Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet
When it comes to SEO, I think people are often looking for the magic key that will guarantee high search rankings and front page positions. This is why so many companies exist that guarantee High Ranking search results in 48 hours or other schemes, tricks and flat out lies.
The reality is that is takes time, hard work, and accurate technique to get the results that you want. It's in the are of accurate technique that we could all use a leg-up. Danny Dover over at SEOMoz.org has spent a lot of time researching the SEO scene and has put together a little Cheat Sheet to help developers and website owners ensure that they are at least headed in the right direction as far as technique is concerned.
Click Here to Download the PDF
The Cheat Sheat is for the most part pretty self-explanatory but I would like to highlight and make some comments on a few of the sections:
The importance of Title Tags can not be overstated expecially when they are well crafted and compliment the content on your page. This is a nice reminder that a good Title Tag includes not just your website's name but carefully selected Keywords that communicate exactly what the page is about. for example, notice the Title Tag of this page:
SEO Cheat Sheet | RynoMedia Resources
I'm not trying to push our site as the perfect SEO friendly site but this is a good example of a functional Title Tag that includes our Keyword "SEO" while also indicating what's on the page, "Cheat Sheet" and then connecting it to our Website "RynoMedia" as well as where it belongs "Resources". It might take a little more time to craft a Title Tag but it will be well worth the effort. (Concrete5 users - check out our Blog Post on adding Title Tags in Concrete5)
This section is a good reminder that Search Engine Robots love well thought-out content that is clearly laid out on a page, aka sections and important words are identified by Header Tags and Bold/Strong tags. It's also a good reminder that when inserting images and links we can boost the ability of a robot to interpret these images and links by giving them 'alt'ernate names and or a 'title'. Website owners are often lazy and so neglect this simple but important step in making your pages transparent to Search Engine Robots. (for example each of this post's images has had appropriate 'alt' tags given to them; you can test this out by hovering your mouse over an image and wait for it's title to appear).
I just want to say a quick word about this, mainly that there is indeed a limit to your Title Tag area, Meta Description, number of links on a page and the depth of your URL.
I recently stumbled across a low budjet design firm's website and was astonished to find that they had used about 30 Keywords as part of their Title Tag. Not only is this just plain stupid but actually can and will hurt your page ranking and Search Engine Results.
This applies to page linking as well. Sometimes people are under the impression that if they have a page with a lot of shared links it will give them a 'boost'. Good shared links are indeed a boost but to much of a good thing will become stale and useless.
So, like I mentioned in the openning. There really isn't a magic trick to SEO but there is such a thing as hard work and proper technique and with a little of both you should see your website climb the page rank ladder.
Thanks and Cheers
Ryan Vars
RynoMedia
