[charliesaidthat]

This is not my post, however, I found it really useful to think about and remind myself of some good SEO practices.

http://www.searcheng...lgorithm/15457/

Feel free to add you own below...

Quote

Domain: 12 factors

1. Domain age;
2. Length of domain registration;
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous;
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk);
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info);
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP);
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain;
10. Domain IP;
11. Domain IP neighbors;
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)

Server-side: 2 factors

1. Server geographical location;
2. Server reliability / uptime

Architecture: 7 factors

1. URL structure;
2. HTML structure;
3. Semantic structure;
4. Use of external CSS / JS files;
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc);
6. Use of canonical URLs;
7. “Correct” HTML code (?);
8. Cookies usage;

Content: 14 factors

1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness;
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML);
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text);
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example);
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images (?)
12. Malicious content (possibly added by hackers);
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation;
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 factors

1. # of internal links to page;
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text;
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc);
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute; (?)
5. Internal link density,

Website factors: 7 factors

1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency;
3. Overall site size (number of pages);
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap;
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar);
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific factors: 9 factors

1. Page meta Robots tags;
2. Page age;
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits);
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level; (?)
6. Page load time (many factors in here);
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page);
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has);
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site);

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 11 factors

1. Keywords in the title of a page;
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title;
3. Keywords in Alt tags;
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text);
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links (?);
6. Keywords in bold and italic text (?);
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text;
8. Keywords in body text;
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site;
10. Keywords in filenames;
11. Keywords in URL.

Outbound links: 8 factors

1. Number of outbound links (per domain);
2. Number of outbound links (per page);
3. Quality of pages the site links in;
4. Links to bad neighborhoods;
5. Relevancy of outbound links;
6. Links to 404 and other error pages.
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Backlink profile: 20 factors

1. Relevancy of sites linking in;
2. Relevancy of pages linking in;
3. Quality of sites linking in;
4. Quality of web page linking in;
5. Backlinks within network of sites;
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources);
7. Link profile diversity:
1. Anchor text diversity;
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites,
3. Geographical diversity,
4. Different TLDs,
5. Topical diversity,
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc);
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)
10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile);
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile);
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz;
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc).

Each Separate Backlink: 6 factors

1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. Authority of a domain linking in
3. Authority of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)
6. Title attribute of a link (?)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 factors

1. Number of visits;
2. Visitors’ demographics;
3. Bounce rate;
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 10 factors

1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing;
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag;
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam);
5. Cloaking;
6. Hidden Text;
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner (?)
11. Past hackers’ attacks records

More Factors (6):

1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools;
2. Domain presence in Google News;
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search;
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords;
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics;
6. Business name / brand name external mentions.

[webdesignfolkz]

Its enough.

[BlueDreamer]

Quote

3. Keywords in Alt tags;

That one line makes me suspicious of the whole thing

[sash_007]

thanks for the info

[charliesaidthat]

BlueDreamer, on 22 December 2009 - 08:27 AM, said:

That one line makes me suspicious of the whole thing

Interesting you pick up on that... I think that it is certainly useful to have keywords within alt tags, especially for google images, not necessarily just for SERPs.

[BlueDreamer]

There's no such thing as an ALT "tag"

There is an ALT "attribute" that should be used as ALTernative text should the image not be available.

This post has been edited by BlueDreamer: 22 December 2009 - 03:43 PM

[charliesaidthat]

BlueDreamer, on 22 December 2009 - 03:41 PM, said:

There's no such thing as an ALT "tag"

There is an ALT "attribute" that should be used as ALTernative text should the image not be available.

Ok.. fair enough, the terminology is not important for this purpose?.. when the alt attribute text holds keywords it certainly helps page optimisation, so long as it is relevant and isn't unnecessary keyword stuffing.



They should be used in moderation, but such is the case with much of SEO.

[BlueDreamer]

Agreed it's only terminology but to me it just casts doubt over the professionalism of the author

[charliesaidthat]

I think it comes from a SEO professional rather than web design professional. I find that there is a gulf between the terminology of the two.

Either way, ^pretty useful.

[BlueDreamer]

charliesaidthat, on 22 December 2009 - 04:36 PM, said:

I think it comes from a SEO professional rather than web design professional.

lol... that's definately true, but I'd argue that an SEO should understand basic concepts of how web sites, users and HTML work.

Saying that I've rescued many sites that "SEO's" have completely messed up. Only the other day. on a customers site, a so called SEO specialist overwrote a dynamic page with static HTML + his keyword spam. Naturally the client was furious and even blamed me first because his CMS stopped working!

[charliesaidthat]

BlueDreamer, on 22 December 2009 - 06:53 PM, said:

lol... that's definately true, but I'd argue that an SEO should understand basic concepts of how web sites, users and HTML work.

*runs off and starts learning HTML & CSS codes*

that is why I'm here, to learn more about the implementation, and spread good SEO from the theoretical aspect.

To be honest, any SEO that spams is only a short term help and a long term shot in the foot. Trying to explain to clients that good SEO can take months to really settle in, when they can see short term spam results work well is difficult though.

I am more keen on manipulating content fairly, and making it useful for the user.

Really it is mostly common sense with structure, content + a small amount of tweaking. I am keen to ealrn more of the web design aspects though.