Being involved with SEO Strategies for over ten years, I often describe the process as a game of chess where all pieces move at the same time. The more sophisticated search engines such as Google and Bing become, the more a well-balanced SEO strategy pays off. There are quite a few DO and DON’Ts that can be on-site as well as off-site. Rather than optimising specifically for search engines, the trend has definitely moved towards optimising for users in a search engine friendly manner. Also, if you over-use keywords, you will ultimately be punished maybe even banned.
To give you an insight into the SEO expert’s headspace we have compiled the following short-list.
On-site factors that can positively influence your SEO Strategy
- Keyword in URL
- Primary Keyword in Domain name
- Keyword in the Title tag
- Primary Keyword in the Description meta tag
- Keyword in Keyword meta tag
- Keyword density in body text
- Individual keyword density
- Keyword in H1, H2 and H3
- Main Keyword font size
- Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords)
- Main Keyword phrase order
- Keyword prominence (how early in page/tag)
- Primary Keyword in alt text
- Keyword in links to site pages (anchor text)
- Links to internal pages- keywords?
- Are all Internal links valid?
- Efficient – tree-like structure
- Intra-site linking
- Links to external pages- keywords?
- Outgoing link Anchor Text
- Link stability over time
- All External links valid?
- Less than 100 links out total
- Linking to Authority
- Domain Name Extension Top Level Domain – TLD
- File Size
- Hyphens in URL
- Freshness of Pages
- Dynamic – Amount of Content Change
- Freshness of Links
- Frequency of Updates
- Page Theming
- URL length
- Site Size – Google likes big sites
- Site Age
- Age of page vs age of the site
Understanding these factors is essential for the production and maintenance of our websites.
