Checklist for Doing SEO - (Part One)

Before you do any SEO, you need to research some factors and find out the part need to be changed. Many people believe the following checklist gives the most important steps in the SEO process.

• Go through the basic knowledge of web development.
  
• Write down your target. Ask yourself: Why are you doing SEO? Why do you want people to find your site?
  
• Brainstorm and write down possible search queries that people may interested with your site. Ask yourself: What words might people type into the search engines to look information that your website can provide? For example, I came up with “Story of Zeus”, "greek mythology" for a website talking about stories.
  
• Research your chosen keywords. Sign up for Google Adwords and learn how to use the provided “keyword tool” and “ad text ideas” generator. Learn how to use Wordtracker (paid) and some other SEO Tools (free).
• Using what you got from keyword research, record what you believe to be the best keywords for SEO.
• Analyze the current Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your keywords. Gather information about: Who is ranking high in SEO result? What are their advantage and disadvantage? Investigate and get to know your competition.
• Create a list of your competition. This is also to set your target. You will be more clear to know what you should once you have set your competitors.
• Use some link analysis tool like Yahoo Site Explorer to find the sources of your competitor's links.
• Search for your site in search engines to figure out whether it's been indexed. Use the site command on Google, Live and Yahoo “site:www.yoursite.com” If your client's site is not indexed, you need to figure out what is preventing the search engines from crawling it. Google's Webmaster tool can be a good helper for this step.

On page optimization will be the part two of this topic.