Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

So what makes for good SEO you ask, well a lot of things. Here is a quick list for anyone starting out in SEO or just interested in learning what the heck it takes to at least get your pages ranked somewhere in Google:

1. Submit them.
   Seems pretty obvious, but a lot of people don’t bother submitting their pages and just assume that Google will somehow magically find their pages. Just do a quick Google search for “submit pages to Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.” and you’ll find the links you need.
2. Have a reliable web host.
   One measure that Google uses to ensure that you are a legitimate site and not just moving content all over the web is the amount of uptime your site has.
3. Have a memorable or obvious domain name.
   Some people try to get too clever with their domain name. The most obvious will is the best one. There is a great SNL skit that reminds me of this point. If you are a “chicago web developer“, check to see if “ChicagoWebDeveloper.com” is available. It’s not, but just an example.

4. Set Robots.txt to allow everybody.
   I have had clients in the past who have asked me, “Why does Yahoo index my site, but not Google?” and then I check their robots.txt file and for some reason the Google bot is set to disallow instead of allow. The best thing to do is just allow everyone to spider your content, unless you are worried that your content will walk away, but you can address that with a copyright poilcy or creative commons license.
5. Tell your friends.
   Have your friends, family, co-workers, online buddies, and anyone else you know put links to your website on their pages. If you know a specific phrase they should use for anchor text, have them code it that way, but any link is better than no link.
6. Do some keyword research.
   There are a lot of keyword tools out there for you to use. My old standbys are overture keywords, wordtracker, and google keywords. There’s also the handy dandy lowtech idea of using a thesaurus to look up synonymous words.
7. Add meta tags - title, keywords, description.
   Decide what content you want to focus on for your domain after you have done some keyword research. Once you have those keywords you can crank out some titles, keywords, and descriptions. Although watch out for the title tag monster, as title tag abuse can strike at any time.
8. Add unique meta tags - title keywords, description.
   Now just because you add titles, keywords, and descriptions doesn’t mean Google will jump for joy. They need to be unique to each page. So if you are using a CMS, make sure it is robust enough to customize these on a per page basis. If you are coding these based on user input, make sure they either enter them or you take some key bits of their content and use that as your meta information.
9. Code it for the latest web standards.
   By coding your site to the latest web standards (XHTML, CSS, XML, etc.) you can ensure that you will be using as little code as possible on the backend, so when your pages are spidered they only see content and not tag soup. This is also best practice for usability purposes as well and just to show off that you’re a smarty pants and on top of things.
10. Write something worth reading.
    If you’re users are bored to death, they will not be coming back first of all and second of all, they will not be linking to your site. If you can write something that they can email to their friends, add to del.icio.us, post on their blog, or otherwise distribute or publish, you are more likely to have them coming back time and time again and ideally linking to your content to increase your rankings.
11. Create unique content.
    Just because you’ve written something great, doesn’t mean you should put it up on 25 pages on your site. Because it’s great and because people are linking to it, keep it in one place. Don’t let the message get watered down by copying and pasting it around your site.
12. Set up tools to make it easy for your users to link to you.
    Create a “link to us” page that makes it easy for your users to link to you in the manner you want. Provide them with easy to copy HTML code that they can just drop on their site.
13. Make it fun to link to you.
    By coming up with a gimmick, you can make it easy and fun for your users to link to you. If you come up with a widget where every time they view some code you provide, a link appears and a random image that’s humorous, they might use it more often. By making it fun and unexpected, your visitors will keep coming back and tell their friends.
14. Plug the forums.
    If you have content on your site that the world should read - hit the forums, blogs, communities, etc. and get the word out. Post links directly into your content. This will make spidering your content occur faster and more regularly the more links you can get into your site.
15. Run a press release.
    Press releases have increasingly become the avenue of the savvy PR and SEO person. However, take any traffic promised by PR outlets with a grain of salt. The real money maker is if a media outlet like your local newspaper or TV station picks up on your press release and reposts any links you have included in your release.
16. Make your urls obvious and permanent.
    When implementing a database driven content system, it’s easy to forget about usability in your link structure and just code away with query strings hanging off the end of urls. However, as I’ve written about before, search engine’s love easy to read urls and will reward you as a result.
17. Use relevant information in anchor text.
    “Click Here” and “More Info” just don’t do it in today’s SEO heavy world. You need to have relevant keywords in the majority of links on you site. Relate the keywords in the link to the header of the page you are sending them for optimal results.
18. Use text, not images.
    Search engines love text, there’s no denying that. So if you have a choice, go for a typography heavy design, as opposed to image heavy. Your users will thank you for less download time and the search engines will thank you for easy content they can use.
19. Check your “alt” tags.
    If you have to use images, make sure your “alt” tags are spot on. Image alt tags are the last bastion of the SEO world. Tons of content can be relayed with one image, but often people just put “Part Number 5″ or “Grocery Store” in an image. Use that to it’s fullest potential and put everything that appears in the image into the “alt” tag.
20. Don’t hide content.
    The black hat’s love to do this. It used to work where you could put white text on a white background at the bottom of a page and get a bunch of ranking, but as Google and others become more sophisticated, this is going the way of the dodo. And if they manually find you doing this, watch out. Bye Bye rankings.
21. Make sure all your content points to one domain.
    I have seen some of my clients set up “www.domain.com”, “www3.domain.com”, “domain.com” and host all the same content there. With the way in which Google currently indexes subdomains, it sees this as multiple websites all with the same content and will make it as supplemental. Make sure all your domains forward to one domain, unless you have substantially different content.
22. Ask your local businesses for a link.
    If you just ask, sometimes your local businesses will add a link to their “Links” page just for being a customer or their neighbor. The worst they can say is no.
23. Create your own local business listing if you can.
    For the mom and pop bakery shop, this is a great idea. As more and more tools are developed to share information, your local listing may end up on someone’s website without you even knowing it. By creating a local listing in Yahoo local or Google local, you can set up a link to your site for all to see.
24. Set up alternate sites.
    Have other side projects with websites? Add a link to your new one or one in which you want increase traffic and ranking. If you don’t have any alternate sites, you can set them up yourself. Set up a blog or forum or something else you can use to plug your newly created site.
25. Ask the experts.
    Read journals, blogs, communities to stay on top of the latest news and information related to SEO. Since this topic changes minute by minute and their is always a new avenue to try or a new thing to see, this is the only way to keep informed. Or you can just email me or subscribe to my RSS feed and I’ll do the heavy lifting for you

I know there are LOTS of others to add to this list, but just wanted to give a quick overview of 25 things to try when you are just starting out. What did I forget? Let me know if the comments.