is a powerful tool. Use it wisely and with efficiency.
18. Use the Title tag within links. The title tag is specifically designed to tell the search engine what said link is about. Why then do so many people ignore it? Use this method for linking to pages within your site. It is also W3C compliant and assists visitors that are visually impaired.
19. Sitemaps. If you don’t have one, get one. These can lower the clicks to specific pages, in turn improving usability, which plays a factor in Page Rank. I could spend a full day explaining Google’s Page Rank. For the sake of article length, we’ll expect you to trust us on this one.
20. Ensure that your webpage is W3C compliant. There are many free validators online to assist in this.
21. Though Search Engines have gotten a lot better at parsing URL’s that contain variables to build dynamic pages, I still recommend trying to use one of the many available mods to create “nice” keyword rich links. An example of what I mean is http://www.oneseoblog.com/?p=186 being converted into http://www.oneseoblog.com/the-internet-without-google/
22. Avoid over-optimization. Remember that there’s a fine line between optimizing and over-stuffing. It’s a mistake I see way too often. Site owner writes article, then stuffs it full of keywords expecting magic.
23. My suggestion is to avoid duplicate content. There are raging debates online about what constitutes as duplicate content and its up to the individual to decide for themselves what side of the fence that they’re on, but the rule of thumb that I follow is to try and avoid re-posting of articles from directories.
24. Avoid using images in lieu of headings. Images are more esthetically pleasing, but they’ll come at a heavy toll. We suggest, if anything, using text on an image background.
25. Keep up on the maintenance of your SEO. Things change, your competitors change their optimization, and you must re-visit your efforts.

By following the outlined 25 Easy SEO Tips Checklist, you should experience a nice boost to your SERPs. Be advised that it can and usually is a slow process. Many things must be taken into consideration when monitoring changes to a site or page such as the crawl rates of your content and of course any new link partners. The SEO basics can be fairly easy so long as you’ve got a game plan from the outset. We hope this checklist will help.