Page 3 - Quick 12 Point "1st steps" SEO Checklist

that is a great list, I am very fond of googles webmaster tools and google analytics, they are great especially being free

Critique of the Quick 12 Point "1st steps" SEO Checklist



Good overall point - broken links damages your trust which impacts on your rankability...

While it's always better to use a permanent re-direct... I've never seen a temp re-direct cause a penalty. At one time 302 caused Google to create artificial page-jacking instances but that was a few years ago.



This is so "BOGUS" Gary... at least the terminology you're using and the way you infer "how to avoid bad neighborhoods".

You're saying "use these tools" to look up an IP and you'll see a bunch of domain names are on the same server or not... how exactly do you get from the domain name to knowing a bad neighborhood?

I assume you think if a porn site like xxx-cream-pie.com is on a server that implies a "bad neighborhood"? ... I don't get this... explain to me as if I'm a two-year-old.



Good point but (http and non http) should be (www and non www) I think.



This has no impact on SEO.



I doubt any page size even ones at 2 megabytes would time out... they can access it they will crawl it... they may not do it in one session but they won't time out.

Some of mine:

www.greenpapaya.org/ - 140k

www.coopyrite.net/ - 204k

www.gourmet-foods.org/ - 306k

www.holidaytales.org/ - 480k

The "cache" may only sample to 90K but you can be sure if the bots can read the top... they'll get the bottom.



While you can... a spider simulator is just a user-agent like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc. A review of the browser is better simply because you're ain't gonna see ranking problems in your spider simulator. This is a visual appeal thing

"make sure nothing is breaking it and it is pulling in the important stuff"... what do these actually mean?

Breaking what?

Pulling what?

Sensible advice needs to make sense first.



Pointless... if pages are dup too much one is still indexed... who really cares if the other is?

Also "low ranking pages" - what are these... low PageRank pages would normally go to supplemental results. But "low Ranking pages" isn't that.

IMHO the tool is bogus... how does it calculate indexed pages and then decides what is in primary and supp?

I have a test fldp.org has 11 pages - 9 from the blog and 2 from the previous website that expired and I uploaded the content to orphan pages because they had a lot of links from foreign language sites.

Google says there is 26 pages... but only posts 11 [and there are only 11] and that tool shows 26 - -- ok so it can regurgitate Google estimates effectively - but an estimate isn't factual data... and the tool says 25 are in primary results and 1 is supp.

In fact, what it appears to be doing is this:

I disallow feed and track versions in robots.txt file, login and register pages as well... so Google counts all pages and this tool takes that number looks at what's actually archived in Google... and whatever isn't - those must be in supplemental.

In any case - I don't believe the tool developer has any appreciation for supplemental results and merely interpolating what might be true... not what actually is the case.

In any case: use at your own risk - the information is as good a PigeonRank.



This is pure BS!



A fair observation - I'm of the camp thinking if your focusing your attention on the other guy - you'll never beat 'em you just won't lose any ground.

The chance of you acquiring links that you don't know about, that are benefiting your competitor and you are losing out on AND that you can acquire yourself... are pretty remote... a better strategy in being far more innovative than your competitor and make them chase you.

10. Install Google webmaster tools verification code to see if they say there is anything wrong

Surely that's part of #3 - not much point in having the Webmaster Console if only for www or no-www



I get volumes of people that PM and ask for a private review - and some even say "I'll pay"...

I'd say ignore all of the above it's a waste of valuable time...

whatever you're selling - write some enormously valuable content and include it at your website and then spread the word... if you don't get any links...

write some even more enormously valuable content and include it at your website and then spread the word... if you don't get any links...

write some even more enormously valuable content and include it at your website and then spread the word... if you don't get any links...

...do this - the links "WILL COME" and so will the ranks... and you won''t need to worry about unattended 302s, bad neighborhood's IPs canonicalization, code vs. text, page size, spider simulators, duplication of content, supplemental results, W3C validation, or competitor's links.



Man you're seriously under-productive if you actually do all this for what "every page"? ...or you actually don't you're simply writing for the sake of writing.



DON'T LINK JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IT!

Gary it's good to see you career is going well... but your advice isn't.

I'm really disappointed that all the competent SEOs around here let this slide... or maybe they didn't read it - I know I didn't until now... I read & commented on the posts it spawn...

Most of this post is PURE HYPE, no substance, 2 + 2 = 100000 crap, spectulation turned fact without any support... nothing but SEO snake oil garbage to fill linespace.

But sometimes you may suffer in index.html, index.php, inedex.asp, index.aspx. in that case google webmaster tool doesn't support then 301 redirect is best solution.

Now days forum are very popular generally a lure people also sit if forums. If you add your website in site review than it may be possible you client cant see your post and due to this reason you may loose your client because client understand if you are working for his website then you have know all the things which related you SEO.
Above the statement which is not my speculation only once time I have suffer from this kind of problem I had lost my client.

[QUOTE=fathom]Critique of the Quick 12 Point "1st steps" SEO Checklist

Oh, and I forgot one...be sure your meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are unique.

When I read this thread first day I was thinking Gary is very honorable member of this forum and he added post like that, I was just waiting for others commnet on this thread and today I have seen Fathom's comment now I understand I was right I agree with Fathom is post is not worthy maximum points are have no base in SEO.

Gary is a very honorable and respected member of the forum... and that why I commented.

But your "me to post" isn't needed... it add nothing to the thread.

Sneak peek at 2009 tips brought out early? ...Kudos!

Meta tag doesn't effect our ranking.

Very useful tip. thanks for sharing

You have missed the entire build up to the punch line...which is what that was.

I would prefer you correcting your errors or omissions or defending your positions...

Actually IMHO this thread should be deleted... unless you can correct your errors or omissions or defend your positions.

Still I may not get it what do you want to say here.

I love getting Fathom's feedback...it keeps me in check and give me alternative ways to look at things.

I didn't really comment on his because I think the reader can take it for what its worth.

What is meant to be is exactly what I called it, 'first steps'. In other words, before you decide to take on SEO, be sure your house is in order because these are all things that can affect a site.

Fathom,
Here are some responses;

2) Bad neighbours are blacklisted (can be found on domaintools.com), or, alternatively you can check if any neighbours are not listed (root url), which would also flag a domain.

4) & 5) Code vs. Text & Page Size - If a spider times out on your site and doesn't crawl the juicy stuff because your page is 200k and the text is planted at the end, then this prevents google from gathering the data and using it. In the past I have spent a lot of time studying logfiles to determine what the GoogleBot and others are doing. I have identified not just on the intermittent 'small crawls', but on 'deep crawls' that they do in fact time out. Here is a perfect example.



The other issue here (and I see this often on e-commerce, dynamic and other real-time sites) is that is the amount of code and/or dynamic content slows the load time of a page and if the page doesn't load, google will time out and move on.

At one time Google did did have a limit that they would crawl because at one time they did have bandwidth issues. Now, although the above tests say that they have limited it to around 512kb, I see this being changed in the future as well. According to the graph below, page sizes are increasing more and more so this will come in to play again.



Is this top 10 stuff? No, but it is very basic information that gets your house in check.

6) Run a Spider Simulator - Some content and links (such as footer navigation solely for the purpose of link sculpting) displayed on a webpage may not be visible to SE's, eg. Flash based content, content generated through javascript, content displayed as images etc.

Doing this is basic SEO and again, meant to get your house in order. You need to see what the SE's are seeing and a spider will show you if a page is broke somewhere or needs adjusted.

For noobiez with no html experience, it can also identify javascript on a page (which we all know Google cannot see, therefor if you have a js menu meant to highlight keywords, you'll need to get this changed.

7) Duplicate Content - I'm not getting into a long explanation about this, but yes, duplication of content within your own site as well as across other sites (primarily competitors) has, does and will always cause problems. Search any top seo's name and any SE's name along with 'duplicate content' and you will get all the information that you need.

The only time it will not affect your site is if you have the same content re-purposed into other languages.

8) Run your site through W3C validation - OK, I will concede this one Fathom. The way that I should have worded it is that although the SE's will not penalise you for non-validation, this is a useful way to identify errors that may affect browser compatibility and other potential problems.

I am a details guy and just like meta descriptions (yes, yes I know they don't matter!!!), unless I specifically identify something as being a negative, which based on myself, 30+ people and hundreds of websites is constantly being tested and analysed, then I'm going to tweak it.

But everyone's not as anal as me.

9. Run your site through linkdiagnosis - Have you run this tool yet? I'll let you all be the judge, but I don't just use it to chase the competition. Look at the information that you get and tell me its not a useful tool for an link analysis as well as a competitive snapshot.

It can be used to identify bad links to be firewalled so they don't negatively affect your rankings.

It can be used to identify the stronger existing links so that you can add, alter or change anchor text.

It can be used to identify your competitors longtail terms that may be contributing to a better SERP (of the many things that can)

And so on, and so on.

Yes, webmaster central and a half dozen other tools are better for this, but remember, this list is for '1st steps' and for people that may not be able to add verification code because of limited knowledge or accessibility issues.

10. Install Google webmaster tools verification code to see if they say there is anything wrong - Once again, 1st steps and novice SEO.

11. Post your site in Site Review - Yea I get the same requests daily. This '1st steps' list is meant to try and eliminate some of the most common problems I find.

As far as being a waste of time, I've never thought of it that way. The sites I look at I spend 10-15 minutes on and usually find a good number of obvious problems. I identify them but I don't completely spell out how to fix the problems. What I will do is reference other posts to try and get the member (who is almost 100% of the time a new member) to interact with our members and ask there own questions. This will lead to members like pro_seo, gazzak, channel5 and many others becoming top-notch contributing members.

12. Run your problem pages through this LSI evaluator - This is simply meant to show the novice SEO's what LSI and 'theme-based' pages and 'silo layouts' can be tested. It may be a little advanced, or maybe I didn't explain it well enough.

The average site has under 100 pages so If I were shooting for the top spots, yes, I would run it on every page.

Myself I use keyword excavator to look at my sites as well as my competitors, then evaluate their page theme and LSI content and weigh it against the page I am trying to improve...whether it be to identify LT terms to target link building efforts toward or to compare contextual elements of the higher ranking sites and assemble them into a comparison chart to see if anything stands out.

And Lastly;
DON'T LINK JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IT!

Fathom, you should know by now I don't publish ANYTHING that I haven't thoroughly tested, and I have tested this over and over. Take it for what its worth to you, but don't shut the door and spin something that I have actually tested and know works.

Thanks for taking the time to critique Fathom, and for also taking the meta comment as it was meant to be, something to make you smile...

GaryTheScubaGuy

Excellent rebuttal... will review later "and save the rep" for when I have a refill!

Gary I have a couple of questions regarding this idea. Firstly what exactly do you mean by 'related'? Have your experiments shown different results depending on how closely related?

I was thinking why this would work and the hypothesis I came up with (pure speculation) is that linking back to the authority site helps make your site relivent to that site. Therefore this makes the link from the authority site to your site more relivent and thus transfer more juice. Do you have an alternative theory?

I have many authority site links do you recommend doing this for all these links?

Very interested in hearing your thoughs

Gazz