Methodology
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Images
The "alt" attribute provides a text equivalent for the image. If the browser cannot display an image the alt description will be given in its place. Furthermore, some visitors cannot see images as they might be blind in which the alt tag provides a valuable image description. Finally, search engines utilize the alt attribute for image search indexing.
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Title
The <TITLE> element provides a short piece of text describing the document. The title is very important as it shows in the window title bars, bookmarks and search results. Title should be between 60 to 80 characters long.
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Description Metatag
The description attribute should provide a concise explanation of a Web page's content. Also, the description is often displayed on search engine results and can affect page ranking.
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Keywords Metatag
The keywords attribute was utilized by search engines to provide more accurate search results. Due to the over usage and spamming the keywords attribute has been phased out and is no longer relevant. Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in web search ranking.
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Text to HTML Ratio
Original content is by far the single most important element to search engines. Low Text to HTML ratio indicates little content for search engines to index. We consider it to be good practice to have a Text to HTML ratio of at least 10% and ideal above 20%
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Frames
It is not recommended to use frames or iframes because they can cause problems for search engines. It is best to avoid frames and inline frames whenever possible (Read Article). If frames must be utilized consider <noframes> tag.
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Flash
Flash and other reach-media technologies should primarily be utilized for decorative purposes. This makes your site more search engine friendly and improves accessibility.
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Headings
The <h1> to <h6> tags are used to define HTML headings. The <h1> tag should hold the title describing the content of a specific page therefore only one h1 tag is needed per page. There can be any number of h2 - h6 tags but they should be added in order of importance.
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Doctype
The declaration tells the web browser about what version of HTML the page is written in. It is good practice to always add the declaration to the HTML documents, so that the browser knows what type of document to expect.
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Character Encoding
To display an HTML page correctly, the browser must know what character-set to use.
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Language
The HTML "lang" attributes and language metatag define the base language to be used for displaying text and characters on a Website.
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W3C Markup Validation
It is good practice to use valid HTML/XHTML markup as it ensures that the search engines can read the website correctly as well as it improves cross browser compatibility.
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Deprecated HTML elements
A deprecated element is one that has been outdated by newer constructs. Deprecated elements may become obsolete in future versions of HTML so it is recommended not to use them.
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robots.txt
A robots.txt file restricts access to your site by search engine robots that crawl the web.
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XML Sitemap
Sitemaps inform search engines about pages available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL. XML sitemap should help search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.
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Favicon
The Favicon is a small icon associated with a website. The Favicon is important because it is displayed next to the website's URL in the address bar of the browser as well as in bookmarks and shortcuts.
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Printability
Print-friendly pages are designed to fit on an 8.5"x11" or A4 sheet and usually include only the content of the page, along with source information.
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W3C CSS Validation
It is recommended to use valid CSS to ensure that the website displays correctly.
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Page Rank
PageRank is Google's measure of the importance of a page. It is based on complex algorithmes evaluating page content, authority, keyword density, back links, traffic, demand and more.
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Indexed Pages
The higher number of indexed pages the more content search engines can index, which increases overall value of the website.
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Backlinks
The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page threfore the more backlinks comming from reputable websites the better.
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Traffic Rank
Traffic Rank is provided by Alexa
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IP Canonicalization
Some web spiders index websites using IP as well as domain name which can cause duplicate content if there is no IP Canonicalization.
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URL Canonicalization
Domain name with WWW and without can be considered as different pages causing duplicate content for search engines.
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Page Speed
PageSpeed analyzes webpages and evaluates its performance while providing suggestions on reducing page load times. Google is now incorporating website speed in search ranking.
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Safe Browsing
Safe Browsing is a service provided by Google that enables applications to check URLs against Google's constantly updated lists of suspected phishing and malware pages.
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Directory Browsing
Protect Webserver directories from unwanted browsing. To enhance security, directory browsing should be disabled unless you have a specific reason to enable it. If you enable directory browsing, make sure that you only enable it on the particular directory or directories that you want to share.
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Server Signature
Attackers can utilize server signature versioning information to their advantage therefore it is recommended to disable it when possible. (Disable server signature for Apache).
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Resources
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Browser Extensions
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