28 Point SEO Checklist - 2013

On Site SEO Category	SEO Element	Description
Meta Tag Best Practices	Head Section Order	Correct order for your Meta Tags is: Title > Description > Keywords.
	Title Tag	This is the wording for the link to your site that shows at the top of the Google search result. It is also the wording in the tab of the browser. It should be 70 Characters or less, unique to each page, and begin with the most important keywords
	Description Tag	This is what shows in the search results under the title, and should be 160 characters. While most SEO's will tell you that it has no direct effect on ranking, making it keyword rich is still a good idea as these words will show up in bold if they are part of the search query. You can also use this element to increase Click Through rate by using an engaging description for your site.
	Keywords Tag	Although keywords supposedly aren't a ranking metric anymore, it's still best practice to include them.
	rel=author Tag	The rel=author tag allows your Google+ profile to show in search results. As a rule of thumb, bigger brighter results get a higher Click Through Rate because they catch the eye, and Click Through Rate is a search ranking factor.
Content Best Practices	Keyword Research	Make sure you've done your keyword research. Again, make sure you've done your keyword research! Measure twice, cut once :)
	Keyword Use	Once you've done your keyword research and determined what keywords you want to target, make sure you use them in your Title, Description, Headers, Body, URL, Alt Tags, everywhere.
	Header Tags	Header tags, <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. should be used to add structure to you page, indicating significant text for both search engines and users alike.
	High Quality Content	Create high quality content people want to link to! As a rule of thumb, create content that is useful and valuable.
	No Duplicate Content	Don't duplicate your own content and especially don't duplicate others content. Write your own, it really doesn't take long, and your search engine rankings will be happy you did.
	Overall Word Count	Recommended word count varies, but try to shoot for a 400 word minimum.
	Internal Links	Use fully qualified links like http://www.example.com/example-page instead of relative links like ../../example-page.
	Image Alt Tags	Using image alt tags not only gives you another great place to add your keywords, as well as opening up your website to Google Image Search, but the American with Disabilities Act says you should always describe the image on the page for the vision impaired. Alt attributes also allow you to validate your HTML code with w3.org.
	Use Text Not Images of Text	Search Engine Crawlers can't read images, that's why you use alt tags, so use when possible, use actual text instead of images of text.
Navigation Best Practices	Site Map	Site maps are maps of the layout of your site that give web crawlers a concise link structure to follow while indexing your site. You should have both an HTML site map link on every page as well as an XML site map you submit to search engines. Make sure the site map has fully qualified URL's.
	Breadcrumb Navigation	Breadcrumbs are another type of simplified navigation that are useful for visitors and web crawlers. They help show themes and hierarchy between your content.
	Text Navigation	Ideally you have text navigation and not flash or JavaScript menus, although site maps and breadcrumbs do make this less of an issue.
	Server Errors	Fix 404's and other server errors. These can easily be found using Webmaster Tools.
	Correct URL Redirects	Use 301 permanent redirects to show preferred URL's and prevent search engines from splitting up the authority of your pages.
URL Best Practices	Dashes vs. Underscores in URL's	Always use dashes instead of underscores to separate words in URL's. If there is concern with marketing the URL's verbally, you can use non-hyphenated versions of the URL's in offline campaigns like mailers and radio, and have those URL's redirect to the hyphenated ones!
	Static Pages	Dynamic Pages like http://www.examples.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date are confusing to search engines, hard for people to remember, and all around bad SEO news. Use a static page like http://www.example.com/seo-checklist-2012. See, isn't that so much better?
	Static Home Page	Depending on the nature of your site, you may or may not want a static home page. If you sell one product, you'll want to keep static or similar search optimized content on your home page, if however, you have a constantly rotating stock or are a news site, changing content is the name of the game!
Server Side	Robots.txt File	The Robots.txt file tells the search engine spiders what not to index. Use it to deliberately exclude content you don't want indexed like duplicate content. just make sure you don't accidentally exclude anything important!
	Externalize JavaScript and CSS Code	Site loading speed is a Google ranking factor. Speed up your page load times by loading your JavaScript and CSS code.
Mobile Search Engine Optimization	Mobile Friendly Responsive Layout	Mobile users hate websites that present a bad mobile experience and will bounce faster than you can say 'Is that Flash?'. A responsive layout means your website will automatically resize to different screens like laptops, phones and tablets. This decreases bounce rate, leading to better ranking by Google.
Web Analytics	Installed Google Analytics	OK, while this one doesn't specifically help your search engine ranking, you still want to measure the Return On Investment of all of your marketing campaigns, including your SEO campaign, right? Google Analytics is awesome. It's free, integrates with the rest of Google's products, and let's you easily measure the ROI of your SEO spend.
Follow Search Engine Guidelines	Google Quality Guidelines	http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769
	Google SEO Guide	http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

 Reference :: jamesjosephmarketing.com