Design Chemical SEO Alchemy – Formulas that Create Quality

We use advanced proprietary techniques that only we know about ... Just kidding ...

Improving website search engine marketing performance, or SEO, is relatively straightforward. Current strategies, tactics and techniques that produce desired results are well established. However that doesn't mean they can be done without investing time and effort.

The Design Chemical 88-point SEO Guideline Checklist has been developed to allow us to systematically evaluate websites and implement changes to make them perform as well as possible. While the checklist is technically oriented, we are sensitive to human usability and purpose of the site, and this process often uncovers design or philosophical shortcomings that keep sites from maximizing results. While we label this a SEO checklist it is also a usability checklist. Hey, we're efficient and try to do as many things as possible at the same time. Jugglers and alchemists!

We will start using the checklist as soon as you contact us and ask for a bit of help. We can quickly determine the scope of work you need and the scale of the project. Remember, the internet has few true secrets and many things can be revealed under the Design Chemical microscope. A lot of what we do can be done without access to your hosted files, other issues will require some passwords and permissions.

Checklist Item 1

First the bad news. The Code. For an existing site we make a quick technical evaluation to uncover coding errors or other issues that may prevent spiders from crawling and indexing the site properly, and that often lead to many different performance issues. We still find it shocking how many poorly put together websites there are out there. We know very quickly if repairs are in order, or its time for a transplant or replacement clone.

Checklist Item 2

More bad news. Flash. If your site is all Flash or uses mostly Flash then you are probably aware that your site doesn't get very good search engine results. While there are techniques to help Flash site SEO, they generally require involvement from the original Flash page developer and we have found them to be less than helpful, if they are even still around. If you're thinking of adding it to your site... don't. We can help develop an original Flash site to have some SEO value, but Flash is more trouble than it is worth and many desirable graphic affects can be achieved without it. Slow, cumbersome, hard to edit, with no SEO or quality score content value... yes, we don't like Flash. Sorry Mr. Adobe. If a site is all Flash we know right away we are going to be the bearers of bad news. Please don't shoot the messenger.

Checklist Item 3

No news is not good news. Web Presence. We reach into our bag of tricks and make a profile of the site to determine what the internet thinks of it. While we are certainly opinionated about what we like, ultimately our opinion doesn't matter. What matters most is how well it performs by various ranking tools and services. We also like to have reliable benchmarks to measure against so we can boast about improvements later.

Checklist Item 4

Just news. Content and Keywords. Of course the scope and scale of this checklist item can grow into many tasks and even stand-alone projects. For existing sites that aren't looking for reconstructive surgery we perform an initial analysis of the content. While we may actually read it, especially if we think it is interesting, what this really means is that we check to see what the spiders are seeing. After Checklist Item 1 we usually have the answer “probably not much” but it gives us all a good idea of what we need to change to help improve sites.

Checklist Item 5

Just the facts. Usability and Intent. This is actually not really about facts; it is about subjectivity and purpose. Review of this helps us define what the site needs to be more effective. While we may have been asked to 'just do something about my SEO', ultimately there are many other issues that come together that determine success or failure. Sometimes a minor technical tweak releases the power of SEO, other times a major do over is the only thing that will help. At this stage, we have a pretty good idea what is required and can prepare an initial proposal, or sit down with a client and go over our recommendations.

Checklist Item 6

If a site doesn't have Google Analytics or other visitor tracking software, we will install and set it up on sites. It is a very powerful tool for determining where visitors come from and what they do on websites. Advanced reporting and client training are options we include in proposals.

Checklist Item 7

Links police. Bad links, are well, bad. When clients have paid to have someone generate linkes we're usually faced with a do over to start generating quality incoming links. We definitely will eliminate questionable outgoing links. The next several check- list items involve evaluating the link situation and making recommendations on how to proceed.

Checklist Item 8

Get Blogging. We recommend a blog on your site, as well as making the rounds of related sites and posting information about your site. Forums too.

Checklist Item 9

Social Bookmarks – they tend to be a bit overrated for SEO because most set links for search engine spiders as 'no-follow', but they can get real people involved with your site, which is good.

Checklist Item 10

Directory Submissions are not what they used to be but still matter. Website directories give your site a quick description and a link back to your site. This is a proven way to build a many backlinks in a short period of time. They won't perform miracles, but directories can help when combined with other SEO techniques.

Checklist Item 11

Press Releases and Article Marketing is hard work, writing quality articles on your topic and submitting them to PR submission services and article directories will give you relevant backlinks from quality websites. We can either produce these, or at least advise on how to get the best results from them.

We will discuss these and other checklist items in the upcoming Design Chemical SEO Blog, but meanwhile you are welcome to download a PDF of this discussion (thank you Mr. Adobe), or better yet contact us and request a quick and free evaluation of your site and our proposal.

Most people realize that their Search Engine Marketing goal should be about quality traffic rather than quantity of traffic; how to do this effectively and efficiently is the tough part. Getting more of the right kind of people to visit your site is our aim, and we can help build the infrastructure and provide the on-going services that will make this happen. We will try to give you as much, or as little information as you need and want to understand these issues.