SEO & SMO Strategy, Checklist, Recommendations

The Complete SEO & SMO

Strategy / Checklist / Recommendations

On Page Optimization

Initial

1. Follow Google Webmaster guidelines -
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
2. Get the strategy from Google SEO Starter Guide -
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/e
n/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
3. Maintain the website in silo architecture (tree like hierarchy)
4. Competitor analysis (Analyze for their services, keywords, UI, navigation etc,)
5. Maintain structured markup language

URL

1. Redirect non-WWW version to WWW version URL
2. URL optimization - Choose hyphen instead of underscores between keywords, avoid
stop words(the, that, is, was)
3. Not case sensitive (But, better to use lower case letters or else redirect upper case to
corresponding lower case using .htaccess server file)
4. URL character length - 115 (Not a thumb rule, keep short as much as possible)
5. Always best practice to use absolute URL

METAs

1. Title optimization - Less than 66 characters (Keep branding at end of the content)
2. META keywords - Less than 250 characters
 Avoid unrelated keywords
 Use Keyword Research tool - Google Adwords Keyword Tool
3. META Description - Lest than 150 characters (Have call-to-action words like subscribe,
free quote, grab today etc,)
4. To avoid showing the directory listing in SERP for the branding (Recommended)
 Use <meta name="robots" content="noodp" > if the site is listed in DMOZ - ODP
 Use <meta name="robots" content=" noydir" > if the site is listed in Yahoo! Directory
5. By default use <meta name="robots" content="index, follow"/> to index the page and to
follow the links in the page
6. To block individual page insert <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> in
the corresponding page
7. Avoid META refresh for less than 5 seconds

@ArunSubbu89 Facebook.com/ArunSubbu89
Sem-Tactics.blogspot.com arunsubbu89@gmail.com



Content

1. H1 - Insert the primary keyword (Use only one H1)
2. H2-H6 optimization (Insert all primary & sec keywords)
3. Avoid linking in header tags (H1 - H6) unnecessarily
4. Avoid duplicate title, description and content as well
5. Keyword Density - Max 3%
6. Keep keyword prominence and proximity
7. Better maintain less than 100 links in a page (Not a thumb rule)
8. Use rel="nofollow" in AHREF tags for external(outbound) links (Avoid linking if it is low
quality, dodgy or link farm site)
9. Add blog feed to show up to 3 posts in homepage (Which updates homepage frequently)
10. Create and update both the HTML & XML sitemaps
11. Sitemap should not exceed more 50,000 links and 10 MB of file size. If it exceeds create
multiple sitemaps and use sitemap index file
12. Create robots.txt file to block the folders in the site (Eg: contact form pages)
 Also give the sitemap link at the end
13. Use social sharing buttons for resources, articles, especially blogs

Image Optimization

1. Image optimization
 File name optimization (Eg: ousource.jpg)
 ALT tag (Insert keywords)
 Title tag (Insert keywords)
 Insert image dimension
2. Use CSS sprites (background images) if the image has more text
3. Add favicon

Navigation

1. Ensure for Text Navigation and avoid JavaScript or Flash navigation, where search
engine bots can’t crawl
2. Use proper breadcrumb navigation
3. Avoid 404 or broken pages
4. Contextualization (Linking in the content)
5. Give link to the required resources, case study or articles in site navigation (left, right,
bottom)
6. Insert website search button ( prefer top right corner)
7. Have a customized 404 page to avoid losing traffic




 List out all services / products in the body area
 Give social media profile links (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin..)
 Provide a physical contact address as well
8. Add a quick contact form in all the pages

Blogging

1. Instead of archives in the blog navigation, better differentiate with categories or cloud
tagging
2. Tag each post based on its keywords
3. Provide author name for the blog posts with linking his / her G + profile
4. Add pagination to navigate to inner pages at end of the blog landing page, like “2,3…10,
next”
5. Use Facebook like button, Twitter follow button, Google + Add to circles, RSS feed,
newsletter subscription, YouTube channel, Pinterest Follow buttons to build social
reputation
6. Use social sharing buttons - Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Linkedin etc,
7. Add “Email to friend”
8. Add Twitter widget to show up to 2 - 3 tweets in navigation
9. Add Facebook “Recommendations bar” - Improves traffic (At end of the article, pops to
read another post based on FB likes for the particular post)
10. Show popular posts and recent comments in right navigation

Increase Website Speed

1. Code / HTML optimization
2. Minimize HTTP Requests
3. Minify CSS, flash, frames
4. Make JavaScript/CSS external
5. Enable compression - Using Gzip
6. Use server side caching
7. Minimize DNS lookups
8. Reduce # of 301 redirects
9. Maintain web page size less than100k (Not a thumb rule)
10. Two ways to boost site speed automatically from Google -
 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/psol
 https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/service
11. To check page speed online - https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights




 Page Speed Insights Rules -
https://developers.google.com/speed/docs/insights/rules

Trustworthy / Authority

1. Quality content (Rich content)
2. Content Uniqueness
3. The quality & quantity of websites linking (inbound links)
4. The quality & quantity of websites we are linking to
5. The overall usability experience on your website
6. The validity of information about the website
 Add a physical contact address
 Author name for blog posts
7. DMOZ listing, profiles in Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube etc,
8. Linking website in Google + page and linking G + page in the website (vice versa)
9. Additional SERP info. - Having maps, breadcrumbs, date, search box etc, (Rich Snippet)
10. Google Webmaster verification
11. Fresh content update
12. Analytics - tracking website

Avoid Spamming

1. Better keep the links less than 100 (Page should be readable to the users)
2. Avoid Keyword Cannibalization (Don’t target same keywords in multiple pages)
3. Avoid hidden text or hidden links (Eg: Both text & background in same color)
4. Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects (Showing different content for crawlers and users)
5. Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords
6. Avoid keyword stuffing
7. Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate
content. (Avoid duplication by canonical tag or 301 or 302 redirection)
8. Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses,
trojans, or other badware (Also ensure no one hacked intentionally)
9. Avoid "doorway" pages (Spamdexing, Gateway) created just for search engines, with
little or no original content

Fixing

Fix all issues noticing in Google webmaster tool especially messages, crawl errors,
malwares and duplicated, long, short & missing title, description




Testing

1. HTML & W3C validation
2. Check whether the site works in text browsers such as Lynx
3. Is compatible and rendering in different browser versions

Off Page (Link Building) Optimization

1. Competitor Analysis (analyze competitor backlink strategy)
2. Always build links in this format (http://www.)
3. Check qualify of the page with factors like Page Rank (PR), Google cache date, no. of
inbound & outbound links, domain age, relevancy etc,
4. Link Building Types
 Search Engine Submission
 Directory Submission
 Social Bookmarking (Recommended)
 Forum Posting
 Question & Answering (Eg: Yahoo Answers,, Flixya)
 Blog Commenting
 Article Submission
 Press Release
 Video posting (Eg: YouTube)
 RSS feed submission
 Local Optimization (Business Listing)
 Mapping - Google, Bing
 Social Sharing - Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Linkedin, Pinterst,
(Recommended)
 Guest Blogging
5. Claim accounts on the following pages for reputation,
 Dmoz.com
 YouTube.com
 Yelp.com
 Maps.Google.com
 Local.Yahoo.com
 WordPress.com
 BlogSpot.com
 Tumblr.com
 Squidoo.com




 HubPages.com
 Flickr.com
 Wikipedia.org
 .edu
 .gov
 .org
6. Avoid link exchange (reciprocal)
7. Avoid paid links
8. Avoid links from link farms (page having only links)

Tools & Resources

1. Xenu Link Sleuth - To check broken links, redirected pages, orphan files, HTML sitemap
creation and complete site statistics
2. Copyscape - Duplicate content checker
3. Google Trends - Shows the trend for a particular keyword in Country & City basis
4. Blekko - Search Engine which provide complete backlinks with backlinks stats
5. SEOBook for Firefox, Google Toolbar - Addon which provides complete SEO info
6. List of Search Engines Add URL or submit URL
7. SEO Browser - http://www.seo-browser.com/
8. Rich Snippet Testing Tool - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
9. HTTP Status Checker - http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/
10. SEOmoz Blog - Blog to know all SEO updates and queries
11. SEO Powersuite

Social Media

1. Posting something interesting to get viral and to engage (For branding)

2. Free giveaways tactic

3. Share all blog posts and new service / products pages in all social media and social
bookmarking sites

4. Use UTM parameter to track the links (CTR, Referral Campaign)

5. URL Shorten Matter (Bitly, Google URL Shortner)

6. Set Up Social Segments for Tracking in Analytics
7. Facebook
 Tag peoples and pages in posts
 Ask like, comment & share for posts
 Post at least twice or thrice a week




 Post interesting topics
8. Twitter
 Tweet 2 to 3 a day
 Re-tweet and make favorite whichever inspires
 Mention(@) others and engage
 Post fun and interesting
 Use # (hash tag) to trend for keywords
 Follow 10 relevant peoples or companies a week
9. Linkedin
 Ask 1 to 2 recommendations a week
 Connect to 3 - 5 peoples a week
 Follow 3 new companies a week
 Post relevant blog posts in groups
10. Google +
 Share twice a day in profile & company page
 Make sure posts are public to reach
 Add 5 new peoples a week
 Create events to publicize
 Try making hangouts
11. Pinterest
 Pin 6 images a week
 Use keywords in title, description
 Pin products and services work flow images
 Follow 5 interesting boards a week relevant to us
12. YouTube
 Subscribe 3 channels a week
 Share 3 videos a week in Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc
 Post videos of company hosts

Arun S, SEO Specialist, Flatworld Solutions

Bangalore, India

arunsubbu89@gmail.com, @ 7204105850 / 9790258904

@ArunSubbu89 Linkedin.com/in/ArunSubbu Facebook.com/ArunSubbu89

Pinterest.com/ArunSubbu/ Gplus.to/ArunSubbu


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