1. Get the Keywords
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| Learn SEO |
1.1. Specify "seed" keywords for your website
Let's start with
keywords, as they determine all your SEO activities. In the Keywords &
Rankings module, you can use the plus button to add keywords manually, or use
the spyglass button to let the software suggest keyword ideas for you. Specify
at least 5 seed key phrases that best describe your website topic.
For the length of
your keyphrases, see hints below.
1.2. Search for keyword suggestions
After you've
clicked the spyglass button and specified your seed keywords, let the software
find keyword suggestions for you. In the keyword suggestions wizard, use the
Expert mode to pick the keyword research methods that will be used to build up
your keyword list.
·
Length of keyphrases
The good practice
is to make sure your keyword list includes 2-4 word phrases. A single keyword
may be too generic (e.g., "cars"); a phrase too long may attract
little or no
traffic (e.g.,
"where to buy a red ford with white doors in Seattle").
A Complete SEO Guide
Keywords with higher KEI
When choosing the
final keyword list, pay attention to KEI, the searches to competition ratio.
Generally the higher KEI (marked green), the better, meaning that a lot of
people are searching for this keyword, but there's no huge competition among
websites. In the Keywords & Rankings module, choose the relevant key
phrases with the highest KEI.
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| SEO Guide |
Please, note that
KEI is a relative metric and you should look at the numbers as relative values
inside a niche. There is no good or bad KEI - so you should only compare one
keyword against another.
In some cases
(e.g., with low search volume key phrases) KEI can be low (marked red) for all
of your project keywords, so you will need to choose phrases with low KEI just
because it's still a little bit higher than the KEI of other words in the
group.
2. Website Accessibility
2.1. Check the number of indexed pages
Want to know how
visible to search engines your site is? Go to Ranking factors, select the
category "Indexing" and you will see how many pages are indexed in
Google, Bing and Yahoo! Search engines. If the number of indexed pages is
smaller than the actual number of pages, you may have an accessibility issue.
Please, check the following tips:
2.2. Revise robots.txt
Make sure that important content is not
blocked by
the robots.txt file in the root directory
the "noindex" tag in the <head> section of pages
the X-Robots-Tag in the HTTP header
In the same Accessibility workspace of Pages/Site
structure check the Robots restrictions column. If content cannot be
accessed by search engines, it will not appear in search results.
2.3. Fix HTTP server response codes
If some of your pages
return errors (404 "not found" error, 500 "internal server"
error, or any other 4xx and 5xx errors), you should fix these issues and have
the server configured properly. In the Accessibility workspace of Pages/Site
structure check the HTTP Status code column - in most cases your pages should
return the 200 status code.
3. URLs and Links
3.1. Use 2-3 level hierarchy for site navigation
In Pages/Site
structure, select the Details workspace and look at your website structure and
pages' hierarchy. Ideally, all of your content should be not more than 2-3
clicks away from the homepage. Exceptions may be made for a website with tons
of content.
3.2. Make URLs static
Review your site
URLs. Dynamic URLs (e.g. http://site.com/product.php?cid=1&pid=5) are not
user- and search engine-friendly, that is why you need to make URLs static
(e.g. http://site.com/product/guide.html). Study the URLs in Pages/Site
structure.
3.3. Fix too long URLs
In Pages/Site
structure pick the Encoding and URLs workspace. The URL length column will show
you the number of symbols your URLs have. Optimize the length of the URLs that
are too long making it around 75 symbols.
3.4. Make URLs descriptive
Use keywords in
the URLs of the pages you are optimizing to make them more relevant and enhance
rankings.
3.5. Create a custom 404 page
Customize a 404
page to make it useful for your website visitors. The custom 404 page may
include links to the most important pages of your website. See an example on
the WebMeUp site: http://webmeup.com/404.html
3.6. Fix broken links
Broken links hinder
usability and can cause traffic losses. Fix all broken links by correcting the
invalid link URLs and setting the 301 redirects. You can find the problematic
URLs in the Broken links column in Pages/Site structure.
4. Code/Performance
4.1. Make your page code valid (W3C HTML/CSS errors)
Make sure your
page's HTML and CSS code is error-free. Not all errors are critical for
rankings, but it's hard to guess which one makes a site drag behind its
competitors. The point here is, if there're code errors, this may prevent
Googles from indexing your pages and ranking your important content. Therefore
it's best to check the site's code for errors.
The standards for
webpage coding are defined by the organization called W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium) and they provide free service to validate your pages. Please take a
few minutes to go to W3C Validator at http://validator.w3.org/ and check your
HTML and CSS code for possible errors.
4.2. Specify doctype
Specify the page
doctype (the HTML type used, e.g. HTML5, XHTML 1.0 Strict, etc.), as this information
is required by some tools processing the document, such as markup validators.
Your current site doctype can be found in the DOCTYPE column of the Encoding
and URLs workspace in Pages/Site structure.
4.3. Specify character encoding
To make sure that
your pages are properly rendered by browsers, specify after the opening
<head> tag what character set your website uses (e.g. UTF-8, US-ASCII,
etc.). To check what charsets are specified for your pages now, check the
Charset type column in the Encoding and URLs workspace in Pages/Site structure.
4.4. Improve page load speed
Page load speed is
one of the ranking factors used by Google. To improve the page load speed, you
can: apply the file compression (e.g. gzip) utilize browser caching use the externalized CSS/JavaScript code optimize
graphics and video size put the scripts at the bottom minimize the number of
iframes use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to lighten the load on your
server, and more.
It may of course
take different time for a page to load, depending on the speed of Internet
connection and other factors. Therefore sometimes it makes sense to look at
page size rather than load time. You can see the size of your web pages in
Pages/Site structure. Choose the Accessibility workspace and check the Size
column.
On average, if it
takes a page more than 3 seconds to load, the speed is considered slow and the
page is heavy. Of course for certain niches (ex. gaming) heavy pages are almost
unavoidable. In this case, it makes sense to compare your page's size to your
competitors'.
5. Landing Pages
5.1. Select your landing pages
Select landing
pages, the pages you are going to optimize in the first place to bring you more
traffic, conversions, and sales. It's better to select these pages out of your
best- ranking content. You can either select the pages in Pages/Site structure
or add them manually in the Pages/Landing pages module. Add at least one
landing page to proceed.
5.2. Assign keywords for each landing page
For each of your
landing pages assign 1-3 keywords you'd like to optimize your pages for. Do not
assign too many keywords for a single page, as the more focused your landing
pages are, the better.
5.3. Select the top-priority search engine
Think about the
search engine most of your target audience would come from: is it Google, Bing,
or Yahoo? For each landing page, choose the top-priority search engine.
6. Competitors
6.1. Add your business niche competitors
Add your
"real-world" business competitors in the Competitor module to analyze
their Internet Marketing activities and results. Thus you'll see what
activities and campaigns some of your industry leaders are making use of.
6.2. Analyze your search competitors
In Pages/Landing
pages WebMeUp analyzes your top organic search competitors for each keyword and
each landing page. To see who your top competitors are, in Pages/Landing
pages/Page elements module you can click the i button in the Keyword field of any
page element, and see your organic competitors and how their page elements are
optimized. (However the main thing about the module Pages/Landing pages/Page
elements is that it shows you how exactly to optimize your landing pages for
keywords to outrank your competitors.)
7. On-page/Content Factors
7.1. Re-write duplicate/missing titles
In Pages/Site
structure pick the Content workspace. Check the Duplicate title column. If
there are duplicate titles, they need to be rewritten. Also pay attention to
the Title length column. The most effective page titles are about 65 characters
long, including spaces. In the Pages/Landing pages/Page elements module you
will find detailed advice on optimizing the title for each landing page. Keep
your titles concise and make sure they contain your best keywords. Each page
should have a unique title.
7.2. Revise meta descriptions
Meta descriptions
are useful because they often dictate how your pages are shown in search
results. For optimum effectiveness, meta descriptions should be about 150
characters long. To see the length of your page meta descriptions check the
Meta descr. length column of the Content workspace in Pages/Site structure. In
the Landing pages/Page elements module you will find detailed advice on
enhancing the description for each page. Your meta descriptions should be
concise and contain your best keywords. Make sure each page of your website has
its own meta description.
7.3. Add more content
The Word count
column of the Content workspace in
Pages/Site structure shows how many words your pages' texts contain. Though
there's no ideal word count for a page, consider adding more content if your
current page word count is below 200 words. This will get you more
"space" for your mid- and long-tail keywords.
7.4. Diversify text-only content
Use images to
diversify your page content and get traffic from Google image search. In the
Pages/Landing pages/Page elements module you'll get recommendations for the
image ALT texts on your landing pages.
7.5. Insert keywords in document names (.pdf, .doc,
.ppt, etc.)
Use your main
keywords while naming the documents available for download on your website.
This will increase your chances for getting found when one uses filetype: or
ext: search operators in Google.
7.6. Mark up data using microformats
Microformat is a
markup that is used to better structure the data that is being sent to search
engines. The presentation of Google's search results is always improving due to
Microformats.
7.7. Decrease the number of outgoing links (homepage)
(less than 100)
In Pages/Site
structure pick the Content workspace and check the Outgoing links total column.
You can see the number of outgoing links on your site's pages. Having too many
links on your pages may cause your website to appear as a link farm or a spam
site and can potentially hurt your site's SEO. For best results, try to
moderate outgoing linking to 100 links per page or less, and link to relevant
pages that are of value for your visitors. Btw, you can see more information
about each link in the details panel at the bottom of the Content workspace.
7.8. Keyword-rich anchors for internal links
Add keywords to
your internal links. A strong keyword-rich internal link structure adds up to
your website relevance and can positively influence your search rankings. Go to
the Landing pages/Page elements module to get internal link anchors
recommendations for all your landing pages.
7.9. Optimize your landing pages
Go to the Landing
pages module and follow all the recommendations for each page in the Page
elements section. You will get tips to optimize keyword use in page titles,
meta descriptions, H-tag headings, link anchors, ALT attributes, and text
paragraphs.
8. Off-page Factors
8.1. Analyze your backlink profile
Before you start a
link building campaign, explore your site's existing backlinks in the Backlinks
module (Profile submodule). Here you can analyze how strong your backlink
profile is. This information is useful for:
·
Identifying the websites that discuss
you or your organization
·
Identifying your top content
·
Discovering errors in the links that
point to your site for correction and improvement
·
Comparing link metrics between
multiple sites to estimate the competition
·
Analyzing anchor text
8.2. Get more backlinks
Generally the more
backlinks you have, the better. You can get natural links when people find your
content useful and interesting and place links on their own websites and you
can build up backlinks using such methods as:
·
Article marketing
·
Getting listed in popular directories
·
Guest Blogging
·
Social media marketing, etc.
Use the module
Backlinks/Management for monitoring your important links. This will let you see
at a glance if the most important links are in place and have the right anchor
texts, point to the right pages etc. And if you're planning to get a link from
some resource, you can enter it in Backlinks/Management to let the software see
when it's added.
8.3. Improve the quality of backlinks
The backlinks are
of great importance for your SEO, but you should remember that it's the quality
not the quantity that matters first. Here are the things you should look at
when building up your backlink profile:
·
The origin of the link
Consider the Google
PageRank, age, the number of outbound links, and the geo location of the
linking page. You can analyze the linking pages of your existing backlinks in
Backlinks/Profile. When you're looking for new places to get links from, you
can analyze potential backlink pages in the Competitors/Backlinks module.
·
Anchor text should include your main keywords
Anchor text (the
visible clickable text in a hyperlink) should be optimized for your target
keywords. Search engines use this text to help determine the relevancy of the
linked-to document. To see the anchor text of the existing backlinks, go to the
Backlinks/Profile module. To see what anchors your competitors are using, go to
the Competitors/Backlinks module.
·
Focus more on "dofollow" links
In Backlinks/Profile
you can also see that some of your incoming links have a "nofollow"
tag, which basically means that search engines are instructed to ignore this
link when determining how to rank the page the link points to. That's why it is
better to have "dofollow" links pointing to your site.
8.4. Study your search competitors' backlinks
In the
Competitors/Backlinks module, you can investigate your competitors' links, find
their best link sources, see what anchor texts they're using and analyze each
link for a variety of factors including Google PR, Alexa rank, domain age and
IP, link value and many more. Usually competitors backlink profile analysis
helps you easily find new great link sources for your own site.
9. Social Media Popularity
9.1. Facebook
More Facebook
likes will help spread the word and bring more visitors. Eventually, it may
have a good impact on your rankings. Therefore it is recommended to add a
Facebook Like button to your pages.
Additionally, you
can create a Facebook page and engage your readers in sharing and discussing
your posts, photos and videos.
You can see the
overall number of Facebook "likes" in the Project dashboard. To
check the number
for a specific landing page, go to the Pages/Landing pages module, pick the
page, and see the Page dashboard.
9.2. Twitter
Add a Twitter
button to your website, so that visitors are able to tweet your content and
share it with their followers.
Also you can
create your own twitter account and notify your followers about interesting
content, news, product updates, etc. In tweets use a hash tag with keywords to
be easily found in Twitter search.
You can see the
overall number of tweets associated with your website in the Project dashboard.
To check the number for a specific landing page go to the Pages/Landing pages
module, pick the page, and see the Page dashboard.
9.3. Google+
If you add a
Google +1 button to your website, users with Google accounts will be able to
share this content with their circles. It may also significantly influence
personalized search results in Google.
Additionally,
create a Google+ page and share some valuable content with your circles. Use a
plus sign for your key phrases in posts when it makes sense.
You can see the
overall number of Google plus shares in the Project dashboard. To check the
number for a specific landing page go to the Pages/Landing pages module, pick
the page, and see the Page dashboard.
10. Track Your
Progress
10.1. Check your rankings for keywords
Make sure you
track your search engine rankings for keywords in the Keywords & Rankings
module. You will be able to see your current rankings and history, and compare
your rankings to competitors.
10.2. Check
ranking factors of your site and landing pages
Is your PageRank
growing? Has Alexa assigned you a higher traffic rank? How many Facebook likes
have you got over the last month? Check your site's ranking factors, view
history and see how you compare to competing sites in the Ranking factors
module. You can also check ranking factors of individual pages in the
Pages/Landing pages submodule.
Please remember
that SEO only rarely brings immediate results and depending on a great variety
of factors (keywords, competitors, business niche) it may take at least a
couple of weeks to see any significant progress.
If you don't see
any progress at all, it is strongly recommended to review this checklist one
more time to make sure you haven't missed some critical steps.
Extras: Enhance Your Online Presence
1. Create a Google Places listing
97% of consumers
search for local businesses online, so If you run a local business (sell
flowers in NY, provide consulting services in London, have a small grocery
store in Barcelona, etc.) and have a physical address, you should sign up for a
Google Places account. This will help you enhance your local search engine
rankings.
By the way, you
can customize your business listing with photos, videos, and special offers,
which may become an additional sales venue for your company.
2. Produce some videos
Videos are an
important marketing tool you can leverage to get more traffic and sales. If you
offer media-related services, video marketing is simply a must for you. In all
other cases, use videos to tell users about your brand, expertise, and success
stories.
Apart from your
website and blog, you can use the following video content platforms to promote
your videos:
YouTube Vimeo
Blip.tv Dailymotion Flickr Video Videojug
3. Present your business
Another way to
promote your products and services is to publish some presentations with useful
information and links to your website. You can also distribute the
presentations you've made at conferences and other events. By the way,
presentations like videos can be embedded into pages, so other users might
easily share them on their websites and blogs.
·
To start promoting presentations,
take a look at:
Slideshare Scribd
Authorstream Issuu FlexPaper
4. Create audio podcasts
Podcasting is
engaging, creates a sense of trust and builds customer loyalty. Also it doesn't
take much to record an audio compared to producing a high-quality video clip.
Some content ideas for podcasts include:
·
Telling a story about your business
Recording a
roundtable or panel discussion on some trendy topics Answering the frequently
asked questions related to your business Interviewing customers and employees
·
To get your podcast to the widest
possible audience:
1. Send your
podcast to all the major audio and video platforms, such as iTunes and
YouTube
2. Include links
to podcasts in your e-mail follow-ups and auto-responders
3. Use social
media to spread your content across the Web.
5. Improve
Usability
Sometimes website
owners are getting a lot of traffic, but sales do not increase and the bounce
rate is huge. If this sounds like your case, this section is for you. On the
one hand, the problem might be in the wrong keywords, and then you have to get
back to keyword research and review your current project key phrases. On the
other hand,
the problem might
be in the wrong keywords, and then you have to get back to keyword research and
review your current project key phrases. Also, something may be wrong with your
website and landing pages. In this case, you'll need to make your website and landing
pages in particular more user-friendly.
·
Some of the common things to look
into are:
1. Case Studies
2. Testimonials
3. Strong
call-to-actions "above the fold"
4. Grammatically
correct texts
5. Emotion-based
headlines
6. Offering some
stuff for free
7. Re-design
In the end, do not
forget to return to this checklist on a regular basis to review, recheck, and
enhance every SEO activity described.
Reference: SEO Check List WebMeUp
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