A 46-point SEO checklist for any website

MonsterCommerce SEO team at the Google campus in 2006

Throughout my career in interactive marketing, I have maintained a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) checklist for my own use. I have updated the best practice guidelines for each item on the list along the way. It's by no means comprehensive, but I still find it extremely helpful as I approach any new project.

I thought I'd share it with you and see what you might add to this list to help make it more useful. As with any check list, it needs to be broad enough to fit most websites, but most high-level SEO guidelines generally are that broad.

The other thing to keep in mind with SEO is that the formulas are not definite. Google does not publish the exact formula for title tag length or keyword frequency/density, but throughout years of SEO expert analysis and commentary, these general best practices have come to light and tend to drive top 10 results for medium to long-tail keywords for any business with a relatively "search engine friendly" site. I will tell you that the last few SEO projects I have contributed to or led in the past 12 months have all started to see brand new top 10 rankings for relatively competitive keyword phrases off of these techniques.

I have also been known to differentiate "search engine friendliness" from "search engine optimized" in the way that I think and talk about SEO. I will elaborate on that further later, but let's summarize it here so that you get the most from this checklist: If your site is "search engine friendly", it means that there is no bulky Flash file or complex JavaScript (or other spider-blocking code) preventing the automated search engine spiders from adequately "crawling" through your site's code to reach the keyword-rich content designed to tell them what your site is all about. If your site is "search engine optimized" then that means that once the spiders do get to the keyword-rich content, the keywords were chosen properly and the content properly optimized (at effective keyword frequency and density levels, in addition to the checklist below) so as to properly differentiate and position the page as an authority on that keyword (topic), thus resulting in higher placement for that keyword query in the search engine.

I look forward to hearing from you, via the comments section below, regarding what criteria you suggest changing or adding to this list. One additional caveat: These are (mostly) on-site SEO factors, so they do not include off-site factors such as link popularity - which are equally as important in obtaining and maintaining top 10 rankings. I hope to post an entirely separate post on link building strategies soon enough. As a checklist, your goal is to achieve a YES or "Requirement met" for each item.

1. Title Tag: Keywords in title tag appear at the beginning of the title tag, before company name.
2. Title Tag: Unique to each page
3. Title Tag: Relevant to each page's content
4. Title Tag: Word count is 6-11 words
5. Meta Description Tag: Unique to each page.
6. Meta Description Tag: Appears in sentence format, not keyword after keyword
7. Meta Description Tag: Word count is 12-24 words, maximum 200 characters
8. Meta Keyword Tag: Unique to each page.
9. Meta Keyword Tag: Word count is between 0 and 48 keywords, maximum of 2,000 characters
10. Meta Keyword Tag: Keywords are not repeated
11. Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword phrases are separated by , and a space
12. Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword phrases are listed longest to shortest
13. Images: File names have keywords in them
14. Images: Images have SEO friendly name and URL
15. Images: Location shows images are stored in a single directory (e.g. brandonsbaseballcards.com/images/)
16. Images: Have alt attribute with relevant keyword
17. Page Content: Section/topic titles appear in H tags and should be in order (H1, H2, H3, etc) in the source code
18. Page Content: Aim for fewer than 100 links on any given page, including navigation and on Sitemaps
19. Page Content: Homepage static content is keyword rich
20. Page Content: Homepage static content will change regularly
21. Page Content: Bread crumb navigation exists for each section
22. Page Content: Use tag instead of for bold formatting
23. Page Content: Text navigation exists for any nav options in an image link
24. Source Code: Javascript and CSS referenced in external files
25. Source Code: Title and metas are formatted properly (see sheet two of this workbook)
26. IP address: Site is on dedicated IP address (recommend Bruce Clay's Server Tool)
27. IP address: Block list check performed and not on any block lists (recommend Bruce Clay's Server Tool)
28. 404 error: 404 error page exists and contains text links to relevant sections of site
29. 404 error: 404 page is consistent with site's design
30. 404 error: Webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent
31. Robots.txt: Is located at the root directory of the site
32. Robots.txt: Is formatted properly (recommend RobotsTXT.org)
33. URL: www is forced (cannot access a page without the www)
34. URL: URL uses hyphen between words in a folder and file name
35. URL: URL should be entirely lower case
36. URL: Any URL redirects are set up as 301 redirects (recommend Bruce Clay's Server Tool)
37. URL: URL contains keyword-rich, relevant categories and filenames
38. URL: URL contains the topic or category
39. URL: root of each folder in URL goes to a landing page
40. URL: URL is unique - no multiple URLs can reach the same page
41. URL: URL is short as possible (75 or fewer characters)
42. Site Map: HTML sitemap: links are categorized and links appear for all sections
43. Site Map: XML Sitemap is generated and submitted (recommend XML-Sitemaps.com)
44. Submission: Site submitted to DMOZ.org
45. Submission: Site submitted to Yahoo! Directory
46. Link Check: Run a broken link check on the site, (recommend LinkSleuth)