Penguin Compliant SEO Checklist 1 by Tom Woolley

On Page Optimizations: A Guide For Smaller Business And Merchant Sites:

1. Passengers, Please Take Your Seats!
It’s important to understand that Google’s algorithm and analytic changes all the
time. With every major change, there are always instances of frustrated, fed-up site
owners walking away from their online businesses.

To avoid interruption in both service and income, make the decision to stay calm,
and take a data driven approach to improving site rank. Stick around – analyze what
happened, and take appropriate actions.

2. WAIT! There’s An Easier Fix.
Many people knee-jerk when the Google algorithm and analytic changes and take a
hatchet to their website. The problem with this is that it creates a link clean up hell
or else a big hole, with a lot of incoming links pointing to nothing.
These “dead links” might actually be a red flag to Google. They may make your site
look like an expired domain purchased for dark arts SEO.
As a good standard practice, if you do delete content, make sure you do a 301
redirect to relevant content on your site. If you’re using WordPress, then you can
install a plugin such as, “Simple 301 Redirects” to achieve that result.

3. No, Thanks. I’m Stuffed!
Search Engines punish sites that try to “keyword stuff” their titles. Check the title of
each page on your website for over optimization. Change the titles of your pages to
be optimized for human readers, rather than for the damnable robots. For example, if
you’re “XYZ Company”, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of self-rising
flour, you might offer recipes for baked goods to attract traffic.

If you’ve pulverized your titles with an SEO hammer, they may resemble this: “Cake
Recipes, Recipes for Cake, Recipes Cake”. Why? C’mon, these are all exceptionally
high ranking Google AdWords/keywords. Great, sort of. Overkill? Google will believe
so.

Keep your site in the clear. Change page titles to something more on the human side.
“Company XYZ’s Foolproof, All Occasion Cake Recipes”. Sounds much more appealing
a service and the keywords, “Cake Recipes” are still drawing in the fans.

4. This Ain’t The Patty Duke Show
Obviously, unless corrected on the front end, copying code from an existing page to
create a new page results in duplicate titles and/or descriptions. This can lead to
multiple URLs all trying their best to rank for the same keywords.

Google Penguin penalizes sites that have a high degree of duplicate content, and
duplicate titles and descriptions can sometimes trigger this penalty. Check that
every page on your site has a unique title and description that clearly describes the
content or purpose of the page.

5. “We can rebuild him…we have the technology,”
Google Webmaster tools is a free service available to webmasters/site owners
through Google that diagnoses any site problems that might affect your rank and
their ability to index you. Tools, especially those provided by the company at the
center of this SEO hoopla, should be leveraged. Available tools offer analysis of your
site that highlight easy fixes such as Google-Bot crawling errors, missing pages, and
duplicate title tags.

6. Look Back; Go Forward
Have a look into your sites existing internal links. If they lead to a specific page using
target keywords in your anchor text, change the anchor text of these links to
include brand and generic terms. A good, safe balance, by Google’s standard, is
around a 40/40/20 mix:

• 40% contain brand related keywords such as “Company XYZ”, as well as branded URLs, such as “http://www.companyxyz.com”.
• 40% contain natural organic “generic” keywords such as “check this out” anchor text from these links
• 20% contain actual target keywords to improve rankings

7. It’s Elemental, My Dear Mr. Watson.
Google looks at a series of elements when evaluating a business’s overall site.
Consumer product and/or experience reviews found on “Google Shopping” are part of
their evaluation.

With Penguin V.4 coming, Matt Cutts announced Google will be looking at “other
signals” to spot “whether someone is not a great merchant”. To date, Cutts’ “other
signals” haven’t been divulged. However, a number of signals currently in use by
Google as part of the “is not a great merchant” judgement, are known. As we wait
for the inevitable next strike by Penguin, now is the perfect time to house clean by
attending to these:

a). HTML Sitemap
Does your site have a map page that helps visitors understand where to find
information on your website? If it doesn’t, get one. Google gives rank preference to
sites that provide ease of navigation and really, unless you are up to shenanigans,
you probably want it to be a snap for visitors to find every page.

b). XML Sitemap
Does your site have an XML document that maps your entire site? If it doesn’t, it’s
important you make or acquire one because the XML sitemap document improves
search engine optimization by making sure webcrawlers can find ALL your pages and
when found, indexes them.

c). Robots.txt file
Your site’s XML Sitemap instructions are given to the crawler bot via this file. If
you have files or directories Google should ignore when crawling your site, this is
where you list them. Additionally, the map, through Robots.txt, informs the bots on
your update regularity. If your site turns content over fairly frequently, you’ll want
that known so you’re re-indexed on your schedule, NOT theirs.

d). Terms of Service (TOS)
Google is preferential to sites with easily accessed and understood Terms of Service.
Sites with these in place as a means of informing consumers of their rights and
responsibilities are considered vastly less likely to be “not great”. They are
considered legally binding and, as such, protect site owners.

A TOS agreement typically contains sections pertaining to one or more of the following topics:
Disambiguation/definition of key words and phrases; User rights and responsibilities;
Proper or expected usage; potential misuse; Accountability for online actions,
behavior, and conduct; Privacy policy outlining the use of personal data; Payment
details such as membership or subscription fees, etc.; Opt-out policy describing
procedure for account termination, if available; Disclaimer/Limitation of Liability
clarifying the site’s legal liability for damages incurred by users; User notification
upon modification of terms, if offered.

If the task of pulling this together seems a bitmuch, allow Entrepreneur to do the heavy lifting
for you. Here is their free “Standard Terms and Conditions Template”

e). Contact page
Create a Contact Page that can be easily located. It should include an
“info@xyz.com” or “contact@xyz.com” e-dress, a real-world address and, a good
option, a contact phone number for customer service. Best yet, have this
information on each page as a footer. Nothing says “We aren’t a bunch of black-hat
thieves!” like an avenue through which to reach a human.

8. All Signs Point West
One of the characteristics of “®Content Farm” sites is that they lack, or have few,
links between pages. Alternately, in the universe of sites containing deep, useful
content, links between pages redirecting user to more deep, useful and related
content should occur. The safest way to create links between pages on your site is
to do it manually.

If, in addition to linking to material in sidebars and in header/footers, you create
jumps within the content, it’s wise to think evolution. Consumers bounce from an
article center to another’s top because they are seeking MORE. They want increased
subject depth they haven’t yet found. Give it to them. They’ll stick around longer
and lengthier visits result in more interaction, more trust and more purchases.
Log into your Google Analytics account to find out all of the following: Who’s staying,
who’s bouncing, how long are the stayers staying, how fast are the bouncers
bouncing and even which pages stayers stay longest on and which bouncers bounce
most frequently from. It’s an extremely accurate measure that can inform your
choice of content and your link structure.

To close this one out, here’s an additional “Good to Know”: Google is using all your
analytics info as a factor in their search algorithm. High bounce rates signal Google
that your page is a poor quality match for the keyword that pinged your page. So,
check it out, work with it and get the Google love.

9. Sorry, Tortoise – It’s A Hare’s Game
If your site takes too long to load, users will bounce. It is estimated that if a page
doesn’t load within 5-8 seconds it will lose 1/3 of its visitors before they ever get to the
good stuff. It not only hurts your bottom line, it hurts your rank. Google views high
bounce rates as strong indicator a site is poor quality and of poor relevance to the
search terms you’re trying to rank for. This may or may not be true. Either way, it’s
a certain shame to have your site devalued when you can do something easy to
remedy the fault.

Run your URL through one of the many site speed testing tools available on the web.
Most are free and some offer competitor site load time comparisons. Hey, a little
harmless recon never hurt.

10. Help A Fella Out?
When your server cannot find a page a visitor is looking for, have a composed “404
Not Found” error return that is useful. Instead of displaying a message your teenage
kids believe clever like “Uh oh, you’ve hit a high speed 404 wall!” present the visitor
with a useful message and links to a relevant page. This could include your
homepage or your site map.

Avoid redirecting all your 404 traffic to a single location such as your homepage, this
can be thought a search engine trick for which your site maybe penalized. You can
also check your “rawl errors” page from within Google Webmaster tools for a list of
any 404 errors. You can then create placeholder pages or 301 redirects to eliminate
these “holes” in your site.

11. I Am Not An Animal! (or a robot spider…)
Each image on your site should include a text description through an alt attribute. It
is very important not to fill your alt tags with keywords. This is another “keyword
stuffing” tactic and can have a negative impact on your rankings. Instead, create a
brief description of the image that would help a person with visual impairment using a
screen reader to understand what the image depicts and how it relates to your
content. For example:

12. Are You Following Me?
Configure your content publishing software to automatically add the rel=”nofollow” to
all comment links and message board links. This will prevent you from passing your
reputation to other sites. More importantly, it prevents you from being penalized for
linking to sites that Google consider dwellers of bad link neighborhoods.

13. WHOOO…Party Over Here!
With social media becoming more and more significant, it’s important to give your
visitors the opportunity to share your content with their friends and followers via
Facebook, Twitter and Google +, etcetera.
Traffic from social sites such as “Likes” and “Tweets” are all positive signals to
search engines that your site is high quality and deserves, in return, to garner a high
rank for keyword phrases. So, get to socializing. People like it and they’ll like you too.

Right then, you’re all set. Up and running. Cleaned house. Ship-shape.
Great Start!

Yes, there are a few more things to look into: Off-Page Optimizations.
I heard you sigh. No need. Part II of this series is a checklist just as easily run down.
So, why not let’s get going before that Penguin stops over.

Thanks and see you there, Tom.
Author:Tom Woolley

Tom Woolley Author Bio
Tom Woolley’s writing career spans a period of 28 continuous years. In addition to
creating evergreen business, marketing, sales and advertising materials for B2B giant
Reed Elsevier, and powerhouse B2Cs, Fairchild Publications and Conde Nast
Publications, he has been employed as journalist, columnist and essayist.

In 2006, Tom moved from full-time corporate to full-time freelance. This shift allows
him time to work on a broader variety of projects as well as Resource Partner
through his city’s Small Business Association. In this volunteer role, he assists
entrepreneurial, small and women owned start ups in the creation of tailored,
effective and cost appropriate marketing and promotions materials.

In 2011, He became part of a mentoring team at the Academy for Civic and
Entrepreneurial Leadership (ACEL), that takes students through the process of
building a marketing plan for their mock businesses.
Beyond writing and mentoring, in 2013, Tom’s obsessive attentions have come to
include his food blog, “Food Idiot Trying”, and the construction of “Streaming Hot Content”,
a Real-Time content/social media marketing information delivery service.

Want To Grow Your Social Media Networks And Increase Your Potential Customer Base?

Our Social Media Management Plans can do exactly this for your business! We create and build Search Engine Optimised Social Media Networks that engage and expand your reach, fans and followers on Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook. We write bespoke, high converting tweets and posts that engage your users and prompt them to share your valuable content, products and services. I used these exact techniques to grow my Twitter networks to over 51 000 targeted, active followers. Read more about Social Media Management