Top Ten Elements for SEO

Title Tags (HIGH)

Your title tag (also called the Meta title tag) is just what it sounds like — a quick, at-a-glance summary of what people can expect from your website's page. You want the contents of your title tag to be accurate because it displays in three important places: (a) the browser's title bar, (b) the browser's tab title bar, and (c) the title of your listing in search engine results.

Your title tag should contain the main keywords for the page, with the primary keyword listed first in the tag. The earlier in the tag your keywords display, the better.  Make sure to keep the maximum length of your keyword tag fewer than 65 characters.

H1 Header Tags (HIGH)

Each page of your website should include one (and only one) H1 header tag to tell visitors what the page is about. Your H1 tag should be brief — no longer than a short sentence — and include the page's most important keywords. Make sure the content for your H1 tag is unique for every page in your website.

Your title and H1 tags for the same page should differ slightly, but get the same idea across. Search engines won't penalize your site's SEO if they're exactly the same but it can actually be beneficial if they're different.

NOTE: If you're using a content management system such as WordPress®, Joomla!®, or Drupal®, check to see if your title and H1 tags are the same by default and, if so, change that setting.

Rich Snippets (HIGH)

Rich Snippets are small pieces of code that are added to your website HTML that tell search engines to display your search results with extra details included.

Rich snippets can drive traffic to your site, since it gives users a better idea of what they can find there. Using rich snippets helps increase click-through rates and decreases bounce rates.  Users are already exposed to the content you are displaying and are able to determine if your products and services are relevant to their search before jumping into your website. Be sure that your rich snippets accurately reflect our page content, in order to provide your users the best experience on your site.

Page Content (HIGH)

The content on your website's pages — the visitor-facing text — plays an important role in search engine optimization. Search engines might use snippets of text from your page if it doesn't contain a description tag. In some situations the search engine might display page content that is more relevant to a user's search. In addition to being well-written and informative, the following rules apply when writing your content:

* Use page keywords often

* Update content frequently (at the very least, once/month)

* Include at least 300 words

* Contain original material that isn't duplicated across multiple pages

* Avoid long blocks of text (1-4 sentences per paragraph, ideally)

* Favor shorter sentences (10 words or fewer)

* Incorporate both bulleted (unordered) and numbered (ordered) lists, where appropriate

Robots.txt (HIGH)

A robots.txt file tells search engines which pages, directories, or file types in your site to avoid scanning. You really only need a robots.txt file if your site contains stuff you don't want search engines to index, or if you want to block specific search engines. If you have files that are to support or reinforce content within your site that you want published, be sure to indicate these files as robot.txt files.

Your robots.txt file should live in the root or top-level directory for your website's files. Because your robots.txt is a public file, take care not to include any private or proprietary information in it.

Image Tags (HIGH)

Images are seen as a sign of quality and engaging content. Both search engines and people value web pages that use a combination of images and text. The image tag is vitally important to improve your website value through search engine optimization; since it helps search engines understand your images. That's right, your textual content isn't the only information that search engines use to evaluate your site. If you use the image tag effectively, your images can show up in image search results and in blended search results that show images, news, places, and web pages on a single page.

To get the most SEO mileage out of your images, it's important to include keywords in your image filename, alt attributes, and title attributes. Doing so helps your images rank in image searches and can also help that page rank for keywords.

Description Tags (MED )

The description tag (also known as the Meta description tag) contains information most search engines display below your website link in the results list. The purpose of description/meta tags  is to provide an accurate description about the specific pages they are embedded so people know what your site is about. Your description should entice people to select your site from all the sites returned when users provide search criteria. Be sure to make certain the content is both interesting and informative.

Every page in your website needs a unique description tag that contains the keywords for every page. Be sure to keep your descriptions less than 250 characters, and avoid non-alphanumeric characters (stick to letters and numbers).

Navigation (LOW)

Navigation involves both external links to other websites and internal links to other pages within your own site. Making your navigation SEO friendly ensures that search engine spiders will scan all of your pages. Spider pages are great whereby they intertwine your own pages within your own site, thus allowing engines to crawl and cache your site more optimally. If a search engine can't find a particular page, no matter how optimized the page is, it won't be listed by search engines.

Avoid using Flash® or JavaScript® because search engines cannot read those scripts. Also, many search engines won't crawl more than 150 links on a particular page. SO be sure to monitor your links within pages and backlinks to other pages.

NOTE: Some search engines display links to additional pages below the first listing. The links are to pages the search engine determines to be most relevant. You cannot guarantee which links display, but adding consistent navigation is a good way to help.

Keyword Density (LOW)

Keyword density refers to the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a Web page relevant to the total number of words on the page. For example, if a keyword occurs 12 times on a Web page with 400 words, the keyword density is 3 percent. While search engines don't necessarily use keyword density as a ranking factor, you can use it to make sure that you're incorporating keywords into your Web page content. Keywords in your content are an indication that your Web page is relevant to web users searches.

The best practice is to incorporate your keywords and variations on those keywords (i.e., "beige sweater," "beige," "sweater,") as many times as you would naturally in your content. If you're writing quality content that people want to read, this should happen without much effort.

Site Map (LOW)

A site map is literally a map that search engines use when they crawl your website.  A site map is a file that lists all the URLs in your website (for pages, files, images and everything else. Your site map should live in the root or top-level directory for your website's files, so the URL for it might look something like this: http://www.coolexample.com/sitemap.xml.