SEO URL Optimisation:

1. REDIRECTS

• Always 301 (permanent) and not 302 (temporary)
• No more than 1 redirect per any given url (if moved again previous redirect needs to be changed for a new one)
• all urls 301 redirected to / pages as Google looks at them as a duplicate content, with duplicate titles and descriptions (as well as /index.php /index.html / home.html, etc. urls)
• permanent 301 redirect from domains without www. to domains with www. – for example, yourwebsite.co.uk permanent redirect to www.yourwebsite.co.uk If this is not done Google looks at the two websites as a duplicate content

2. URL STRUCTURE

• all url structures no more than 3 levels deep! for example, www.yourwebsite.co.uk/services/ppc
• relevant keywords used in urls folders for better SEO – www.yourwebsite.co.uk/strategic-search-engine-marketing/
• urls to not ho have underscores (_) but to have dashes instead (-). Latter one is SEO friendly
• avoid file-type extensions – asp
• no gaps or spaces

WEBSITE

3. WEBSITE STRUCTURE

• No Flash (except for some elements)
• SEO friendly programming – html, java script, php
• Website pages need to be checked in wc3 Validator for html errors (corrected file can be downloaded from that website) – Check for errors and see if any of them maybe preventing search engine robots crawling your site
• The website needs to be checked in wc3 CSS Validator for CSS errors (corrected file can be downloaded from that website) – Each page should have no errors
• All images and videos need to have alt=”” descriptions
• Make sure that alt=”” descriptions are short and descriptive on an image

4. LINKS

• Internal links to internal pages should contain keyword strategy text
• External links need to be ‘no follow’ (if you do not trust the site you are linking to)
• All external links need to open in the new tab to prevent your clients/customers leaving your site and not coming back + to make sure the website’s speed is not affected

5. META DATA

• All pages need to have meta data – Title, Description and keywords ->
• Keywords are still to be included (although have been ignored by Google for now for a lot time) to make sure your site still receives traffic from the other search engines other than Google

6. SEO

• SEOs then could start with a keyword research
• Optimise all the content on every page – Content and Meta data
• Content – keyword density should be kept natural and not over optimised
• Meta data – Title: 50 characters with spaces, Description: 150 characters with spaces and Keywords: no more than 10 words per page in total
• Start with Article syndication and link building