SEO Copywriting: Search Engine Optimization Checklist

Randall Rensch, copywriter

The SEO Copywriter's Checklist

Just so we're both starting on the same foot, here's what "Search Engine Optimization" means —

SEO is the process of:

Making your website attractive to search sites and easy for them to accurately list you
Also making it easy for people to find you
Enticing them to click-through to your site
and
Being persuasively on-target so that their expectations are fulfilled when they arrive.

Notice I said nothing about "keywords" or "ranking highly". That's just part of the "easy to find" part.

Also notice that for SEO to be effective, it must include all four of these elements. A mistake made by many marketers — even many SEO providers and marketing agencies — is that they stop with the first two or three tasks. But if you don't satisfy your prospect's expectations, it's all for naught.

So, at its fullest, SEO is a multi-step, ongoing process that encompasses everything from your site's look and the form of its code, to what you say on each page and in all your site descriptions. At its simplest, SEO is a checklist of things you can add or modify in a relatively short time. SEO is a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which includes paid search listings and your overall marketing strategy. "Organic" SEO consists of things that are visible on your web pages and the underlying code, including some of the documents.

So, good news! Organic SEO takes a while to accomplish, and a while to work, but once done and successful, you can sit back and relax. Sort of.

And now the "bad" news.

SEO is not what it used to be, even just a few years ago. It has gotten much more sophisticated and more complex. It's no longer a relatively easy matter of learning some word-density formulas and such, and then writing to spec. In fact, today the idea of an SEO Checklist can seem (and be) rather naive. More on this below the fold.

For the basic "top-line" SEO Checklist, SCROLL DOWN.

OR GET THE DETAILED VERSION NOW.
The top-line version tells what to do. The detailed version tells how.
As I've noted above and below, the Detailed Checklist is very out of date, but parts of it will still be helpful. And it's free. Get it now.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (2019):

SEO techniques are constantly evolving, and since my first version of this list in 2008, they have changed a LOT. In fact, some aspects of SEO have become so complex that it would be silly to list them all here. The average businessperson would waste a lot of time by trying to keep abreast of standards and trends, and very possibly could be tweaking on the basis of obsolete information.

But, if you know anything about the topic, you might ask, "Yes, but what about 'organic' SEO -- things I can do once, or just now and then, that will enhance my search engine position based simply on what is on my pages? In other words, without fancy programming, embedded codes and continual revision and other work?"

The sad response these days is, "That IS organic SEO -- even the static, natural changes you might incorporate into your site have become more extensive, more complicated, and different in their nature. For example, while it is still important to incorporate keywords and key phrases, the days of salting them at prescribed intervals in a certain percentage relative to your overall content ... those days have come and gone. There is so much competition for position, that it's first critically important to understand how people will search for your site, exactly what phrases they will use, and embed those phrases in a natural way. Overdoing it can actually get you penalized!

More important is your site's reputation, and your reputation as an authority or go-to-source for the type of product or information your site is about. That means developing unique, useful content, and cultivating links to it from other sites having as much or more authority.

So, you can go through this list. It won't hurt to attend to these practices (and avoid the no-no's), many of which are now almost two decades old.

But for a current list of important SEO practices that don't require special expertise (other than being a good, knowledgeable writer), I'll refer you to some authorities respected throughout the SEO industry:

SearchEngineLand.com: The 40-point SEO checklist for startups ... The entire SearchEngineLand site is one of the original search engine authorities and still a champ. Its co-founder Danny Sullivan is currently a public liason officer at Google.
SearchEngineWatch.com: Somewhat redundant here but still up-to-the-minute with lots of SEO and SEM details, this site was founded and sold by Danny Sullivan before he moved on to Search Engine Land.
Michigan Tech Five Ways to Improve your Site's Ranking (SEO) ... I chose this almost at random. There are a zillion such lists and this one is hardly exhaustive. But it's not promoting its own SEO services, and in turn, it includes some good further resources, including Google Webmaster Tools.

Nevertheless, attention to all these points will take you a long way. They are in the order you should take them, but many can be done at the same time. As far as it goes, I have tried to update it reasonably well for 2019.

One more important point ...

... that I barely touch on below is the impact of "web content" on Search Engine results. In pursuit of rankings, countless websites are constantly adding "content" (how I hate that word!) of various sorts, often in the form of "blog" posts or articles. Don't get me started on that subject; it's grist for an article in itself. For now, suffice it to say that before you start blogging, you should understand exactly what you hope to achieve, how to make your blog worth reading, and how to promote it.

The point is to be seen as an authority in your field and acquire genuine referrals from other sites and authors. There are already way, way, way too many blithering "bloggers" saying pretty much the same things. That's not helpful to their cause, nor to rest of us.

Although this list is probably not exhaustive, it may be exhausting. So another way to do all this is is simply to call or write an experienced SEO copywriter.

For the basic "top-line" SEO Checklist, SCROLL DOWN.

OR GET THE DETAILED VERSION NOW.
The top-line version tells what to do. The detailed version tells how.
As I've noted above, the Detailed Checklist is very out of date, but parts of it will still be helpful. And it's free. Get it now.

The SEO CHECKLIST

How're you doing now?
• Spot-check the major search engines and note how your site is doing.
• Don't over-use or misuse rank-checking automation.
• If it's working, don't "fix" it. Much.
• But do keep your site fresh and persuasive.

Do keywords research.
• Use your prospect's words, not just your own.
• Focus on phrases, not words.
• What keyphrases are most popular? Learn this at Wordtracker and Google.
• What relevant keyphrases have less competition? (Wordtracker tells you this, too.)
• Use relevant keyphrases having a high popularity-to-competition ratio. (Wordtracker quantifies this for you.)
• Is NOBODY searching online in your category? Use other channels to market your site.

Mind your appearance and architecture
• Make your site visually attractive.
• Make your site's operation clear and highly usable.
• Is the your site's topic apparent at first glance?
• Are your filenames based on relevant keywords?
• Try to avoid frames. If you can't or don't want to, use appropriate workarounds
• Eliminate or deal with spider traps (e.g., dynamic URLs). Implement workarounds if necessary.
• Include a special Sitemap page for spiders. And a different site map page for people.
• Include a robots.txt file.
• Avoid delays and dead ends.
• Never say "under construction" on a live site.

Write clean overall code
• Put your indexable content as early as possible in the source code.
• Put heavy JavaScript and CSS code in external files.
• Minimize use of multiple nested tables and other complex page programming.
• Include spider-friendly navigation.
• Remember that spiders don't read images and generally don't read javascript. Some spiders may soon read text-based (not image-based) Flash.
• Include alternative text within <noscript> tags.

GET THE DETAILED VERSION NOW.
This "top-line" version of my SEO Checklist tells what to do. The detailed version tells how. It's free. Get it now.

Make use of codes ("Tags", "Attributes", Etc.)
• A unique Title tag for each page.
• A specific, compelling Description meta tag for each page.
• Keywords meta tag.
• Image "alt" attributes. (Also use them to sell.)
• Title attributes (don't confuse this with Title Tag).
• Headlines and headers.
• Use keywords as your links
• Use <a name=> Links.
• Table caption tags, if appropriate.
• Image captions, if appropriate.

Make the site keyword and content rich
• Build content.
• Have content throughout the site.
• Make it unique content.
• Keyword placement and frequency are important — not too little, nor too much.
• Be sure it's written VERY well. You should be conscious of the way you embed keywords, but your visitors shouldn't be aware of it at all. Make human visitors your first priority. Give them concise, highly readable web copy that quickly delivers what they were looking for, and lead them directly to the action you want most -- be it a sale, phone contact, email, a download, etc.

Avoid the unintended faux pas
• Avoid invisible text.
• Avoid teensy-weensy text.

Optimize your entire site.
• Optimize your interior pages.
• Give each page its own focus.

Manual submission.
• Submit to Search Engines and Directories. For each Directory, select your category and word your description carefully.
• Know what you submission software does, and keep it careful.
• Do not oversubmit.
• Some, including Google and Yahoo, accept site map submissions in certain formats.
• Plan Open Directory (dmoz.org) and Yahoo Directory carefully. Read ALL the instructions at ODP. Leave Yahoo till last, and only if you need it.

Link popularity
• Cultivate quality links and avoid garbage links.
• Write custom emails.
• Suggest the page you should be on, and if not self-evident, briefly explain why.
• Offer descriptions they can use.
• Ask them to link using a keyphrase of yours, but not the same one for every partner.
• Reciprocate conservatively. Don't water down your pages. If your site will really make the other one more valuable to its visitors, the site should want to link to you regardless.
• Links from Yahoo and Open Directory count bigtime.
• There are ways tools to search for sites compatible with yours, and which link to your competitors. Also try Ken Evoy's Value Exchange.
• Participate meaningfully in Web 2.0 communications — blogging, social networking, etc. (The value in this goes beyond just SEO.)

Server-side
• Evaluate any server-side techniques you are using, for honesty and SEO compatibility.
• Don't delete or rename old pages that are well indexed. Instead update them, or politely redirect to the new one(s), manually or automatically (depends).
• Keep the site active. Re-upload various pages now and then, after making small revisions.
• Be sure pages appear quickly and without errors.

Do bridge pages/landing pages honestly
• Build bridge pages if/as needed, and give them true content.
• Evaluate Pay-Per-Click directory opportunties, and plan for clickthrough tracking.

Convert visitors into sales.
• Improved sales conversion often outweighs improved SEO performance.

Keep at it.
• Do it again.