The SEO Checklist

The WebConfs website has a very useful list of “Best and Worst Practices for Designing a High Traffic Website.” Basically they collected all the major factors that might affect the search optimization of your site, attributing a score to them. The score ranges from -3, which is very bad for your site, to +3, which is very good. Below you will find a summary of the most important factors:

Keywords

• Keyword in title tag (+3)
• Keyword in URL (+3)
• Keyword density in document (+3)
• Keyword in H1 and H2 headings (+3)
• Keyword in the beginning of document (+2)
• Keyword in ALT tags (+2)
• Keyword in Meta tags (+1)
• Keyword stuffing (-3)

Links

• Anchor text of inbound links (+3)
• Origin of inbound links (+3)
• Links from similar sites (+3)
• Links from .edu and .gov sites (+3)
• Anchor text of internal links (+2)
• Many outgoing links (-1)
• Outbound links to bad neighbors (-3)
• Cross-linking (-3)

Meta Tags

• Description Meta Tag (+1)
• Keywords Meta Tag (+1)
• Refresh Meta Tag (-1)

Content

• Unique content (+3)
• Frequent updates (+3)
• Age of content (+2)
• Poor coding or design (-2)
• Invisible text (-3)
• Doorway pages (-3)
• Duplicate content (-3)

Other factors

• Site accessibility (+3)
• Sitemap (+2)
• Site size (+2)
• Site age (+2)
• Top-level domain (+1)
• URL length (0)
• Hosting downtime (-1)
• Flash (-2)
• Misused Redirects (-3)