The Ultimate SEO Checklist

Being Search Engine-Friendly

Great keywords, keyphrases, terrific content, and having other web sites linking to yours does nothing for your search ranking if the search engines can't access your web pages to index them. Use this checklist to help ensure that your web site is based on search crawler-friendly design and markup.

Avoid the use of splash pages.

A splash page is a main entry page that displays either a large graphic image or a Flash animation, usually with a link to Enter a web site or Skip Intro (skip the animated introduction page). Splash pages usually redirect to a new web page after the animation has completed. As you might expect, splash pages typically lack keyword- or keyphrase-rich content, as they contain little or no visible body text other than Enter or Skip Intro links. Given little or no text content, the search crawlers have nothing to index.

Typically, splash pages use redirects to automatically advance the user to the web site's actual homepage. Currently, search engines tend not to index web sites that use redirects, and they'll ban web sites that create artificial redirects in an attempt to achieve higher rankings. (Shari Thurow, Top Five SEO Design Mistakes, ClickZ (September 27, 2004).)

So, by using a splash page that contains little or no text content, and uses redirects, you'll likely have ruined your chances of having your web site indexed—let alone ranked—by search engines.

Balance HTML text and graphics.

Professional, high-quality graphics can help support your credibility, as we discussed in Chapter 3, Preparing Web Site Content. It's also critically important to provide plenty of keyword- and keyphrase-rich text content for search engine crawlers. There's no need to avoid using graphics; in fact, avoiding graphics could be detrimental to your web site's search engine success. Instead, plan your web site design to use graphics that have a purpose, insert meaningful text within each <img> element's <alt> attribute, and provide plenty of keyphrase-rich content that will help your search engine rankings, and benefit site visitors who read them.

Create search-engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross-links.

Search engine crawlers follow HTML text links. If you provide good, search engine-friendly internal HTML text links within your site, crawlers will likely follow those links. If any of your web pages' URLs change, use server-side redirects to send search bots using the old link to the new URL.

Instead of allowing search engine crawlers (or web site visitors!) to find dead links, create server-side redirects, perhaps using .htacess and mod_rewrite techniques, that will automatically take search engines to the new URLs. On the server side, use a 301 code for permanently moved files and a 302 code for temporarily moved files (assuming that your host allows you access to such settings; many do not).

If you're not able to use server-side redirects, create a web page for each changed URL to inform search engine crawlers and visitors that the web page has moved temporarily or permanently, and provide a link to the new page. If there is no new URL, then be sure to provide a link to your homepage, sitemap, and local search to help your visitors and search engine crawlers (this is especially important in ensuring that the crawlers continue indexing your web site via these links). Don't use JavaScript redirects on these pages!

Rules for Using Static Redirect Pages
If you're forced to use static pages to inform people and search engines that a page has moved, be sure to have an inventory—a spreadsheet, perhaps—that you can refer to six to 12 months later. This should be enough time for the search engine crawlers to index the new locations, at which point you can check your search engine listings and consider removing these old holding files if the search engines are listing the new pages. You might consider leaving these static pages longer, though, especially for use by visitors who've bookmarked your moved pages. (Ian Lloyd, The Perfect 404, A List Apart (January 16, 2004).)

Use external CSS and JavaScript whenever possible, to maximize relevance.

Search engines will read your markup, beginning at the top of your web page, but they'll also review embedded CSS and JavaScript between your opening and closing <head> elements. Generally, search engines tend to give more weight to the text that appears at the top of web pages than to text published further down the page. (Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Placement Tips, Search Engine Watch (October 14, 2002); Danny Sullivan, Hiding JavaScript, Search Engine Watch (June 10, 2003) (subscribers-only area).)

Use structural markup, and separate content from presentation as much as possible.

Search engine crawlers use structural markup to understand what your web page content is about, and they give more weight to text within heading elements (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.).

Content Stuffers will be Penalized!
Don't try to fool search crawlers by stuffing content into heading elements or elsewhere, as they know about such trickery, and you could be banned from the search engine listings for trying to artificially improve your rankings. Honesty is always the best policy. Creating keyphrase-rich content that visitors will love to read is the best way to go. Other web sites will also link to it, which only helps boost your search engine rankings further.

Provide a web site sitemap, and link to it from your homepage as well as all your other web pages.

Providing a sitemap that links to your main pages will help search engines find your content, as well as being helpful to web site visitors. If your sitemap contains more than about one hundred links, though, break it logically into pages of no more than one hundred links each.

If you use JavaScript links, include <a> element <href> attribute links within them.

For example, at my web site, I use DHTML for a show/hide toggle menu, which includes a crawler-friendly JavaScript link with an <a> element <href> attribute link that looks like this:

<a href="/inc/arch.shtml" onclick="return toggleMenu('arch');  
   return false;" onkeypress="return toggleMenu('arch');  
   return false;">Toggle Show/Hide</a>

Here, <a href="/inc/arch.shtml" is the <a> element <href> attribute link. Since it's an HTML text link, search engine crawlers can read it and continue on to index the /inc/arch.shtml page. I had accessibility in mind when I decided on this particular show/hide approach, but it helps search engine crawlers, too.

JavaScript and Popups
Popup windows are another popular way to use JavaScript links. Ian Lloyd of Accessify.com fame wrote an excellent article for SitePoint, titled, The Perfect Pop-Up. Check it out for a helpful approach that's accessibility-friendly and search-crawler friendly, too.

Avoid dynamic URLs that contain ?, &, $, =, +, and % characters, cgi-bin, session IDs, or cookies.

These URLs are usually the result of query strings on dynamic pages. Some search engine crawlers are wary of such URLs because they could potentially be infinite links that would overload the crawler. As a result, they may not index pages that use these URLs, especially when three or more of these characters are included in the address. As Eytan Seidman, MSN Search Program Manager, states, "The algorithm starts to wonder whether it is going to get stuck in a loop endlessly crawling every single permutation of the query parameters. Thus, URLs with many (definitely more than 5) query parameters have a very low chance of ever being crawled." (Eytan Seidman, Crawling the Internet..., msnsearch's WebLog (November 18, 2004).) Here's an example of the kind of URL Mr Seidman's talking about:

http://mybyz.com/products/page.aspx?view=14&tab=6&pcid=24B8-100084  
9@@@@&section=586&origin=mybyzsearch&cookie=false

URL Rewriting won't Eradicate the Endless Loop
Although you can use URL rewriting to eliminate the problem characters and create more human-friendly URLs, you won't be eliminating much bigger potential problems—it's critically important to ensure that search engine crawlers won't get stuck in an endless loop that would overload them.

Use text alternatives to Flash content.

If your site uses Flash to present content that you really want or need search engine crawlers to index, provide text alternatives that they can index. If you use Flash for your entire web site without providing text alternatives, don't expect search engine crawlers to index your site.

Provide metadata and text alternatives for audio and other rich media files.

Typical metadata information includes the title, author, copyright, and a description of the content. Specialty search tools, such as Singingfish, use this metadata to help users find rich media, including MP3 files. Be sure to include helpful text information about your rich media content within your web pages, too.