GaryTheScubaGuy's SEO Checklist

I found this SEO Checklist by GaryTheScubaGuy and thbought I'd share it with you. This is really good stuff. I found this list via Terri Well's article Checking the List: SEO Details on seochat.com

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Metatags and on-page Optimization

• Are the keywords in the title with a 1-word buffer (Max - 1 keyword phrase)
• Are Keywords in META keywords? It’s not necessary for Google, but a good habit. Keep the META keywords short (128 characters max, or 10).
• Are Keywords in META description? Keep keyword close to the left but in a full sentence.
• Are Keywords in the top portion of the page in first sentence of first full bodied paragraph (plain text: no bold, no italic, no style).
• Are Keywords in an H2-H4 heading
• Are Keywords in bold – second paragraph if possible and anywhere but the first usage on page.
• Are Keywords in italic – anywhere but the first usage?
• Are Keywords in subscript/superscript?
• Are Keywords in URL (directory name, filename, or domain name). Do not duplicate the keyword in the URL.
• Are Keywords in an image filename used on the page?
• Are Keywords in ALT tag of that previous image mentioned?
• Are Keywords in the title attribute of that image?
• Are Keywords in link text to another site?
• Are Keywords in an internal link’s text?
• Are Keywords in title attribute of all links targeted in and out of page?
• Are Keywords in the filename of your external CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) or JavaScript file?
• Are Keywords in an inbound link on site (preferably from your home page).
• Are Keywords in an inbound link from offsite (if possible).
• Are Keywords in an html comment tag?

Technical

• What is the code-to-text ratio? (text should be at minimum higher than the code)
• What is the page size?
• How long does it take to load the page?
• On each page, is the top keyword density on each page between 3-7%?
• Are their any redirects? If so do not use 401. 301 redirect is the preferred SEO standard.
• Is the page W3C Compliant?
• Is their any duplicate content out on the web?
• Is the site in the top 10 directories?
• Is a spider seeing all of the site content?

Other Issues

• Are there at least 250 words in the content?
• Is the keyword density for each kw on each page between 3-7%?
• JavaScript in external files?
• Alternative navigation on flash or frames?
• Xml and html sitemap?
• Are their any broken links?
• Is there a robots.txt file?
• Browser Compatibility (IE, Netscape, Opera, Firefox, Mosaic and Safari)

Linking

• Does the page have rss feeds for fresh on-page content?
• Does the site have an SEO optimized 404 page?
• PDF optimized docs in root file with a navigation page listing each doc description and link. Also a separate xml sitemap for these and separate submission.

Wikipedia Conquering Google First, World Next?

by Terri Wells, SEOChat

If you’ve been using Google to search for just about anything lately, you’ve probably noticed a strange trend: entries from Wikipedia appear at or near the top of the first results page. What’s going on here? Is it something we should worry about? What, if anything, should you do about it for the sake of your web site?
The first thing you should know is that you're not imagining this trend. Hitwise recently reported that Wikipedia's share of Google downstream traffic has gone up 166 percent over the past 12 months. Wikipedia receives 70 percent of its traffic from the search engines. Google by far is the largest source of search engine traffic for the online encyclopedia anyone can edit; half of Wikipedia's visitors show up as a result of being referred from Google. {more}