Quick Start List

SEO Quick Start Checklist

Picking a Product

• Analyze your product. Are you interested in it yourself?

• Analyze your market. Is it oversaturated? Is it growing or changing?

• Is it easy to order your product from the web?

• Or are you selling commodity dog food that is expensive to ship?

• What can you do to be unique in the market?

• What creative and original ideas can you add to your site?

Picking a Domain Name

• FOR NEW SITES: Ponder your domain name choice. Depending on your brand strategy, it should either be highly brandable or have your primary keywords in it.

• Make sure your domain is easy to say over the phone and is memorable.

• Consider buying different domain names for each targeted language or niche in your market.

• If you have additional ideas and the matching domain names are available register them at market price, because if someone else buys them first it might cost you a few thousand dollars to buy them later.

Domain Registration & Hosting

• Choose an ICANN accredited registrar.

• Register a .com as soon as possible. If the .com is out of reach then register a .net or .org.

• Register a country’s top-level domain if your primary market is local in nature.

• Choose a host that supports the technology you will be using (ASP or PHP, etc.)

Keyword Selection

• Use keyword tools and customer feedback to find the most targeted keyword phrases for your site.

• Develop grouped themes of keywords that reflect the different sections of your site.

• Use an Excel spreadsheet to organize your keyword ideas. Keeping them within a grouped theme, choose different keywords to target each page.

Page Optimization

• Put your chosen words for each page in your page title tags. Make sure your page title tag text is unique to each page.

• Write a description for the meta description tag. Make sure your description is unique to each page.

• Use only one H1 header per page, and target similar keyword phrases as the ones you targeted when writing the page title.

• Use subheaders H2 and H3 on your page when necessary.

• Use bulleted lists and bolding to make content easier to read.

• Make sure your text is written for human consumption—not bots.

Home Page Optimization

• Make sure your home page builds credibility and directs consumers to the most important parts of your site.

• Target your most competitive keyword on your home page or a page that is well integrated into your site.

• Link to major theme pages from your home page.

• Link to your home page from every sub page.

Site Optimization

• Use text-based navigation.

• If you already have, or insist on using, graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text on the images, and link to every primary page from your sub pages in the footer of the sub pages.

• Use descriptive keyword breadcrumb navigation.

• Make a site map if you have a large site.

• Check your link text to make sure it’s descriptive whenever possible.

• Link to resources outside your own site that improve each user’s experience.

• Deep link to related articles and content from your page copy.

• Rely as little as possible on the site navigation. Instead, guide your visitor through your site with links in the active content portion of the site.

• Use external CSS to minimize page load time.

• Avoid duplicate content issues. Ensure that each page has significantly unique content that does not exist on other pages on your site or other sites.

Registering With Directories

• Register your site with the major directories – Yahoo!, DMOZ, and Business.com, google.com.

• Register your site with a couple better second-tier directories – JoeAnt & BOTW.

• Register with a couple local or niche-specific directories – from ISEDB.

Link Building

• Make sure your site has something that other webmasters in your niche would be interested in linking to.

• Create content that people will be willing to link at even if it is not directly easy to monetize. These linkworthy pages will lift the authority and rankings of all pages on your site. Think of remarkable content production as cheap advertising.

• When possible, get your keywords in the link text pointing to your site. Use product names and article titles that contain keywords in their offical names.

• Register with, participate in, or trade links with topical hubs and related sites. Be in the discussion or at least be near the discussion.

• Look for places to get high-quality free links from (like local libraries or chambers of commerce).

• Produce articles and get them syndicated to more authoritative sites.

• Participate in forums to learn about what your potential consumers think is important.

• Issue press releases with links to your site.

• Leave glowing testimonials for people and products you really like.

• Start an interesting and unique blog and write about your topics, products, news, and other sites in your community.

• Comment on other sites with useful relevant and valuable comments.

• Sponsor charities, blogs, or websites related to your site.

• Consider renting links if you are in an extremely competitive industry.

• Mix your link text up whenever possible.

• Survey your vertical and related verticals. What ideas/tools/articles have become industry standard tools or well-cited information? What ideas are missing?

As shared by Aaron Wall from seobook.com