SEO best practise - list

This is probably by no means a definitive list but I follow this and it has helped me increase levels of organic traffic to my site.

Initial research
· Every page is a website asset and should bring more traffic based on keywords you
decide upon
· Target content towards achievable and relevant search terms
· Use Keyword Tool to find long tail search terms and compare volumes
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
· Find out about competitors –differentiate your keywords if they are too competitive
· Create information clusters/hubs
Meta data and on-page elements
Title
· Page titles should be unique and describe the page
· Between 50-67 characters long
· Include the primary keyword and follow a call to action layout
[Action Verb] [Primary Keyword] [Brand]
· Title should be interesting, relevant and encourage the user to click on the link
Meta Description
· Each page should have a unique meta description
· No more than 150 characters
· Should encourage a search engine user to visit the page.
Meta Keywords
· The tag may sometimes be useful to reinforce the page ‘theme’ on the few search
engines that still support it. When using it I recommend using no more than
12 search phrases with 4 words in each phrase.
Alt Attribute
· Any image should use a descriptive and accurate ALT attribute.
· Should describe the image and if possible include page keywords
Heading Tags
· The <h1>tag should be used once on a page, describe the page topic and include
primary keyword. <h2> and <h3> tags should also be used to break up page copy and highlight
important sections of the page.
· Never over use the number of times a heading tag is placed on the page.

External Links
· Comment on blogs or forums and leave your URL with relevant anchor text
· Adding pages to the social bookmarking websites is sometimes the quickest way
to get pages indexed and rank for less competitive search terms

Page Creation and Content
· Page content should be unique and not copied from another page of the site or another
website
· Keyword targeting should be consistent across all on page elements and meta tags to
support theme
· When writing content think about the words users would type to find your pages
· Don’t use images to display text or important links. Search engines cannot read text
contained in images.
· Use relevant page keywords in a URL to increase click through rate
· Keep links on a page to less than 100
· Improve rankings by adding descriptive links between pages that are related pages,
offer similar content or complement each other.
· Use keywords in anchor text that describe page linking to
· Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link
· When linking from one page to another on the same site, keywords should be included
in the link text
· Internal links should avoid script based navigation as search engines cannot follow
them
· Use HTML links in all cases
Technical guidelines
· Make the site is crawlable. Don’t include things like JavaScript, flash, frames or session
IDs in the coding.
· Keep the URLs short and descriptive and avoid using variable strings (i.e., a “?”
character)
· Use robots.txt file to prevent crawling of pages that don’t add value for users
· Non existing URL’s should always return 404 code
· Ensure 301 “moved permanently” redirect is implemented when pages change. This
helps users and also transfers link value to the new page
· Add pages to the XML sitemap file and link the sitemap from robots.txt
General Don’ts
· Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
· Don’t use cloaking and avoid “doorway” pages with no unique content.
· Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
· Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate
content.
· Don’t use forms, Flash, Ajax or JavaScript for navigation and to display menus.
· Don’t use “click here” or “read more” as anchor text
· Don’t focus too much on PageRank. PageRank doesn’t get updated very often and it is
not an accurate indicator of success.
· Don’t require cookies for web site access. The search engine robots won’t be able to
read pages that require them.