- SEO: On-Page Checklist - 1 P a g e

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Jocelin Hampton
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1 - SEO: On-Page Checklist - 1 P a g e

2 Introduction This checklist is focused on the most important on page aspects you should implement both on the websites where you have complete control over the code/html as well as on Web 2.0 sites assuming you are able to make these changes. Of course, not all Web 2.0 platforms will allow you to make some of these alterations, (such as changing the 'alt tags' for images), but try and implement them where ever you can. To explain each of these points effectively, I'm going to show how I would use them if I were setting up a simple html affiliate website on "Body Building" and was trying to rank for the keyword: ' bodybuilding exercises'. 2 P a g e

3 Essential Website Pages Obviously, when trying to improve your Google rankings you will need to add additional pages over time which contain articles, videos and other content. However, the following are the most important pages that you should include on every website you set up. At the present time, Google specifically looks for these pages and if you don't include them, your rankings could suffer. Home Page (index.html) Ideally, the home page for an affiliate website for which you want to rank in the search engines should be a combination of a short explanation about your site with an H1 tag, a product review, some type of social proof such as testimonials, two keyword-rich articles as well as external and internal links. Contact Page (contact.html) Add an address to this page. If you don t want to see comments or s that are sent about your site, there s a simple solution don t read them! There are two options here: 1. Choose either a Gmail address which contains your keywords, which in this case would be bodybuildingexercises@googl .com. (If the username has already been taken, try registering one with numbers on the end such as bodybuildingexercises2009@googl .com ) 2. Create an address for you domain through your webhost. For instance in this case I would create either service@bodybuildingexercises.com or contact@bodybuildingexercises.com. In fact, some people say that creating an address on your domain may be more beneficial for SEO. 3 P a g e

4 Privacy Policy Page (privacy.html) You will need to add a privacy policy as this also helps with rankings and you can find a sample one that you can work with here: It is actually preferable and beneficial to have a machine readable privacy policy and you can find one set out here: Terms of Service Page: You can find a sample terms of service page here: Side Note: It is becoming increasingly important, especially if you are a US resident, to have water tight legal pages even if you are selling products as an affiliate. To do this we recommend Bob Silber at It isn't exactly a cheap service - legal work never is - however, once you are earning money and are in a position to afford this, it could be a very good idea to protect yourself in this way. 4 P a g e

5 Keyword Inclusion Keyword Density: The keyword or keyword phrase you want to rank for will obviously need to be abundant not only within the content of your website but also in your page title, page description as well as in your picture, keyword & H1 tags. One important point to mention from the start is that you want to avoid accidently keyword stuffing your pages. As a general rule, the keyword phrase you are tying to rank for should appear no more than 6% of the time within your content or Google may think that you are trying to manipulate the system and drop you down or even out of the listings. Ideally it should be less... around 3% is what we usually aim for. You should check the keyword density of your pages before you get your site indexed and you can do that with this keyword density checker: LSI Keywords: You should also include a selection of 'LSI keywords' within the content of your home page as well as on any articles or additional content you add to your website. What are LSI Keywords? LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) operates at some level in Google s algorithm to eliminate problems with ranking pages solely by text pattern matching. In other words, if Google only looked for both the presence and frequency of individual keywords on a webpage to determine relevancy and rank pages, their results would turn out to be poor. To avoid this they look for other keywords or keyword phrases on your web pages that they believe are also relevant. As a result it s important to find additional phrases that are associated with the theme of your site and sprinkle these LSI keywords throughout your content. 5 P a g e

6 If you do, the more value and depth Google will deem your website to have, and the higher they should rank you. How do you find LSI keywords? There are a number of research tools you can use but personally I like this one: It is a paid tool, but there is a free trial that you can take advantage of and the link for this is near the top of the page. So in the case of the keyword bodybuilding exercises, I would want to find LSI keywords that my competitors in the top 10 of Google were using and add them to my content as well. To do this, I would go to this tool, type in my keyword, select Google, United States and Check to scan top 10 listings only and then hit the scan button. The tool would then deliver the results as you can see on the next page: 6 P a g e

7 You actually receive a lot more information than what is shown in the above screenshot. However, for this example, the single words are what we need. So what I would do is note down maybe the top 5 words that I deemed relevant and was confident I could include in my website without them looking out of place. I would then scatter each of them once or twice throughout the content. 7 P a g e

8 Page Title & Description It s very important to have both an effective page title and description to your web pages because even though your website is going to appear in the organic listings, you still want a high CTR with searchers clicking on your listing more than others; much like you do when using Google Adwords. So when creating your website, look at the titles and descriptions that other websites in the top 5 are using under the keyword phrase you are going to trying and rank for, then try and create something more effective. As an example, if I wanted to rank for the term 'weight loss tips' and the page title of the #1 ranked site was simply 'Weight Loss Tips and Advice', I would make the title of my website something like 'Weight Loss Tips - 47 Killer Tips To Lose Weight Fast'. This way, even if your website only ranked at #3, you should be able to steal quite a lot of the 60% or so clicks that the first organic result usually receives. Not only that, if Google sees that your website is getting more than the average number of clicks for its position, it could determine that it is more relevant for that phrase and may reward you with a better position (much like what happens with Adwords). In addition, always include the keyword phrase you want to rank for in both your page title and description and including numbers and other types of characters in the title can also be effective for getting attention and drawing in the maximum amount of clicks. For instance, take a look at the following screenshot of the title and description for our Golden Thread website and notice how the page title stands out 8 P a g e

9 Also, on pages such as contact & privacy, include those terms in the page title. So in the case of the contact page at the above site I would make the page title for the contact page the following: The Golden Thread - Contact Us 9 P a g e

10 Tags Keyword Meta Tags: You must also add keyword meta-tags on each page which should include your main keyword phrase. Don t add any more than three or four as it could do more harm than good. So to the pages within my BodyBuilding Exercises website I would add the following: Bodybuilding Exercises, Body Building Exercises, Bodybuilding H1 Tags: H1 tags tell search engines what an individual webpage is about and using them on your site will help you rank faster and higher. For instance, with my bodybuilding exercises website, I would obviously want to tell Google that the content of my home page was about that exact keyword phrase so I would insert an H1 tag into the page with that phrase in it. The way I would do this would be to put a strategically placed about this website area on the home page and insert the following piece of code into the source code of that particular area: <h1><font face="arial" size="4">bodybuilding Exercises</font></h1> and when live on the web, that piece of code would appear as this: 10 P a g e

11 Picture Tags: This is something that many people overlook but is a very important on-page SEO factor. What you are doing here is tagging (or naming) images that you have on your website which again in Google s eyes will increase the relevancy of your pages and should help you rank for your chosen keywords. So again, if I wanted a page to rank for the same keyword phrase, I would use 'alt tags' to name the pictures on the website by using alt="bodybuilding exercises" code within the source of the page like this: <img border="0" src=" alt="bodybuilding exercises"></td> Do the same for other images; although I ll say again - make sure you don t over-stuff your page with your keywords - the alt tags count towards the keyword density! You can also tag your images using variations of this phrase or even LSI keywords. 11 P a g e

12 Internal Linking Anchor Text & URL s: When you are linking from your home page to an internal page (and visa versa), always link to the full URL of the destination page. As a default setting some web editors shorten the link. For instance this is a full URL: where as within the actual source code, some web editors might shorten it to look like this /privacy.html (which is not what you want) Here are a few examples Home Page Anchor text: Home URL: Privacy page Anchor text: Privacy Policy URL: Example Article Page Anchor text: Body Building Exercises URL: 12 P a g e

13 External Linking Remember to make links to external websites open in a new window so if clicked, they can still return to your website. As well linking to the other pages within your website, at the bottom of your home page link out to the following: 1. One authority site that Google holds in high regard. For instance I might link out to a relevant page at BBC.com 2. The search results in Google News when you type in the keyword you are trying to rank for. In this case, it would be something like: 3. A Wikipedia listing for the general theme of the website such as: 13 P a g e

How to do an On-Page SEO Analysis Table of Contents

How to do an On-Page SEO Analysis Table of Contents Step 1: Keyword Research/Identification Step 2: Quality of Content Step 3: Title Tags Step 4: H1 Headings Step 5: Meta Descriptions Step 6: Site Performance