So I haven’t actually written about SEO in quite a while and a few of my readers (well, one really - and no, It wasn’t my Mom) have expressed concern that my SEO blog is losing focus and turning into a Social Media blog. This is true, I have been addicted to social media - and the first step to fixing an addiction is to admit your problem. My name is Dave, and I am a social media addict.
Anyway, on to SEO.
I was recently asked this question - “What are the first things you look at, on a website, when you start a new SEO project”
Great question, I actually have a mental checklist - That I will now turn into a physical one for you. My first glance is generally for technical issues that can be fixed quickly without much effort and generally my first first steps to any SEO project (keyword research not included.)
- Useless Meta-tags - Get rid of them.
- 301 Redirect - to “www” or not to “www” (example.com or www.example.com)
- 404 Pages - Try example.com/thispageisnotherebecauseitshouldbea404 - if a 404 message doesn’t come up something is wrong.
- Robots.txt - Make sure it doesn’t block things that it shouldn’t LIKEWISE make sure it blocks things that it should (TOS, user logins, privacy policy, ect - unless these things are original and fun and you want them indexed)
- Make sure no duplicate content issues - such as examplesite.com and examplesite.com/homepage being the same
- Are internal links maximized? Anchor text uses natural language that describes what it links to rather than “CLICK HERE” or “MORE”
- Heavy Java script at the top? Can it be externalized? Can it be moved down?
- Image Alt tags - use them
And that’s it - Of course there is much more to the SEO process, but as a first glance these are the things I notice. I will probably expand this list in a future post - to outline the entire process - as there is more to what I see right away, but I was trying to make this a simple/quick checklist.