Here’s something a little different from the social media and backlink posts I have put up recently, but it is equally important to help maximise your websites success – a web developers on page seochecklist.
There are certain elements of code that should always be included when building your websites and blogs that will help the search engines love you and give you more limelight in the SERP’s. Some of these are obvious while others are rarely used, so have a look through the list and make sure you are using all of the points included. After all, you want as much natural traffic as you can get right? This will help.
If you’re unsure of anything, do a quick Google search to learn and implement it.
Important HTML seo Tags
Title tag:
<head> <title>Keyword title here</title></head>
Header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4):
<h1>Most important header tag</h1>
<h2>Second most important header tag</h2>
<h3>Third most important header tag</h3>
<h4>Fourth most important header tag</h4>
Bold/Strong:
<bold>Keyword</bold>
<strong>keyword</strong>
Image:
<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”keyword” />
Hyperlink:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/index.html” title=”keyword”>Keyword anchor text</a>
Hyperlink (Not followed):
<a href=”http://www.example.com/index.html” title=”keyword” rel=”nofollow”>Keyword anchor text</a>
The above shows basic HTML that the search engines look for to determine what your site is about and what keywords it relates to. They are all important and should be used on each page of your site if possible. The below shows recommended title tag syntax:
Keyword < Category | Website Title
It is always a very good idea to add your keywords to the page title, but do not overdo it by keyword stuffing as the title should not be more than 70 characters in length.
Search Engine Indexing Limits
The below does not apply to authority websites but is relevant to an ‘average’ site.
Page File Size: No more than 150 kilobytes (before images, attachments and CSS etc)
Number of Links: No more than 100 unique links per page.
Title Tag: No more than 70 characters in length.
Meta Description: No more than 155 characters in length.
URL Depth: No more than 4 – for example:
Bad Example = http://www.example.com/category/places/items/brazil/rio
Good Example = http://www.example.com/places/rio
In addition to the above, the number of parameters in a URL should be no more than two.
Sitemap Syntax
<?xml version=”1.0” encoding=’UTF-8’?>
<urlset xmlns=’http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9’>
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>1987-05-25</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
The location of your XML sitemap should be set to a default location where the search engines will automatically look for it. These are as follows:
http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.gz
http://www.example.com/sitemap.gz
If you are unsure about creating your own XML sitemap you can find out more and make your own for free at – http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Robots.txt Syntax
User-agent: *
Disallow: /privatefolder/
Disallow: /privatefile.html
User-agent: Googlebot/2.1
Disallow: /nogoogle.html
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Robots Meta Tag
<meta name=”ROBOT NAME” content=”ARGUMENTS” />
The ROBOT NAME above can either be “robots” for all robots or a specific user-agent robot as below.
noindex – Page in not indexed.
nofollow – All of the links on a page become no-follow.
noarchive – The page is not cached.
noodp - Stops the description and title tag overwrite by DMOZ directory (homepage only)
noydir – Stops the description and title tag overwrite by Yahoo directory
nosnippet – Stops Google generating a description based on on-page text.
Common Robot Traps
- Input Forms
- Session IDs in URL
- Pages Restricted by Cookies
- Frames
- Logins
