Here’s a sample SEO checklist to use when developing, optimizing and promoting websites.

SEO Optimization Plus
Website Quality Check + W3C  – Correct glaring issues
Server Check – Win/Linux Apache, IIS – IP Check – Dedicate or Shared
Applications (CMS, Cart, Forum) & Databases (MySQL)
HTTP Response Header Check – Custom Error Pages
Basic Architecture (Contact, FAQ, Privacy, Resources, Site Map, Terms)
Preliminary Global Link Popularity Report – Anchor Text Analysis
Top 3 Competitors Analysis – Reverse Link Engineering
Spider Topic Reputation Report
Preliminary Indexed Pages Report – View Titles & Descriptions
Keyword Research – Competition, Daily Search Volume, Relevance
Primary Search Terms – Long-Tail – Supporting Terms – LSI Terms
Competition Research-Uncover Entire PPC Campaign Keywords
Keyword Revenue Report with Average Customer Value Equation
Master Keyword List & Prioritized Keyword List
Number of Pages to Be Optimized
Map Keywords to Individual Pages
Individual On-Page Optimization – SEO Score
Metadata – Title, Description, KW tag
Optimize Head Area (Proper DTD, Char Set) – Header Status Check
Page Headings (H1, H2, page structure)
Page Content Optimization
Reduce Code to External Script
Optimize Image Load Times & Alternate Text, Captions
Optimize Internal Links in Body (keyword, placement)
Optimize Link Site Structure (No Follow)
On Page Sitemap Optimized
Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, XML Sitemaps, Preferred Domain
Canonical and Duplicate Content Fixed
Robots.txt File Properly Implemented
Name Capture/Opt-in Form/Email Marketing
Usability/Objectives/Conversions

Promotion
Optimize Current Blog or Develop Custom Blog. Tie-In to Networks
Utilize Promotional Widgets, Select and Optimize Blog Plugins
Develop Content Strategy – photo, video, slideshow, audio, wiki’s, etc
Write Articles – 450+ words (use in syndication)
Huge Content Syndication Group (Quality Only) – Diggs, Bookmarks
Write Blog Posts – 100-300 words, ping
Press Releases – 300+ words (submission to 25 Press Release sites)
Top 5-7 Article Submission Sites – (Option re-purpose to 300 directories)
Blog RSS Feed Submissions (80-100+ Feed Submissions)
Blog Directory Submissions (Top 10-18 blog directories)
General Directory Submissions (400+ Quality directories)
Targeted Ezine Submissions
Social Linking Properties – presence for Links, no networking involvement
Social Network Properties – optional for networking, friends, etc
Social Bookmarking Sites – Top 20
Free Blogging Sites, Blogger, WordPress, etc.
Micro Blogging – Twitter Marketing Plan 2000 followers in 30 days
Keyword Ranking Reports, Analytics, Backlinks Reports
PDF Files (text-optimized w/ new Titles, Kws, Descriptions)
High PageRank Link Development
Researched Keywords to Target in Articles

Classified Ads, Blog & Forum Commenting
New email created to create and confirm promotional actions.
PPC Setup & Management
Website Design

There are various steps or processes for many of the activities listed above so keep an eye out for more in-depth reports on individual topics.

Jerry West of SEORevolution.com has been an SEO expert for some time. He has over 500 domains through the country on various hosting platforms in which he performs in-depth testing. So all his advice comes from actual results of many sites. This is an email I just received and thought you may find it helpful. I will keep you apprised of the new changes going on with Google on this blog so be sure to bookmark it and come back often.

I am about to leave for the airport in just a few minutes and wanted to get this update out. Overall PubCon was good, but Google did not have their normal presence there, in fact, for the first time that I have been attending, they didn’t have a booth.

That meant that the contacts I usually sit and talk with weren’t there, but I got all of your questions answered, it just took a little longer than usual.

I will be preparing more updates on the long flight home.

This hasn’t been edited, so there maybe spelling or grammar issues … just a warning.

Question: I’m helping a friend right now try to push some bogus extortion site “complaints” off his first page on the SERP.

So my question is how can someone go to google to rid themselves of a bogus complaint on one of those sites like ripoofreport.com or complaintsboard.com ?

I know we can work on the SEO but in some cases they are very well entrenched and are trying to charge the victim money to take the “complaint” off the site. In some cases they have gotten edu and gov links and have leveraged their SEO power for “evil”. And the pages or posts are often “closed” so you can’t even add your side of the story.

You would think Google would have a way to approach getting that dealt with. It can cost an individual or small business a lot of money in lost business and in hiring an SEO pro to combat bogus complaints which leaves this client with a bad taste for internet marketing. I wonder how many business owners have decided never to advertise in adwords or online after an experience like this?

Answer: Google has remained very consistent on this issue – they aren’t a censor.  While they can sympathize with you over this issue, if they began to act as a censor, the line begins to get fuzzy. They best that you can do is promote your company the best you can and customers realize that there aren’t always going to be favorable things said about your company. In fact, a company that has a spotless record is always a red flag in my book because no company can satisfy every person.

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Question: When will Google Caffeine be rolled out?

Answer: Matt Cutts stated not until after the holidays, but he didn’t say which holiday. My guess is that it will be during the Christmas/New Years break since that is usually a “dead” time for business.

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Question: What is the future of the Blogger platform. How it might integrate into their other app developments. Do they see Blogger having a vital future? Or is it one of those channels like Google Video that may be left on the back burner?

Answer: This is on their radar for 2010. It is still an important part of their business strategy. No details were shared, however.

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Question: Is it still true that most searches don’t bring the results that people are looking for?

Answer: Google didn’t have any hard data to share, but Microsoft said they have a 25% “back” trend (hitting the back button). So a quarter of all searches result in a refinement of some sort.

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Question: What are the total information searches for a given topic vs. product searches?

Answer: This information wasn’t available.

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Question: What is the most reliable way to get and retain high search engine rankings?

Answer: According to Matt Cutts it is creating unique content and getting good, quality links to your site.

We all know that answer won’t get you top ranking. The best thing to do is use my SEO in a Box technique along with my Keyword Competition Tool.

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Question: When will integration of Google Docs with Google Wave happen?

Answer: No date has been announced.

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Question: How is Sidewiki going to be policed?

Answer: As with any user generated content, they are monitoring for spam. Since it is still new and the traction hasn’t been fully realized, there are still some growing pains.

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Question: How do you know if you have been “slapped” by Google? How to avoid it?

Answer: The “Google Slap” is only for AdWords and does NOT effect the organic listings.  You will know if you have gotten slapped if your Quality Score has tanked and/or your minimum bid has been raised to the $15-25 per click range … just to be on the first page. Read that again, not the first position, but the first page. That’s a slap.

Here are some options to go through to correct the Slap:

1) If you’re an affiliate, and you are directly linking to the merchant’s page with your affiliate code, change the CTA to /yourdomain.com/buy/ and do a 301 redirect to the merchant.
2) Make sure your Title tag is unique and contains the targeted keyword phrase.
3) Ditto with the Meta Description.
4) Ditto with the H1 tag.
5) Get the Privacy, Contact Us, About Us, Terms, etc. on the page if they aren’t already there.
6) Put the keyword phrase at the bottom of the page, just above the footer links. But don’t link it to anything.
7) Use it at least twice in the body of the page.
8 ) Get some good solid links 5-10 or so to your landing page. As strange as it sounds, getting links from pages that are cached and it gets spidered by GoogleBot has helped in the slap – but not consistently.

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Question: How do you lower the keyword costs in AdWords?

Answer: Simply put, you can lower your bids, which will, of course, lower your position. That isn’t what you want. What you are probably asking is how to increase your margins, and that comes with solid landing page designs which are build on “continuing the conversation” the prospect has in their minds. I will be updating my Landing Page testing results this month in the SEO Revolution.

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Question: What are the least important ranking factors?

Answer: This question is too generic and Google isn’t really going to answer this accurately other than to say they ignore the Keyword Meta Tag and Spam content (which they don’t ignore).

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Question: How to better optimize for Google local, not in Google Maps, but in the regular SERPs.

Answer: There is still a hole in Google Local that Matt Cutts admitted to that I have been reporting for the last three years or so. That is, you can focus on an address near the City Center and the local post office for the ZIP code you are targeting and will get a top ranking – even if you use a fake address. They state they are going to start using their own collected date in order to be more accurate.

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Question: Does the click through rate influence the SERPs?

Answer: While Matt Cutts stated that currently there is no correlation between click through rate and the rankings in the SERPs, I am seeing some evidence of this. However, it isn’t consistent and it might be the Caffeine injection which has been going on for the last few weeks.

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Question: If you buy an expired domain what do you do with the non-existent pages so you can capture the backlinks?

Answer: You can use mod_rewrite or 301 redirects to point them to the right page. It is not recommended that you just do a blanket 301 redirect to the home page.

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Question: What date does Google see as the registration date of expired domains that are re-registered?

Answer: Google doesn’t look at the registration date, instead it looks at “first time spidered”. If there is a significant time where Google cannot index the site, it will “reset” the age of the domain. I have found in my testing, that if you get the site built (you can use WinHTTrack or Archive.org to get the previous content of the site) on your server and as soon as you win the auction and the domain is given to you, you can switch the DNS and be ready for Google’s next crawl. That is usually very effective in saving the domain. However, if you sit on it and spend a week or two developing the site and Google comes back, they will often deindex much or all of the site making it worthless for the reason you bought it.

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Question: Is the PageRank preserved if all pages are redirected to the homepage?

Answer: There is some “PageRank” leakage, but details were not given. Personally, I don’t find this a big deal. Leakage is going to happen. As long as the home page is spidered often, you should be able to use the authority to push link power to your other properties.

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Question: What should be done with the upcoming Caffeine update? Are traditional SEO techniques going to become useless? Are they being replaced with semantic-optimized pages?

Answer: You can read my analysis I posted on August 16th: http://www.seorevolution.com/members/training/?p=4424 The “sandbox” for Caffeine has been disabled as they are getting ready for the rollout after the holidays (probably between Christmas and New Years). Even though it is stated that Caffeine is NOT an algorithm update, there is enough changes in the SERPs to believe that there is an algo change.

In terms of it being replaced with semantic-optimized pages, I am not seeing that in my tests. I think this is more hype and rumor. What my tests are showing is that the authority on the home page is mattering more and the total number of domains linking to you is becoming more of a factor. This is making “run of site links” less effective, however, internal linking is getting more powerful. So, if you have a large authoritative site, your advantage will greatly increase once Caffeine goes live.

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Question: How much does bounce rate and average time on site affect rankings? What about a blog or internal pages?

Answer: Matt Cutts stated that this is NOT part of the algorithm yet, but I am seeing some evidence of it, although nothing conclusive. I would assume the reason for this is to get rid of the Made for AdSense sites which typically have high bounce rates because that is their business model.

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Question: Is the value of links and merit of link different for each industry?

Answer: It isn’t that the value of links is different, it is how the keyword is scored. Since Google has access to know what the dollar value is (through AdWords), it will rank the keywords accordingly. Higher value keywords have more off-page factors and lower value keywords have more on-page factors attributing to the ranking process.

Even though on-page factors do not give as much benefit as they once did, if you get them wrong, you will never rank as high as you could, so make sure you get them right.

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Question: What will happen to the Yahoo SSP campaigns when the merger with Microsoft occurs?

Answer: The SSP (Search Submit Pro) program will be discontinued.

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Question: Will the SERPs appear more like Bing or Yahoo rankings?

Answer: When the merger occurs, they will be Bing results. Yahoo! has never been able to serve quality search results ever since they took the directory listings out of their algorithm.

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Question: Are links hidden in search engine friendly CSS drop downs as strong as links viewed normally through the page load?

Answer: I haven’t tested this and Matt Cutts stated there is never a time when “hidden links” are search engine friendly. While I haven’t tested this, never take what Matt Cutts says as absolute truth. Test it first.

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Question: Does Google made a distinction between a Postweb page and Pageweb page in WordPress? Which is better for SEO?

Answer: Lisa Brown, with WordPressAngel.com handles all of my WordPress issues. There was probably a time when this mattered, but I don’t see any issues now. Just make sure you have the SEO Plugin.

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Question: Is Google giving more weight to the keyword in the domain name?

Answer: Yes they are, especially in .org domains.

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Question: What is the one thing you could do for Google so it would be 100% greater, what would it be?

Answer: The answer was very political and not worth reporting.

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Question: How is the influence on social sites with the Google algorithm?

Answer: With Caffeine, the impact of Web 2.0 properties has been lessened. That doesn’t mean they won’t be as effective, it just means it will take more effort to get them to rank.

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Question: What about personalized search?

Answer: This is becoming more and more of an issue. If you notice if you are logged in to your Google account, your search results will be different than if you are not logged in. However, even if you are logged out, Google is tracking your search behavior through the IP address you are using and will begin to give you personalized search results based on your search behavior. They are getting good.

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Question: Do links going through a redirect click tracking script count?

Answer: The answer is “yes” from Google, but I don’t have testing results to back it up. My viewpoint is worry about real links and if you get extra juice from a redirect, then you are getting something extra.

Best Regards,

Jerry West

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First Place Positioning provides Philadelphia SEO Services and is happy to provide a free SEO report and a strategic custom SEO plan for your company.  Reach us at 1-800-430-0205 or direct at 610-768-0357, or fill out the SEO form to have the details emailed to you.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization: (from Wikipedia): “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.”

Google is the number one search engine as it receives 272 million unique searches per day. That is more than 11 million searches per hour. Although MSN and Yahoo! have a share of the search market, the effort to focus ranking on Google far outweighs the others.  Although MSN and Yahoo! say they have a better conversion ratio in the Pay-Per-Click arena, there is no comparison to Google when it comes to organic  results.

The bottom line is that Google supplies a lot more traffic, which means you will make more money by using Google. Driving traffic to your website is the goal but ultimately you want your revenues to increase.  So converting that traffic is a big key for your SEO campaign to be a success.

It all starts with keywords… keyword phrases.  Knowing the keyword phrases that actually convert into revenue before optimizing your site is a step that must not be understated.  Using various keyword tools (like Wordtracker) will reveal the keyword data that people are actually searching on.  Choosing and testing those keywords for the potential to convert into sales is a crucial step that can be accomplished through a simple keyword tracking PPC campaign and then once these keywords are proven to convert… than the organic optimization process can be put in place.

While focusing on your core terms is vital, uncovering other phrases that will bring the right visitors to your site can set you apart from your competition and get you targeted leads quite quickly.

Here are some keyword research tips that can accomplish this:

Using Wordtracker or other keyword tools, it is best to utilize “action related” root words to see how that word is exactly being used within phrases. Words like: Take, Stir, Hold, Make, Create, Fix, Repair, Replace, Shift, Retract, Lift, Assemble, Cool, Start.

Explore keyword data with a focus on the natural power of prepositions. Examples of a few Prepositions:
From, Across, During, Between, Beside, Below, Inside of, Outside of, Over, Past Toward, Under, Through, Since, Until, Around, Against.

Explore the data with the flexibility of extreme opposites: Antonyms
Start, Begin, Best, Stop, Finish, Worst, Newest, Oldest, Advantage, Disadvantage, Always, Never, Common, Rare, Easy, Difficult, Exterior, Interior.

Keep in mind Seasonally related, News related, Topic related (common hot topics) keywords.  Also words that relate to all kinds of “Color”, “tools”, pricing “Numbers” and Semantics (supporting terms rather than exact topics).

Other words to consider at the start of the digging process:
How-to, Stop, Cure, Solution, Answer, Free, Learn, Treat, Quit, Help, Lose, Fast, Find, Deal, Offer.

Buying keyword modifiers like, Shipping , Delivery, Order, Cost, Price, Rate, Charge, Fee, etc., can open a door to phrases that you  may have never thought of or considered.

Using an optimization process utilizing your core terms, mid-level terms and long-tail keywords after an in-depth keyword research process will give you a big jump on your competition plus you will have a good list of terms you can build content around on an on-going basis.