SEO Step 2 - Technical audit

Before we start looking at how to use the keywords and keyphrases to build new content, you need to make sure Google and other search engines can actually access your site. There is no point in creating keyword-rich content if Google is unable to find your site, access your content and index all your pages. Below is a detailed list of activities for your technical audit.

Sitemaps

You need to create 2 sitemaps:

1. The first one is an html sitemap to add to your site, with a list of all your pages.
2. The second one is a .txt or .xml page. There are automated tools to create sitemaps, but I prefer manual sitemaps to ensure you list all the additional database driven pages created via URL rewrites. You will need to submit your sitemap to the various search engines. To Google via the Webmaster interface; to Yahoo, Ask and MSN via sitemap submission tools.

Google Robots

Create a robots.txt file to tell Google which pages of your site to access, and which ones not to. If you have one already, make sure you haven’t excluded whole sections by mistake.

URL structure

Your URL should include your keywords. You will need to look:

• Domain name optimisation
• URL optimisation
• File name optimisation

If you have a database-driven website, then you should use mod-rewrite as a way to replace dynamic urls (eg www.domain.com/db.php?a=cat1) with a static page (eg www.domain.com/search-engine-optimisation.php). The file length should not be more than 3 keywords long.

Use of images

All images need to have a keyword-rich ALT tag. The size of the images needs to be small to make them easier to download.

Navigation and links

Internal links need to include keywords. Don’t use “click here”, you need to tell Google what is should find on the next page. Do not use javascript or frames. Minimise the number of external links, as this will reduce your overall PageRank.