101 SEO Tips That Made My Head Explode

August 31, 2009 // Author: Jacob Stoops // 599 views // View Comments

This scene from the movie 'Network' really captures how I feel after coming up with 101 SEO tips in one sitting.

Today, I’ve decided to challenge myself a little bit. Every SEO can probably come up with a top 10 seo list no problem! I’ve probably done that more than a few times, so I’ve decided to up the ante…to 100 quick SEO tips! I’ll be doing this as a 2-part series over the next week!

Now, I’m not going to go into detail on each SEO tip (who wants to read all that anyway when you could be out drinking a beer), but you’ll get the idea! I’m pretty sure that my head will explode at some point during this post.

They are in no particular order, so don’t place any credence on which one is first or which one is last. I’m just jotting them down as they come to me, and trying to do the best I can to arrange them in a way that makes some sense.

Start your SEO campaign with an emphasis on research of all kinds.
Research your desired target keywords.
Research your product offerings and services.
Identify your top competitors.
Research your competitor’s target keywords.
Check your competitor’s meta tags, titles, and HTML text to uncover keyword targets.
Research which target keywords pull the most traffic.
Research which target keywords are the most/least competitive.
Ensure that your website is crawlable/indexable by search engines.
Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking your website from being indexed.
Treat your website’s <title> tags like solid gold real estate.
Use your target keywords in your <title> tags.
Use your most important target keywords towards the beginning on the <title> tag.
If you service a specific area, mention your service area in your <title> tag.
Ensure that every page on your site has a unique title.
Keep your title’s short and sweet (they are cut off at 65 character spaces in the SERPs).
Don’t leave a page on your site untitled.
For brand recognition purposes, use your company’s name in your <title> tag.
Place your <title> tags immediately after the <head> tag, so it is the first thing scanned.
Use your titles to show your website’s hierarchy, especially for category and other “deep” pages.
Don’t omit Meta tags from your strategy, but don’t rely on them too heavily.
Ensure that each page has a unique Meta Description.
Include target keywords in your Meta Description, but write it mostly for your users.
Include service area information in your Meta Description (if applicable).
Make sure your best Meta Description content is within the first 150 character spaces (that’s the approximate normal cut-off point in the SERPs).
Try not to exceed 300 character spaces with your Meta Description (too spammy).
Use your target keywords (paired with service localities), in your Meta Keywords section.
Focus on phrases, rather than lone keywords in your Meta Keywords section.
Use a maximum of 10-15 keywords/phrases in the Meta Keyords section on each page of your website.
Ensure that each page on your site has a unique set of Meta Keywords.
Try not to exceed 400 character spaces in your Meta Keywords section.
Enter your website into Google Webmaster Tools, and add a verification tag.
Add an index, follow Meta tag to your website.
Seperate your style from your page using CSS.
Avoid inline styling, and use your stylesheets instead.
Avoid “code bloat“, which means excess and unnecessary amounts of code on your page.
Minimize the use of JavaScript & AJAX code in important content areas of site.
Avoid using AJAX to load new pages (where the URL doesn’t change).
Avoid creating an all-Flash website.
Avoid using dynamic URLs strands with random numbers & letters.
If you must use dynamic URLs, avoid making webcrawlers pass through too many parameters.
Use keywords in your URLs.
Separate keywords in the URL with a dash (ex: your-keyword).
Ensure that every page on your site has scanable HTML text.
Try to have a least 200 words per page (if possible – gives search engines “meat to eat”).
Use your target keywords throughout the HTML text.
Use variations & synonyms of your target keywords throughout your HTML text.
Try to maintain an average keyword density of 5-7%.
Don’t write your site’s ad copy for search engines.
Write your site’s ad copy for your users to ensure good user experience.
If you service a specific area, make sure to mention the cities serviced in your HTML text.
If you’re a brick-and-mortar location, include your address somewhere prominent on your website.
Don’t hide text in JavaScript drop-downs.
Don’t hide text by making it the same color as the background.
Don’t hide text by making it too small for a user to see.
Don’t stuff keywords in your text.
Bold or italicize important keywords (but don’t go crazy with it).
Use heading tags to denote important text (H1-H6).
Only use the H1 once in your page (it is the most influential heading tag).
Ensure that all images have Alt description tags.
Use target keywords in Alt tags.
Don’t stuff keywords in your Alt tags.
Ensure the Alt descriptions are at least semi-accurate reflections of what the picture actually depicts.
Use keywords when naming image files.
Separate keywords in image files using a dash (yellow-flower.jpg).
Create a solid internal link structure within your site.
Ensure that every page on your site is linked to (No “orphaned pages”).
Understand that the more links on your site go to a specific page, the more important that page will be deemed.
Understand that pages that are fewer clicks away from the homepage are generally deemed more important than page buried deeper in the site.
Ensure that your site’s hyperlinks are using “quality” keywords in the anchor text (ex: <a href=”link”>QUALITY Anchor Text</a>).
Don’t link using text that says, “Click Here” or “Read More”.
Title your links (ex: <a title=”Descriptive Text” href=”link”>Anchor Text</a>).
Create an HTML Sitemap page.
Create an XML Sitemap and submit it via Google Webmaster Tools.
Start a link building campaign.
Understand that inbound links are like votes for your website (more votes = good).
Focus on acquiring one-way links from websites that are similar to your own (ex: blogging sites should try to get links from other blogging sites).
Focus on acquiring one-way links from websites that are highly respected (ex: BBB or similar reputable sites and/or associates).
Focus on acquiring one-way links from websites that have high Google PageRank.
Try to assure that your site is linked to with “quality” keywords in the anchor text.
Don’t be afraid to do link exchanges.
Stay away from link schemes or link farms.
Try to acquire links from Niche Directories (ex: AllTop.com, Trulia).
If you’re a brick and mortar location, submit your website to Local Directories (Google Maps, Yahoo Local).
Encourage customer reviews on your Local Business Listings.
Ensure that you link back to your main website on your Local Business Listings.
Submit your site to DMOZ.
Submit newsworthy pages on your website to popular user-submitted news aggregators such as Digg or Reddit.
Submit your site’s videos to popular video sharing sites such as YouTube or Metacafe.
Ensure that you provide a description and a link back to your site in Video Descriptions.
Leave comments on popular forums (using profile to link back to site).
Leave comments on popular & related blogs (links usually allowed as part of commenter profile).
Create social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), and ensure that they link back to your website.
Use an analytics program such as Google Analytics to track your results.
Use data & research on traffic increases/decreases to make associations with your SEO campaign.
Use date & research regarding keywords click on/pulling traffic to make associations with your SEO campaign.
Use date & research on site visitor behavoir to make associations with your SEO campaign.
Be patient, and let your SEO campaign marinate a little bit before freaking out and making any drastic changes.
Be in a constant state of monitoring and evaluation, and be ready to make tweaks to your campaign.
Realize that SEO is never ending (see: SEO Lifecycle), and algorithm changes happen often.
Don’t kill your SEO! Chances are he’s looking out for your business/site, and trying really hard to do the right things to make your campaign work.

And now is the part where MY HEAD EXPLODES! I didn’t think I could get through that, but alas I’ve risen to meet the challenge. Time to nod of for a while!

Hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to add more tips to add to my 101, as I’m sure I haven’t even come close to covering all the things you can do for SEO.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

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Chicago Printing

Hi,

I describe your tips as simple but exploding. Simple because it is easy to understand and exploding because they have full of meaning nothing says none sense. You've done a good job. In fact, I have save this post to my computer for future reference.
rocky

The first thing to know is that most rummage around engines, chiefly the all powerful Google, hate SEO. It makes sense in fact the whole incentive that we need SEO is for the reason that the nation who are knotty with these seek out engines want to be the ones to read aloud what ranks high in their lists, SEO is often times our way of attempting to stunt the rummage around engines into seeing us as the best site to fit their criteria. So, my first piece of recommendation is a cleanly one, use SEO but use it caringly and don’t over do it. Being too noticeable about it will often findings in a consequence more accurately than the augment in traffic you were on tenterhooks for.
Himanshu

Hi Jacob, lots of tips on the same place, I generally don't emphasize on title tag or keyword type of things and post on different subjects whatever comes in my mind, but now I think it is very necessary to look up on these factors seriously, your blog is looking very promising, lemme check out other articles.