Wednesday 24 January 2018

2018 Best SEO Onpage Checklist

SEO Best Practices Checklist for 2018

Before getting into SEO optimization techniques, it’s important to pick a SEO friendly CMS (Content Management System), and right Hosting plan to have added values for SEO ranking. Your CMS should make use of HTML best practices, coding should be clean (validates 100% with W3C), and that loads quickly. Avoid coding with irrelevant or excessive JavaScript, unnecessary non-breaking spaces & antiquated tables. A good idea would be to find a CMS that supports HTML5/CSS3. For images, use compression (smush.it helps), and for layout, elements consider using CSS sprites.
Other additional tips would be;
  1. Rich Snippet Support – Schema and RDFA. Authorship and Publisher markup, in particular, should be possible, but other rich text markups such as reviews, products, apps, locations, and services are also a good idea if relevant.
  2. Mobile Support – A responsive design, where the site auto-adjusts to any screen size or device type of a smartphone, tablet or digital device, or it could be a dedicated mobile version of a site.

SEO CHECKLIST

Keywords                                                               Details                                             Scores
1Keywords in <title> tagThis is one of the most important places to have a keyword because what is written inside the <title> tag shows in search results as your page title. The title tag must be short (6 or 7 words at most) and then the keyword must be near the beginning.+3
2Keywords in URLKeywords in URLs help a lot – e.g. – http://onlinepaidlook.com/about-me where “Ranjan Jena PPC Trainer” is the keyword phrase you attempt to rank well for. But if you don’t have the keywords in other parts of the document, don’t rely on having them in the URL.+3
3Keyword density in document textAnother very important factor you need to check. 3-7 % for major keywords is best, 1-2 for minor. Keyword density of over 10% is suspicious and looks more like keyword stuffing, than a naturally written text.+3
4Keywords in anchor textAlso very important, especially for the anchor text of inbound links, because if you have the keyword in the anchor text in a link from another site, this is regarded as getting a vote from this site not only about your site in general, but about the keyword in particular.+3
5Keywords in headings (<H1>, <H2>, etc. tags)One more place where keywords count a lot. But beware that your page has actual text about the particular keyword.+3
6Keywords in the beginning of a documentAlso counts, though not as much as anchor text, title tag or headings. However, have in mind that the beginning of a document does not necessarily mean the first paragraph – for instance if you use tables, the first paragraph of text might be in the second half of the table.+2
7Keywords in <alt> tagsSpiders don’t read images but they do read their textual descriptions in the <alt> tag, so if you have images on your page, fill in the <alt> tag with some keywords about them.+2
8Keywords in Meta tagsLess and less important, especially for Google. Yahoo! and Bing still rely on them, so if you are optimizing for Yahoo! or Bing, fill these tags properly. In any case, filling these tags properly will not hurt, so do it.+1
9Keyword proximityKeyword proximity measures how close in the text the keywords are. It is best if they are immediately one after the other (e.g. “dog food”), with no other words between them. For instance, if you have “dog” in the first paragraph and “food” in the third paragraph, this also counts but not as much as having the phrase “dog food” without any other words in between. Keyword proximity is applicable for keyword phrases that consist of 2 or more words.+1
10Keyword phrasesIn addition to keywords, you can optimize for keyword phrases that consist of several words – e.g. “SEO services”. It is best when the keyword phrases you optimize for are popular ones, so you can get a lot of exact matches of the search string but sometimes it makes sense to optimize for 2 or 3 separate keywords (“SEO” and “services”) than for one phrase that might occasionally get an exact match.+1
11Secondary keywordsOptimizing for secondary keywords can be a golden mine because when everybody else is optimizing for the most popular keywords, there will be less competition (and probably more hits) for pages that are optimized for the minor words. For instance, “real estate new jersey” might have thousand times less hits than “real estate” only but if you are operating in New Jersey, you will get less but considerably better targeted traffic.+1
12Keyword stemmingFor English this is not so much of a factor because words that stem from the same root (e.g. dog, dogs, doggy, etc.) are considered related and if you have “dog” on your page, you will get hits for “dogs” and “doggy” as well, but for other languages keywords stemming could be an issue because different words that stem from the same root are considered as not related and you might need to optimize for all of them.+1
13SynonymsOptimizing for synonyms of the target keywords, in addition to the main keywords. This is good for sites in English, for which search engines are smart enough to use synonyms as well, when ranking sites but for many other languages synonyms are not taken into account, when calculating rankings and relevancy.+1
14Keyword MistypesSpelling errors are very frequent and if you know that your target keywords have popular misspellings or alternative spellings (i.e. Christmas and Xmas), you might be tempted to optimize for them. Yes, this might get you some more traffic but having spelling mistakes on your site does not make a good impression, so you’d better don’t do it, or do it only in the meta-tags.0
15Keyword dilutionWhen you are optimizing for an excessive amount of keywords, especially unrelated ones, this will affect the performance of all your keywords and even the major ones will be lost (diluted) in the text.-2
16Keyword stuffingAny artificially inflated keyword density (10% and over) is keyword stuffing and you risk getting banned from search engines.-3

Links – Internal, Inbound, Outbound

17Anchor text of inbound linksAs discussed in the Keywords section, this is one of the most important factors for good rankings. It is best if you have a keyword in the anchor text but even if you don’t, it is still OK. However, don’t use the same anchor text all the time because this is also penalized by Google. Try to use synonyms, keyword stemming, or simply the name of your site instead+3
18Origin of inbound linksBesides the anchor text, it is important if the site that links to you is a reputable one or not. Generally sites with greater Google PR are considered reputable. Links from poor sites and link farms can do real harm to you, so avoid them at all costs.+3
19Links from similar sitesGenerally the more, the better. But the reputation of the sites that link to you is more important than their number. Also important is their anchor text (and its diversity), the lack/presence of keyword(s) in it, the linkage, etc.+3
20Links from .edu and .gov sitesThese links are precious because .edu and .gov sites are more reputable than .com. .biz, .info, etc. domains. Additionally, such links are hard to obtain.+3
21Number of BacklinksGenerally the more, the better. But the reputation of the sites that link to you is more important than their number. Also important is their anchor text, is there a keyword in it, how old are they, etc.+3
22Anchor text of internal linksThis also matters, though not as much as the anchor text of inbound links.+2
23Around-the-anchor textThe text that is immediately before and after the anchor text also matters because it further indicates the relevance of the link – i.e. if the link is artificial or it naturally flows in the text.+2
24Age of inbound linksThe older, the better. Getting many new links in a short time suggests buying them.+2
25Links from directoriesCould work, though it strongly depends on which directories. Being listed in DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and similar directories is a great boost for your ranking but having tons of links from PRO directories is useless or even harmful because it can even be regarded as link spamming, if you have hundreds or thousands of such links.+2
26Number of outgoing links on the page that links to youThe fewer, the better for you because this way your link looks more important.+1
27Named anchorsNamed anchors (the target place of internal links) are useful for internal navigation but are also useful for SEO because you stress additionally that a particular page, paragraph or text is important. In the code, named anchors look like this: <A href= “#dogs”>Read about dogs</A> and “#dogs” is the named anchor.+1
28IP address of inbound linkGoogle denies that they discriminate against links that come from the same IP address or C class of addresses, so for Google the IP address can be considered neutral to the weight of inbound links. However, Bing and Yahoo! may discard links from the same IPs or IP classes, so it is always better to get links from different IPs.+1
29Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sitesPresumably, this does not affect you, provided the links are not reciprocal. The idea is that it is beyond your control to define what a link farm links to, so you don’t get penalized when such sites link to you because this is not your fault. However, some recent changes to the Google algorithm suggest the opposite. This is why, you must always stay away from link farms and other suspicious sites or if you see the link to you, contact their webmaster and ask the link to be removed.0
30Many outgoing linksGoogle does not like pages that consists mainly of links, so you’d better keep them under 100 per page. Having many outgoing links does not get you any benefits in terms of ranking and could even make your situation worse.-1
31Excessive linking, link spammingIt is bad for your rankings, when you have many links to/from the same sites (even if it is not a crosslinking scheme or links to bad neighbors) because it suggests link buying or at least spamming. In the best case only some of the links are taken into account for SEO rankings.-1
32Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sitesUnlike inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites, outbound links to bad neighbors can drown you. You need periodically to check the status of the sites you link to because sometimes good sites become bad neighbors and vice versa.-3
33Cross-linkingCross-linking occurs when site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to site A. This is the simplest example but more complex schemes are possible. Cross-linking looks like disguised reciprocal link trading and is penalized.-3
34Single pixel linkswhen you have a link that is a pixel or so wide it is invisible for humans, so nobody will click on it and it is obvious that this link is an attempt to manipulate search engines.-3

Meta Tags

35<Description> metatagMeta tags are becoming less and less important but if there are meta tags that still matter, these are the <description> and <keywords> ones. Use the <Description> metatag to write the description of your site. Besides the fact that meta tags still rock on Bing and Yahoo!, the <Description> metatag has one more advantage – it sometimes pops in the description of your site in search results.+1
36<Keywords> metatagThe <Keywords> metatag also matters, though as all meta tags it gets almost no attention from Google and some attention from Bing and Yahoo! Keep the metatag reasonably long – 10 to 20 keywords at most. Don’t stuff the <Keywords> tag with keywords that you don’t have on the page, this is bad for your rankings.+1
37<Language> metatagIf your site is language-specific, don’t leave this tag empty. Search engines have more sophisticated ways of determining the language of a page than relying on the <language>metatag but they still consider it.+1
38<Refresh> metatagThe <Refresh> meta tag is one way to redirect visitors from your site to another. Only do it if you have recently migrated your site to a new domain and you need to temporarily redirect visitors. When used for a long time, the <refresh> metatag is regarded as unethical practice and this can hurt your ratings. In any case, redirecting through 301 is much better.-1

Content

39Unique contentHaving more content (relevant content, which is different from the content on other sites both in wording and topics) is a real boost for your site’s rankings.+3
40Frequency of content changeFrequent changes are favored. It is great when you constantly add new content but it is not so great when you only make small updates to existing content.+3
41Keywords font sizeWhen a keyword in the document text is in a larger font size in comparison to other on-page text, this makes it more noticeable, so therefore it is more important than the rest of the text. The same applies to headings (<h1>, <h2>, etc.), which generally are in larger font size than the rest of the text.+2
42Keywords formattingBold and italic are another way to emphasize important words and phrases. However, use bold, italic and larger font sizes within reason because otherwise you might achieve just the opposite effect.+2
43Age of documentRecent documents (or at least regularly updated ones) are favored.+2
44File sizeGenerally long pages (i.e. 1,500-2,000 words or more) are not favored, or at least you can achieve better rankings if you have 3 short (500-1,000 words) rather than 1 long page on a given topic, so split long pages into multiple smaller ones. On the other hand, pages with 100-200 words of text or less are also disliked by Google.+1
45Content separationFrom a marketing point of view content separation (based on IP, browser type, etc.) might be great but for SEO it is bad because when you have one URL and differing content, search engines get confused what the actual content of the page is.-2
46Poor coding and designSearch engines say that they do not want poorly designed and coded sites, though there are hardly sites that are banned because of messy code or ugly images but when the design and/or coding of a site is poor, the site might not be indexable at all, so in this sense poor code and design can harm you a lot.-2
47Illegal ContentUsing other people’s copyrighted content without their permission or using content that promotes legal violations can get you kicked out of search engines.-3
48Invisible textThis is a black hat SEO practice and when spiders discover that you have text specially for them but not for humans, don’t be surprised by the penalty.-3
49CloakingCloaking is another illegal technique, which partially involves content separation because spiders see one page (highly-optimized, of course), and everybody else is presented with another version of the same page.-3
50Doorway pagesCreating pages that aim to trick spiders that your site is a highly-relevant one when it is not, is another way to get the kick from search engines.-3
51Duplicate contentWhen you have the same content on several pages on the site, this will not make your site look larger because the duplicate content penalty kicks in. To a lesser degree duplicate content applies to pages that reside on other sites but obviously these cases are not always banned – i.e. article directories or mirror sites do exist and prosper.-3

Visual Extras and SEO

52JavaScriptIf used wisely, it will not hurt. But if your main content is displayed through JavaScript, this makes it more difficult for spiders to follow and if JavaScript code is a mess and spiders can’t follow it, this will definitely hurt your ratings.0
53Images in textHaving a text-only site is so boring but having many images and no text is a SEO sin. Always provide in the <alt> tag a meaningful description of an image but don’t stuff it with keywords or irrelevant information.0
54Podcasts and videosPodcasts and videos are becoming more and more popular but as with all non-textual goodies, search engines can’t read them, so if you don’t have the tapescript of the podcast or the video, it is as if the podcast or movie is not there because it will not be indexed by search engines.0
55Images instead of text linksUsing images instead of text links is bad, especially when you don’t fill in the <alt> tag. But even if you fill in the <alt> tag, it is not the same as having a bold, underlined, 16-pt. link, so use images for navigation only if this is really vital for the graphic layout of your site.-1
56FramesFrames are very, very bad for SEO. Avoid using them unless really necessary.-2
57FlashSpiders don’t index the content of Flash movies, so if you use Flash on your site, don’t forget to give it an alternative textual description.-2
58A Flash home pageFortunately this epidemic disease seems to have come to an end. Having a Flash home page (and sometimes whole sections of your site) and no HTML version, is a SEO suicide.-3

Domains, URLs, Web Mastery

59Keyword-rich URLs and filenamesA very important factor, especially for Yahoo! and Bing.+3
60Site AccessibilityAnother fundamental issue, which that is often neglected. If the site (or separate pages) is unaccessible because of broken links, 404 errors, password-protected areas and other similar reasons, then the site simply can’t be indexed.+3
61SitemapIt is great to have a complete and up-to-date sitemap, spiders love it, no matter if it is a plain old HTML sitemap or the special Google sitemap format.+2
62Site sizeSpiders love large sites, so generally it is the bigger, the better. However, big sites become user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate, so sometimes it makes sense to separate a big site into a couple of smaller ones. On the other hand, there are hardly sites that are penalized because they are 10,000+ pages, so don’t split your size in pieces only because it is getting larger and larger.+2
63Site ageSimilarly to wine, older sites are respected more. The idea is that an old, established site is more trustworthy (they have been around and are here to stay) than a new site that has just poped up and might soon disappear.+2
64Site themeIt is not only keywords in URLs and on page that matter. The site theme is even more important for good ranking because when the site fits into one theme, this boosts the rankings of all its pages that are related to this theme.+2
65File Location on SiteFile location is important and files that are located in the root directory or near it tend to rank better than files that are buried 5 or more levels below.+1
66Domains versus subdomains, separate domainsHaving a separate domain is better – i.e. instead of having blablabla.blogspot.com, register a separate blablabla.com domain.+1
67Top-level domains (TLDs)Not all TLDs are equal. There are TLDs that are better than others. For instance, the most popular TLD – .com – is much better than .ws, .biz, or .info domains but (all equal) nothing beats an old .edu or .org domain.+1
68Hyphens in URLsHyphens between the words in an URL increase readability and help with SEO rankings. This applies both to hyphens in domain names and in the rest of the URL.+1
69URL lengthGenerally doesn’t matter but if it is a very long URL-s, this starts to look spammy, so avoid having more than 10 words in the URL (3 or 4 for the domain name itself and 6 or 7 for the rest of address is acceptable).0
70IP addressCould matter only for shared hosting or when a site is hosted with a free hosting provider, when the IP or the whole C-class of IP addresses is blacklisted due to spamming or other illegal practices.0
71Adsense will boost your rankingAdsense is not related in any way to SEO ranking. Google will definitely not give you a ranking bonus because of hosting Adsense ads. Adsense might boost your income but this has nothing to do with your search rankings.0
72Adwords will boost your rankingSimilarly to Adsense, Adwords has nothing to do with your search rankings. Adwords will bring more traffic to your site but this will not affect your rankings in whatsoever way.0
73Hosting downtimeHosting downtime is directly related to accessibility because if a site is frequently down, it can’t be indexed. But in practice this is a factor only if your hosting provider is really unreliable and has less than 97-98% uptime. Try using a reputed hosting provider such as Hostgator for hosting.-1
74Dynamic URLsSpiders prefer static URLs, though you will see many dynamic pages on top positions. Long dynamic URLs (over 100 characters) are really bad and in any case you’d better use a tool to rewrite dynamic URLs in something more human- and SEO-friendly.-1
75Session IDsThis is even worse than dynamic URLs. Don’t use session IDs for information that you’d like to be indexed by spiders.-2
76Bans in robots.txtIf indexing of a considerable portion of the site is banned, this is likely to affect the nonbanned part as well because spiders will come less frequently to a “noindex” site.-2
77Redirects (301 and 302)When not applied properly, redirects can hurt a lot – the target page might not open, or worse – a redirect can be regarded as a black hat technique, when the visitor is immediately taken to a different page.-3