1) No SEO means
no visitors from search engines. If you don’t do it then search engines can’t categorise and rank your
site for keywords relevant to your business.
2)
Both on-site SEO and off-site SEO are required. You can’t achieve good results doing one
without the other.
3)
Start doing
SEO now. The longer
you leave it to start, the further ahead your competitors will be, and the
harder it becomes to rank higher than them.
4)
Know your competition. Find out what the sites ranking on the 1st
page for the keywords that you want to rank for have done, on-site and
off-site, to get there.
5)
No two
websites are the same. An SEO
strategy that worked for someone else’s site isn’t guaranteed to work for yours
because there are so many variables.
6)
SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. You can get big results on a small budget if
you invest time in creating good content and building online relationships.
7)
SEO results
aren’t instant. The
results of SEO work done today might not become apparent, and might not be
credited by search engines, for weeks, or even months.
8)
The newer
your website is, the more patient you will need to be. It takes time to build authority and trust,
and until you’ve developed both, you shouldn’t expect to outrank older, more
established sites.
9)
Never
consider your website to be finished. If you want your site to continue to rank higher, attract more
visitors and make more sales, then you should always be adding to and improving
it.
10)
Adapt to
algorithm updates. To
attain and retain good rankings you need to adapt your SEO strategy as search
engines evolve over time.
11)
You don’t need to submit your website to search engines. They have evolved beyond the point of needing to be
directly notified when a new website, or page on a website, is created.
12)
Get advice
directly from Google. Via
their Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Help Videos.
13)
Don’t risk
Google penalties. As
they have a significant share of the search market, a penalty from them results
in a significant, and often long-term, loss of visitors to your site.
14)
You’re
ultimately responsible for all of SEO work done on your website. Search engines won’t remove a penalty on the
basis that you didn’t do, and didn’t know the specifics of, the SEO work on
your site.
15)
Set-up and
use Google Webmaster Tools. To find out, among other things, what keywords your site is
ranking for and which other sites are linking to yours.
16)
Set-up and
use Google Analytics. To find
out, among other things, how many visitors your site gets, the keywords they
use to find it, and what pages they visit.
17)
Set-up a
Google+ page for your business. Doing so builds trust with Google and improves rankings for
localised keywords.
18)
Diversify
your traffic sources. Google
is a great source of traffic but being 100% reliant on them for visitors puts
you in a vulnerable position.
19)
Use Pay Per
Click in addition to SEO. If you
can afford to do both, then do both, as although PPC can be costly, you can get
visitors to your site straight away for any keywords that you want.
20)
Low quality
equals high risk. Low
quality backlinks and/or low quality on-site content can easily result in your
site being penalised by search engines.
21)
Create
content primarily for people, not search engines. There’s no point creating content that ranks well if
it doesn’t help people, interest them, or persuade them to buy from you.
22)
Remove
duplicate content. You can be
penalised for having the same, or very similar, content on multiple pages of
your site.
23)
Remove,
merge or add to pages with little content on them. Having lots of content-light pages, with short page
view times, can result in search engines downgrading all of your site’s keyword
rankings.
24)
Don’t copy content from other websites. If search engines find that content on your
site has been taken from elsewhere they may downgrade rankings for some, or
even all, of your webpages.
25)
Claim
authorship of your content. Linking
your Google+ account to your content improves both rankings and
click-through-rate.
26)
Ensure
your content is good enough to be on the 1st page. If your content isn’t better than the content
already on the 1st page for a keyword then your site doesn’t deserve to rank
there.
27)
Make your
content engaging for visitors. The more engaging it is, the longer people will stay on your site, and
high viewing times signal to search engines that your site deserves good
rankings.
28)
Create
videos. They increase the amount of
time that people spend on your site and also allow you to get links from video
sharing sites.
29)
Create
stats/charts/graphs/infographics. People are more likely to share and link to these types of content than
plain written content.
30)
More content equals more rankings, more visitors and more
sales. Search
engines reward, and visitors trust more, sites that are filled with lots of
pages of good quality content.
31)
Add a blog
to your website. Doing so
makes it quick and simple to add new pages of content to your site.
32)
Create
content to post on other websites and blogs. People are much more likely to link to you if you
provide them with content to use on their site.
33)
Balance
creating content with marketing content. If you create content without marketing it then
people will struggle to find it, and if they can’t find it they can’t link to
it or share it.
34)
Write a unique, descriptive title for every page. Within 55 characters you need to make the
topic of a page clear to both humans and search engines.
35)
Write a
unique, descriptive meta description for every page. Within 160 characters you need to describe the
topic of a page in a way that persuades people to click on your site instead of
the other sites listed in the search results.
36)
Research keywords before optimising for them. If you choose the wrong keywords, regardless
of what you do for on-site and off-site SEO, you’ll get very few visitors
and/or visitors who don’t convert into sales.
37)
Use Google’s
Keyword Tool. It provides
a good list of words and phrases related to the keyword ideas that you
enter into it.
38)
Get keyword
ideas from other people. They (customers, suppliers, partners, friends, etc.) see your business
differently to you and may associate different words and phrases with it.
39)
Target
relevant keywords. The
more relevant your keywords are, the easier and quicker it is to rank for them,
and the higher the percentage of visitors who will become buyers.
40)
Target
keywords with commercial intent. You want visitors who are ready to spend money rather than those
who are just looking for information.
41)
Long-tail
keywords are a great source of traffic. It’s quicker and cheaper to rank for longer, specific keyword
phrases, and more than 40% of searches are comprised of four or more words.
42)
Dedicate 1
page of your website to each keyword that you’re targeting. Doing so makes it simpler for search engines
to categorise and rank your pages.
43)
Add keywords in
the right places. They’re less important than they used to be, but you should still
include them in urls, page titles, meta descriptions, header tags and image alt
tags.
44)
Avoid
keyword stuffing. You’re
much more likely to be penalised than credited if you use a keyword phrase
repeatedly on a page.
45)
Backlinks
affect rankings more than anything else. The number and quality of links pointing to your
site will largely determine in what position your site ranks.
46)
Don’t set
backlink targets. Link building should be a steady, consistent, on-going process,
that doesn’t stop when you reach a certain number.
47)
Get
backlinks from relevant sources. Search engines want to display relevant results for each keyword,
and links from relevant pages/sites are a strong signal to them that your site
is relevant.
48)
Get backlinks
from trusted sources. Links
from trustworthy sites signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy
too.
49)
Be
prepared to work for high quality backlinks. Generally, the more easily you can acquire a
link, the less value it will likely have.
50)
Be wary of paying people to link to your website. Buying backlinks can, and does work, however,
there’s a definite risk involved if you buy cheap ones and/or from people who
openly sell them.
51)
Don’t get
involved in link networks. The benefit of getting links from networks is low, whereas the risk of
being penalised and losing rankings is high.
52)
Diversify
your backlink profile. Get
different types of links from a wide range of IP addresses.
53)
Build
backlinks to every page of your website that you want to rank. Get people to link to the inner-pages of
your site – the ones you want to rank for specific keywords – as well as to the
homepage.
54)
Existing
relationships are an instant source of backlinks. Some of your suppliers, partners and
customers will link to your site if you ask them to do so.
55)
Get the good
backlinks that your competition already has. If someone has already linked to one of your
competitors then there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll link to you also if
you give them a good reason to.
56)
Get some
backlinks with your target keywords as the link text. This type of link is important, but should make up
less than 25% of your backlink profile.
57)
The majority
of your backlinks should be branded. A backlink profile without lots of branded links (like ‘Company
Name’ and ‘www.companyname.co.uk’) signals to search engines that you’ve been
using manipulative link building tactics.
58)
Know who’s
linking to you. Within
Google Webmaster Tools, go to ‘Traffic’ and then ‘Links’ to check how many
sites are linking to yours and which sites they are.
59)
Sign up for
Ahrefs, Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer. Doing so gives you access to extensive backlink
data for your site and also your competitors’ sites.
60)
Every page
of your website should be linked to from at least one other page. Search engines don’t include pages in their
results that aren’t linked to either internally (from another page of the same
site) or externally (from another site).
61)
Have direct
links from your homepage to your most important pages. Doing so passes authority from the homepage
to your important pages and improves the rankings of those pages.
62)
Add in-content links to
other relevant pages on your website. Whilst not as valuable as external links,
internal links do still pass authority and signal to search engines what pages
to rank for which keywords.
63)
Remove
unnecessary outbound links. Only link to pages on other sites that you think visitors to your site
would find helpful and/or interesting.
64)
Link out to
relevant websites and blogs. People generally notice if you link to them, and if you link to
them, there’s a reasonable chance that they’ll link back to you if you have
good site.
65)
Leave
comments on relevant websites and blogs. Doing so builds trust and relationships with people
– both the site owners and visitors to those sites.
66)
Interact
with bloggers in your industry. The better people with relevant blogs know you (through social sites,
forums, email, etc.) the more likely they’ll be to link to your site and to
share your content.
67)
Contact
small businesses with relevant websites. A good relationship, in which you help promote each others’ sites,
makes SEO simpler and cheaper for you and for them.
68)
Write press
releases to share news and opinions. This is a good way to get content on, and links from, sites
outside of your industry and circle of connections.
69)
Phone people
to develop online relationships. Emails can easily be ignored or forgotten, but phone calls not so much.
70)
Use your
website to build trust and relationships. The more relationships you have, and the more people trust you,
the more people will talk about you, link to you, and, ultimately, buy from
you.
71)
Add your
address and phone number to every page of your website. This builds trust and improves rankings if
you’re targeting keyword phrases that contain your town/city name.
72)
Get listed
in industry and local directories. Most directories are worthless, however, there should be at least
10 that are relevant to your area or industry.
73)
Ask
customers to leave reviews on Google+ and local directories. Positive reviews improve your rankings in Google’s
local listings and can be accessed directly from the search results.
74)
Be personal
in a way that big businesses can’t be. Putting your individuality and personality across
throughout the off-site SEO process (outreach emails, guest posts, Tweets,
etc.) makes others more likely to engage with you.
75)
Use social
websites to promote other people’s content as well as your own. People generally know if you’ve
taken action on social sites to help them, and if they see that you’ve helped
them, the chances of them helping you out in return are much higher.
76)
Add social
sharing buttons to your website. The easier you make it for people to share your content, the more likely
they will be to do so.
77)
Social media
isn’t a replacement for SEO. Your social strategy should be part of, or should run alongside,
your SEO strategy.
78)
Search
engines ranks webpages, not websites. Whether or not a page ranks for a particular keyword depends largely on
the quality of that individual page, and not the quality of your site as a
whole.
79)
Small businesses can rank higher than big businesses. It’s not uncommon for a page on a small business’s
site to rank higher than a page on the site of a big, national company.
80)
Know where you’re ranking. Within Google Webmaster Tools, go to
‘Traffic’ and then ‘Search Queries’ to check where your site is ranking for
keywords.
81)
Aim to be in the top 3, not just the top 10. If your site isn’t ranked in the top 3 positions
for a keyword then you’ll only get a small percentage (less than 10%) of the
traffic from searches for that keyword.
82)
Rankings can
be misleading. The
number of 1st page rankings you have is irrelevant if those rankings don’t
convert to visitor numbers and, ultimately, sales.
83)
Don’t worry
about PageRank. Sites
with a low PR can, and often do, outrank sites with a high PR.
84)
Choose
between using www or not using www. Ensure that your site is set to load at either
www.domainname.co.uk or domainname.co.uk – not both.
85)
Adopt a flat
website architecture. Any page of
your site should be accessible within 3 clicks from your homepage.
86)
Use a simple,
clear URL structure. People
should be able to guess the topic of a page by looking only at its URL.
87)
Use header
tags. Include
variations of your target keyword phrases in a page’s H1 and H2 tags.
88)
Use rich
snippets. They provide
additional data about your site to search engines and can improve the
appearance of your site’s listing in search results.
89)
Use 301
redirects. If you
change the url of a page on your site, but don’t redirect the old url to the
new one, any links pointing to the old one will be wasted.
90)
Set-up a
useful 404 error page. Linking to your best content from your 404 page means that visitors who
see it are less likely to leave your site.
