SEO in 15 minutes? Sound too good to be true? Isn’t this stuff supposed to be hard?

The truth is anyone can get an idea of whether their site needs professional search engine optimization in just a few minutes, if they know where to look.   If you’re looking to have your site professionally optimized, then having even a small amount of knowledge puts you in a much better buying position.

So, here’s your 15-minute SEO Checklist:

1. Have a Unique Title on Every Page:  The page title appears at the very top of your browser window, and it’s also used by search engines when listing search results (the words that make up link you click on to visit a site?  That’s the page title).  If all your website pages have the same title, then all your pages will seem similar to the engines - your site should be organized so that each page has its own, unique purpose. 
2. META tag for quality, not quantity:  Meta tags are descriptors for webpages; they are meant to be seen only by search engines, however using the “View Source” option on your browser can show you where they are.   Several Meta tags exist, however only a couple need your attention:
   • Meta “Keywords”:  When you view the source code of your webpages, do you see a line near the top that has a list of keywords / phrases in it?  If so, this is Meta “Keyword” tag.  While these were helpful at one time, my advice for current websites is to remove this tag from all your website pages.  Using this Meta tag does not seem to provide any search ranking advantage, and has the potentially detrimental effect of allowing others (such as your competition) to see the keywords you’ve chosen to emphasize.
   • Meta “Description”:  Another line of code near the top of your page’s source code is the Meta “Description” tag.  This tag is used by some engines just below the title when returning search results.  Your Description should contain a unique one- or two-sentence summary of your page (not site!) that people would find persuasive.
3. Have a Headline for each page:  In addition to a page title, check to make sure each page of your website has a unique and descriptive headline structure.  To get an idea of headline structure, have a look at any newspaper:  A main headline in larger, bold type followed by a concise, one-line description of the article (or a compelling tidbit from the story that entices you to read it), and then the body of the story.  If your page has this basic structure, switch over to “View Source” and look for your main headline to be bracketed by <h1> and </h1> tags.  If you see them, great!  If not, then odds are search engines will not see that as your page’s headlines and won’t emphasize it as such.
4. Have a caption for every image:  Just as the text on your website can be tagged to give more information to search engines, images can be as well.  (More tagging, so keep the “View Source” window handy.)  Images can be given a caption to describe it.  Find out if your images have captions simply by placing your mouse cursor over the image - you should see a description pop-up momentarily (if you’re using IE).  No caption?  Then you’re missing another opportunity to tweak your site a little more.
5. Include Text Links for your pages:  There are a variety of methods to link pages together, and some (such as Flash) have a high degree of visual appeal.  If you goal is to optimize your business website, however, it is important to understand that Flash programming is not easily read by search engines; therefore links embedded in Flash won’t benefit your page’s search ranking (and links area BIG factor in search rankings!).  A simple check of your website for the presence of text links will help determine if your site needs optimization.  Try to highlight the links on your site with your mouse; if you cannot highlight the link, then chances are your site is losing an opportunity to rank higher.

So, in about as much time as it takes to read this post you can get a sense of whether basic optimization has been performed on your site.  If your pages pass this basic SEO checklist, then great!  Your site is probably ready for more aggressive forms of optimization.  Regardless of what you find (or don’t find), analyzing your site in this manner should begin to help you understand what search engines look for, and how you can properly emphasize your site’s content.

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