ON PAGE OPTIMISATION

Title tags are optimised

• Title tags should be optimised and unique.
• The brand name should be included in the title tag.
• Title tags are about 55-60 characters (512 pixels) to be fully displayed.

Important pages have click-through rate optimised titles and meta descriptions

• Check for pages missing page titles and meta descriptions
• The on-page content includes the primary keyword phrase multiple times as well as variations and alternate keyword phrases
• There is a significant amount of optimised, unique content on key pages
• The primary keyword phrase is contained in the H1 tag
• Images’ file names and alt text are optimised to include the primary keyword phrase associated with the page.
• URLs are descriptive and optimised

Clean URLs

• No excessive parameters or session IDs.
• URLs exposed to search engines should be static.

Short URLs

• 115 characters or shorter.

CONTENT

Homepage content is optimised

• Does the homepage have at least one paragraph?
• There has to be enough content on the page to give search engines an understanding of what a page is about?

Landing pages are optimised

• Do these pages have at least a few paragraphs of content? Is it enough to give search engines an understanding of what the page is about?
• Is it template text or is it completely unique?

Site contains real and substantial content

• Is there real content on the site or is the “content” simply a list of links?

Proper keyword targeting

• Does the intent behind the keyword match the intent of the landing page?
• Are there pages targeting head terms, mid-tail, and long-tail keywords?

Keyword cannibalisation

• Do a site: search in Google for important keyword phrases.
• Check for duplicate content/page titles

Content to help users convert exists and is easily accessible to users

• In addition to search engine driven content, there should be content to help educate users about the product or service.

Content formatting

• Is the content formatted well and easy to read quickly?
• Are H tags used?
• Are images used?
• Is the text broken down into easy to read paragraphs?

Good headlines on blog posts

• Are the headlines are well written and draw users in?

Amount of content versus ads

• Since the implementation of Panda, the amount of ad-space on a page has become important to evaluate.
• Is there significant unique content above the fold.

Duplicate content

• There should be one URL for each piece of content
• Do URLs include parameters or tracking code?
• Does the same content reside on completely different URLs?

Check for duplicate content

• Test content snippets
• Does the content show up elsewhere on the domain?
• Has it been scraped?

Sub-domain duplicate content

• Does the same content exist on different sub-domains?

Check for a secure version of the site

• Does the content exist on a secure version of the site?

Check other sites owned by the company

• Is the content replicated on other domains owned by the company?

Check for “print” pages

• If there are “printer friendly” versions of pages, they may be causing duplicate content.

Accessibility & Indexation

• Check the robots.txt
• Has the entire site, or important content been blocked?
• Is link equity being orphaned due to pages being blocked via the robots.txt?

Turn off JavaScript, cookies, and CSS

• Is the content there?
• Do the navigation links work?

Change the user agent to Googlebot

• Are they cloaking?
• Does it look the same as before?

Check for errors

• Check for 4xx errors and 5xx errors.

XML sitemaps are listed in the robots.txt file

• XML sitemaps are submitted to Google/Bing Webmaster Tools

Check pages for meta robots noindex tag

• Are pages accidentally being tagged with the meta robots noindex command
• Are there pages that should have the noindex command applied

Do goal pages have the noindex command applied?

• Prevents direct organic visits from showing up as goals in analytics

Site architecture and internal linking

• Number of links on a page
• Vertical linking structures are in place
• Homepage links to category pages.
• Category pages link to sub-category and product pages as appropriate.
• Product pages link to relevant category pages.

Horizontal linking structures are in place

• Category pages link to other relevant category pages.
• Product pages link to other relevant product pages.

Links are in content

• Does not utilise massive blocks of links stuck in the content to do internal linking.

Footer links

• Does not use a block of footer links instead of proper navigation.
• Does not link to landing pages with optimized anchors.
• Good internal anchor text

Proper use of 301s

• Are 301s being used for all redirects?
• If the root is being directed to a landing page, are they using a 301 instead of a 302?

“Bad” redirects are avoided

• These include 302s, 307s, meta refresh, and JavaScript redirects

Redirects point directly to the final URL and do not leverage redirect chains

• Redirect chains significantly diminish the amount of link equity associated with the final URL.
• Google will stop following a redirect chain after several redirects.

Use of JavaScript

• Is content being served in JavaScript?
• Are links being served in JavaScript? Is this to do PR sculpting or is it accidental?

Use of iFrames

• Is content being pulled in via iFrames?

Use of Flash

• Is the entire site done in Flash, or is Flash used sparingly in a way that doesn’t hinder crawling?

Check for errors in Google Webmaster Tools

• Crawl and site structure errors

XML Sitemaps

• Are XML sitemaps in place?
• Are XML sitemaps covering for poor site architecture?
• Are XML sitemaps structured to show indexation problems?
• Do the sitemaps follow proper XML protocols?

Canonical version of the site established through 301s

Canonical version of site is specified in Google Webmaster Tools

Rel canonical link tag is properly implemented across the site

• Make sure it points to the correct page, and every page doesn’t point to the homepage.

Uses absolute URLs instead of relative URLs

• This can cause a lot of problems if there is a root domain with secure sections.

SITE SPEED

Review page load time for key pages

• Is it significant for users or search engines?

Make sure compression is enabled

Enable caching

Optimised images

MinifiedCSS/JS/HTML

Fast host is used

MOBILE

Review the mobile experience

• Is there a mobile site set up?
• If there is, is it a mobile site, responsive design, or dynamic serving?

Is analytics set up if separate mobile content exists?

If dynamic serving is being used, make sure the Vary HTTP header is being used

• Helps alert search engines understand that the content is different for mobile users.

Review how the mobile experience matches up with the intent of mobile visitors

• Do the mobile visitors have a different intent than desktop based visitors?

Ensure faulty mobile redirects do not exist

• Does the site redirects mobile visitors away from their intended URL (typically to the homepage)?

Ensure that the relationship between the mobile site and desktop site is established with proper markup

• If a mobile site (m.) exists, does the desktop equivalent URL point to the mobile version with rel=”alternate”?
• Does the mobile version canonical to the desktop version?

INTERNATIONAL

Review international versions indicated in the URL

• ex: site.com/uk/ or uk.site.com

Enable country based targeting in webmaster tools

• If the site is targeted to one specific country, is this specified in webmaster tools?
• If the site has international sections, are they targeted in webmaster tools?

Implement hreflang / rel alternate if relevant

If there are multiple versions of a site in the same language (such as /us/ and /uk/, both in English), update the copy been updated so that they are both unique

Make sure the currency reflects the country targeted

Ensure the URL structure is in the native language

ANALYTICS

Analytics tracking code is on every page

• Are there pages that should be blocked?

There is only one instance of a GA property on a page

• Having the same Google Analytics property will create problems with pageview-related metrics such as inflating page views and pages per visit and reducing the bounce rate.
• It is OK to have multiple GA properties listed, this won’t cause a problem.

Analytics is properly tracking and capturing internal searches

Demographics tracking is set up

Adwords and Adsense are properly linked if the business is using these platforms

Internal IP addresses are excluded

UTM Campaign Parameters are used for other marketing efforts

Meta refresh and JavaScript redirects are avoided

• These can artificially lower bounce rates.

Event tracking is set up for key user interactions