SEO CheatSheet

Here is a run down for suggested SEO site modifications that can be applied to almost any website. You can use this as a check list to make sure you've covered the basics of SEO.

Footer Navigation

By adding a "text link" navigation in the footer of all pages the site becomes more indexable to search engine spiders. This footer navigation is also convenient because it does not interfere much with the design of the page. See our footer navigation on this page and all of our pages.

Code Changes

Every page should have a "Keyword Optimized" Title, Meta-Description, and Meta-Keywords tags. See the source code for our index page as an example, http://www.spiderbait.com/

Sitemap

Adding a Sitemap makes a website more indexable. An example of a sitemap is can be found here, http://www.spiderbait.com/sitemap.asp. It is simply good practice to include one for the sake of indexability. The site map should use text links and link to almost all pages using descriptive words in the linking text where practical. However, don't get too spammy with the keywords! This is frowned upon.

Google XML Sitemap

Adding a Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) to a site allows all pages listed in the file to become indexed in Google in a relatively short amount of time. This simply requires uploading a file to the root level of the domain. For example, http://www.spiderbait.com/sitemap.xml. And then submitting this file location to Google here.

URL Mod Re-Writes of "non-www" into "www" (example: this http://spiderbait.com/ into this http://www.spiderbait.com/)

By doing a mod rewrite (301 redirect) of non-www URLs in to www URLs the strength of inbound links is increased. The reason why this is is because some people link to a webpage with the "www" and some do with out. This creates, in essence, 2 different "link popularities" for a webpage. And by doing the mod rewrite both "link popularities" are combined. Some good references for performing a mod rewrite are here or here.

Here are some handy tools and resources

Keyword Suggestion Tools

wordtracker

7search

digital point

overture

      Read more about keyword targeting and integration:

http://www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert/2006/02/keyword-focus.asp

http://www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert/2005/07/keyword-importance.asp

http://www.spiderbait.com/seo-expert/2005_05_09_archive.asp

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Mod Rewrite Tool

"Our mod_rewrite RewriteRule generator will take a dynamic url given to it, and generate the correct syntax to place in a .htaccess file to allow the url to be rewritten in a spiderable format. The apache module mod_rewrite converts urls in a certain format to another format, and can be very useful in helping a site with dynamic content to be indexed. For more information on mod_rewrite, visit the apache documentation site."

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/mod_rewrite-rewriterule-generator.shtml

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Spider Simulator

http://www.spannerworks.com/spidersimulator.0.html

http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php

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Google Sitemap.xml Generators

http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
- Spiders site and creates sitemap or Google sitemap.xml. Requires java.

http://www.sitemapbuilder.net/
- Scans any page you provide for url hyperlinks and creates Google sitemap from those urls.

http://www.googlesitemap.info/thesimplerway/
- Super easy to use but requires you to already have a list of your urls.



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