This is my attempt to list and categorise every SEO technique and many of the associated tools and tutorials. I have an almost OCD like desire to organise things and this checklist is a reflection of that. I’ve realised that many of the techniques don’t fit into any one category but I’m doing my best to put them in the most logical place. In some cases I will put a technique in two places if it makes sense. If you don’t understand any of the terminology you can also check out this SEO Glossary from SEOlium.
Index
- Existing Website Problems
- Search Results Types
- Click Through Rate
- Keyword Research
- Inbound Link Building
- Social Sharing
- Keyword Optimisation
- Website Architecture
- Website Content
- Accessibility
Existing Website Problems
This section will list common problems that existing websites have that might be preventing them from ranking well.
Try working through this Technical Site Audit Checklist
- Tools
- Screaming frog crawler [tool]
- Free SEO tool [tool]
- Site: search on google [tool]
- Google webmaster tools [tool]
- Problem areas
- Keyword research
- Not done
- Poorly done
- Out of date
- Keyword optimisation
- Duplication
- Missing
- Not optimised
- Over done (keyword stuffing etc.)
- Duplicate content
- www and non www
- http and https
- Multiple url paths to the same content
- Site speed
- Page speed online [tool]
- Indexation
- Robots.txt
- No index meta
- No follow internal links
- Links
- Broken links (incoming)
- Broken links (outgoing)
- Keyword research
Search Results Types
- Google
- General/integrated web search
- Image
- Alt tags
- Video
- Video site maps
- Local (places)
- Claim listing
- Data canonicalisation [concept]
- Encourage reviews
- Uploaded pictures
- Use optimised categories
- News
- Google news acceptance
- Multiple authors
- Google news acceptance
- Product
- Google shopping feed
- Bing/yahoo
- Other search engines
Click Through Rate
- Rich snippets
- Schema/ Microdata
- Schema creator [tool]
- Schema for wordpress [wp plugin]
- Authorship (rel=author)
- Events
- Recipes
- Videos
- Meta descriptions
- Titles
- Social connections
- Deep links
- Breadcrumb navigation
- Site links
- Rich snippets testing tool [tool]
- Schema/ Microdata
- Branding
- Google Places
- Reviews
Keyword Research
- Keyword generation
- Concepts
- Keyword types
- Traffic/Specificity
- Market defining keywords (MDK)
- Head terms
- Mid tale
- Long tale
- Branded
- Discovery
- Local
- Hyper-local
- User intent
- Browse
- Research
- Price comparison
- Purchase
- Traffic/Specificity
- Keyword variations
- Synonyms
- Thesaurus.com [tool]
- Spellings
- Misspellings
- Regional spellings
- Multiple spellings
- Plural/singular
- Noun/verb
- Synonyms
- Keyword types
- Generation methods
- Human generated
- Internal
- Interview method
- Look at products and categories
- Brainstorming
- Existing referring keywords
- External
- Competitor research
- Internal
- Computer generated (with initial human input)
- Keyword tool
- Google keyword tool
- Wordtracker
- Suggest tool
- Keyword tool
- Hybrid (significant amount of both human and computer work)
- Root + stem + leaf method
- Human generated
- Concepts
- Analysis
- Traffic potential
- Search traffic
- Wikipedia method [about/how to]
- Keyword tool
- Google insights for search [tool]
- Google trends [tool]
- Wordtracker [tool – paid]
- Google adwords keyword tool [tool]
- Internal data
- On-site search
- Adwords data
- Keyword impressions
- Ad impressions
- Click through rate (CTR)
- Google analytics data
- Blogging activity
- Fresh Web Explorer [tool – paid]
- Social activity
- Twitter search [tool]
- Topsy [tool]
- Social mention [tool]
- Search traffic
- Competition
- Keyword difficulty tool [tool – paid]
- Number of competing pages
- Global results
- Local results
- Pages from ‘country’
- Keywords in title
- Keywords in url
- Keywords in incoming anchors
- Availability of exact match domains [about] [used by Todd Mintz]
- Number of paid advertisers
- Strength of ranking pages/websites
- Rank measure
- Page rank
- Moz rank
- Domain authority
- Page authority
- Alexa rank
- Domain age
- Backlinks
- Page backlinks
- Domain backlinks
- .edu backlinks
- .gov backlinks
- Authority of backlinking sites
- Index count
- Keyword optimisation
- In the domain
- In the URL
- In the title
- In the heading
- Home page or subpage
- Are there any communities ranking? [about] [used by Glenn Allsop]
- Quality of content
- Social data
- Number of twitter followers
- Number of facebook fans
- Number of rss subscribers
- Rank measure
- CPC in Adwords
- Google tool competition bar
- Iterative approach [about] [used by Larry Kim]
- Commercial potential
- Cost per click
- Conversion rate
- Relevancy
- Google image search
- User intent
- Traffic potential
- Keyword selection
Inbound Link Building
Theory
- Link concepts
- Link prospecting
- Variety
- Linkable assets
- Link neighbourhood
- Motivation/reasons for linking
- Content linkability
- Link value
- Link authority
- Page rank
- .edu
- .gov
- Link location
- Above/below the fold
- Site wide
- Within main content
- Number of other links on the page
- Link neighbourhood
- Traffic
- Link variety
- Linking pages
- Linking domains
- Class 3 subnets
- Link relevancy
- Linking page relevance to your page
- Link neighbourhood
- Anchor text
- Long tail
- Exact match
- Link authority
- Link types
- Efficiency & scalability
- Tools
- Free
- Yahoo site explorer
- Majestic SEO site explorer
- Open site explorer
- Topsy
- Follower wonk
- Xenu’s link sleuth
- Firefox plugins
- SEOmoz
- SEO book
- SEO quake
- Paid
- SEOmoz
- Ontolo
- Link research tools
- Ravin
- Majestic SEO
- Article samurai
- Buzz Stream
- Free
- Manual Outreach
- Email
- Gmail efficiency [how to]
- Outlook efficiency [about]
- Email
- Relationship building How To How to from Dan Ray
- Provide Encouragement [eff]
- Offline
- Online
- Help webmasters
- Alert them to broken links
- Dead content recreation
- Fixing grammar/spelling
- Finding malware
- Filling gaps in content
- Update old content
- Give them hosting
- Logo/Graphic/Web design
- Ask for influencers opinion before publishing
- Help webmasters
- Tools
- Common problems
- Unnatural link graph
- Unnatural link accumulation
- Over-optimised anchor text
- Evidence of buying links
Techniques
See this curated list of link building strategies
- Link prospecting
- Social media
- Networking [eff] [technique] [source]
- Relationship building How To How to from Dan Ray
- Online
- Answer questions
- Give a crap
- Participate
- G+ Hangouts/Skype
- Twitter RTs, Responses, and DMs
- Random acts of kindness
- Offline
- Conferences
- Call them
- Local meetups
- User group meetups
-
- Searching
- Advanced queries
- Using search queries for link building
- Operators
- Tilde (~)
- intitle:
- inurl:
- site:
- Or (|)
- Examples
- KW + “web resources”
- KW + research filetype:.pdf
- KW + (question keywords) – use google discussion search
- Google alerts for new link building opportunities [how to]
- Approach those more likely to link to you [eff] [technique]
- Mentions (citations) without links
- Websites already featuring your content without links
- Images
- Graphs, tables, graphics
- Scraped content
- Previous linkers [person type] [about]
- Existing customers (for reviews)
- Your followers and fans
- Your blog commentors
- Those already linking to your social pages [about]
- Look for opportunities to improve the anchor text or existing links [about]
- Advanced queries
- Using tools
- Scrapers [tool]
- Competitor backlink analysis
- Majestic SEO cliche finder [tool]
- Searching
- Editorial accumulation
- Orchestrated
- Link attraction (link bait)
- Lists
- Data/Research
- Infographics
- Interviews
- Crowdsourcing
- Interactive
- Infoanmiations
- Trollbait (controversy)
- Complete guides/resources
- Covering News first
- Curated rankings/scores
- Microsites
- Quizzes/Tests
- How to’s and tutorials
- Debunking myths
- Petition
- Glossary of terms
- Humor
- Case studies
- Surveys
- Research papers
- Printable resources
- Web tools
- White papers
- Ego-bait/ linking out [about]
- Link roundups
- Mention people where ever possible
- Focus on active medium level bloggers [eff] [source]
- Drawings
- Stories
- Games
- Live blogging
- Contrary hook
- Timely/Seasonal content
- Webinars
- Creating contests
- Google Maps mashup
- Review something new
- Debate articles
- Attack articles
- Create useful tools or apps
- Create buzz/ interest
- Give stuff away
- Create a competition
- Hold a sale
- Give a discount or coupon code
- Link attraction (link bait)
- Orchestrated
-
-
- Create/buy external linkable assets [eff]
- Post your job listings online
- Organise an event
- Content distribution
- Network with influencers
- Reporters
- Bloggers
- Manual outreach
- Tailor the content to specific communities e.g.
- Paid distribution
- Advertising
- Social sharing
- Social bookmarking
- Syndication
- Press release
- Enter your content into competitions and giveaways
- Network with influencers
- Non-orchestrated
- Create a ‘how to link to us’ page
- Enable trackbacks – maybe dofollow
- Branding & Goodwill
- Personal/individual branding
- Agree to be interviewed if asked
- Agree to be involved in crowdsourced content if asked
- Speaking gigs
- Conference
- Local university/college
- Local business group
- Networking event
- Coin a phrase in your industry [source]
- Personal/individual branding
- Increase your content’s general linkability [eff] [source]
- See ‘content writing’
-
- Manual suggestion (submission) and approval (editorial)
- Content based
- Article directories
- Guest blog posting
- Article trading
- Press release submission
- Blog directories
- Podcast directories
- Multimedia/Document submissions
- Infographic submissions
- Video submissions
- Ebook directories
- Enter your content into competitions and giveaways
- Cite your own content
- Wikipedia contributions (currently no follow)
- Other wiki contributions
- Q&A sites
- Non content based
- Directories
- Industry trade organisation directory
- Free web directories
- Paid directories
- Niche specific directories
- RSS directories
- Web 2.0 submission
- CSS/HTML5 galleries
- Theme/Template directories
- User rating reviews
- Company directory submissions
- Iphone app directories
- Web app directories
- Widget directories
- Non-English directories
- Web cam directories
- Logo design directories
- 1800 number directories
- Directories
- Content based
-
-
- Link lists
- Blog rolls
- Resource lists
- Local business lists
- Link lists
-
- Self created (non editorial)
- Self linking (interlinking between websites that you own)
- Site network
- Expired/abandoned domains
- Broken blogger blogs
- Check my links chrome extension [article]
- Buy other websites/ domains
- Web 2.0 sites
- Scraped content blogs
- External linkable assets
- Site network
- Blog commenting
- Forum posting
- Q & A sites
- Directories
- Community newspapers [website type]
- Community newspapers [info]
- Profile pages
- Press release submissions
- Review writing (with a reference link)
- Self linking (interlinking between websites that you own)
- Value exchange links
- Types
- Editorial
- Non-editorial
- Money
- Paid directories
- Join industry trade organisation
- Paid links
- Scholarships for .edu links
- Student discounts for .edu links
- Sponsorship
- Local meetup group
- Local sporting group
- Industry event
- Other event
- Local charity
- Competition/contest
- Blogging contest
- Blog theme sponsorship
- Paid reviews
- Crowd funding
- Advertising
- Affiliate
- Other advertising
- Paid directories
- Products/ services
- Free products for reviews
- Give stuff away
- Discounts
- Student freebies for .edu links
- Pro bono services for a link
- Competitions
- “Link to this page to enter”
- Traffic
- Stumble upon paid discovery traffic
- Information/ digital
- Testimonials for links
- 35 local link opportunities you missed [article]
- Link exchange
- Guest posting
- Guestographics [article]
- Article trading
- Article syndication
- Embeddable things (with link included)
- Free use of images for links
- Is an image worth a thousand words? [article]
- Charts and graphs included
- Contact webmasters already using your images
- Tineye [tool]
- Google image search [tool]
- Widgets
- Toolbars
- Plugins & extensions
- WordPress themes
- Drupal Themes
- Badges
- Icon sets
- Leverage copying and pasting [eff] [about]
- Free use of images for links
- Testimonials for links
- Types
- Link repairing
- On your site
- On other sites
- Check my links chrome extension [tool]
- Check my links chrome extension [article]
- Advanced queries
- “no longer available” [article]
- Xenu’s link sleuth [tool]
- Content replacement [concept]
- Check my links chrome extension [tool]
- Citations
- Local search
- Data canonicalisation
- Local business directories
- Social profiles
- Data canonicalisation
- Local search
Social Sharing
Theory
- Shareability
Techniques
- On-site social sharing
- Buttons
- Social comments
- Off-site social sharing
- +1’s in search results
- Retweets
- Social payment systems
- Paywithatweet.com [service/tool]
Keyword Optimisation
- Keyword location
- Anchor text
- Incoming links
- Outgoing links
- Internal links
- Titles
- Headings
- File names
- Content body (see also ‘Website Content’)
- Alt text
- Anchor text
- Common problems
- Keyword stuffing
- Duplicate titles
Website Architecture
- Structure
- Landing pages
- Navigation
- Faceted navigation
- Pagination
- Breadcrumb
- Redirects
- 301 vs 302
- Internal linking
- Vertical links
- Horizontal links
- Site search
- Archiving
- Duplicate content
- Sitemaps
- HTML for users
- XML for search engines
- Crawlability
- Robots.txt
- No follow
- No index
- Distance from the home page
- Javascript links
- Flash links
- Iframes
Website Content
- Content types
- Text
- Video
- Images
- Audio
- Tools
- Above the fold
- Keyword density
- Content : ads ratio
- Content : code ratio
- Quality
- Unique
- Sourced
- Author
- Engagement
- Images
- Graphs
- Headlines
- Value over time
- Time sensitive content
- Evergreen content
- Usability
- Text size
- Website speed
- Readability
- Dot points
- Paragraphs
- Readability (flesch-kincaid readability score)
- Minimal grammar & spelling mistakes
- Offering your content in multiple languages
- Common problems
- Duplicate content
- Scraped content
- Badly spun content
Accessibility
- Standards compliant
- Alt text
- Website works with flash, CSS, javascript and cookies turned off
- Cross browser compatibility
- Cross OS compatibility
- Errors
- 4xx
- 5xx
Major Resources:
- Ultimate Guide to Keyword Competition – Wordstream.com
- Link Building Strategies – PointBlankSEO.com
- Technical site audit checklist – SEOmoz.org
- 99 Ways to Build Links by Giving Stuff Away (and Improve Your Brand Too) – SEOmoz.org
- Linkbait guide – Distilled.net
- 9 Actionable tips for link prospecting – SEOmoz.org