Ok, this post is going to lean to the geek-side, but these are concepts that anyone earning a living off the web should know. Even if your business only has an outpost presence with its web site, you can benefit by knowing how search engines rank your site. Also, this is a basic checklist that we use when conducting reviews and upgradingsites.
In grading the site by a point system, use this scale and assign a number in answer to each question:
- Still Needs Work
- Slight modifications will do the job
- Ready for the Search Engine Spiders (automated indexing programs)
Keep score and we’ll give you some advice at the end of the article.
Six Key Factors
- The basics
a. Title tags. Does the site use unique and accurate title tags?
b. Meta tags. Does the site make use of the “description” meta tag? - Good site structure.
a. Navigation, breadcrumbs. Does the use an easy to follow navigation, including breadcrumbs or persistent button-bar?
b. Sitemaps. Does the have an HTML or XML sitemap? - Quality content.
a. Updated content. Does the feature content that is updated regularly, recently?b. Anchor text. Do the site’s links utilize accurate and relevant text?
c. Alt attributes. Does the site utilize the “alt” image attribute with relevant key words?
d. Header tags. Do the site’s heading tags (<h1>through to<h6>) reflect the most relevant keywords? - Is the site “Easy to Crawl” (spider lingo)
a. Control user generated content. Does the site use the “nofollow” attribute on your site product reviews, blogs and other user-generated content?
b. Allow robots.txt file. Is there a robots.txt file which tells search engines which files not to index? - Ready for Mobile?
Major search engines are now indexing for mobile devices (phones) and letting users know which sites will be friendly to those devices. This may involve creating a slimmed-down version of your content, or simply designing in a way that works for smaller screens.
a. Allow mobile visitors. Does your site make it easy for mobile users?
b. Mobile-friendly URLs. Does the site use mobile friendly URLs? - Site promotional outreach.
a. RSS feeds. Does the site have RSS feeds from your blog or other pages?
b. Social media integration. Does the site allow use social media integration (links to Facebook, Twitter and others)?
How did you score?
If you tallied 14-20 points, you’ve got lots of work to do.
21-35 indicates that there is a still room to improve your site.
36-42 tells you that you webmaster is on the job and doing as much as possible to help you rank highly in search results.
For more information about SEO (optimization) and SEM (marketing), please contact us.
