SEO Quality Assurance Checklist

Here are list of SEO QA Checklist.

1. Does each page type have a unique Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords tag?

• Make sure each title does not exceed more than 75 characters
• Make sure each description contains the keywords present in title and does not exceed 180 characters.
• For dynamic pages does the code generate a unique Title, Description and Keywords tag?
• For static pages have content authors written a unique Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords tag?

2. Optimize the page's content

• Make sure important content is contained outside JavaScript, flash or iframe
• Make sure text is not rendered as image
• Ensure the keywords are placed are H1 and H2 tags
• Ensure there is only one H1 tag which contains the same content/keywords as page title. It is not used for website title
• Headings are sparingly used on every page and are consistent in font and size
• The heading tags H2 and H3 are used to create hierarchical structure for the main content of the pages.

3. Information Integrity

• Make sure content is not copied and pasted from other websites.
• Links to source content are provided in case any facts have been taken
• No under construction or coming soon or empty pages
• When used, country names, country codes and regions are consistent with the names of countries database in all languages
• Make sure links to related information and reference materials are provided.
• Any third party content is not used without appropriate permission.

4. Optimize the non-text content

• Ensure the alt tags contain the keyword describing the image's content
• Ensure the image filenames describe about the image - make sure the character length is not more than 30 characters
• Images, figures, video, audio etc. all have captions, video and audio captions include duration
• A transcript is used for audio and video files

5. Navigation

• Navigation is logical, clear, consistent and intuitive
• Primary navigation is available on all pages and is consistent
• The active menu item is obvious at all times
• The user's location is indicated through breadcrumbs or by specifying the current step in a sequence (E.g. Step 2 of 5)
• Common page elements such as search box look the same and appear in the same place across all the pages
• Text is used to label navigation items, images are not to be used.
• A custom 404 page is provided that contains information which assists users in finding the information they seek.
• The site search pagination contains rel prev and next attributes to avoid duplicate content in the site.

6. Is the robots.txt file blocking any URLs that you want the search engines to index?

• Are pages such as the login, email to a friend, printer friendly pages, footer pages, etc. blocked?
• Does the robots.txt file contain a line "Disallow: /" that blocks all robots from crawling the entire site?
• The nofollow attribute is used on pages with un-edited content i.e. user generated content such as comments or forums on specific links to untrusted content.

7. Do any dynamic pages that should be indexed have a "noindex" tag in the Robots Meta Tag?

8. Anchor tag

• Anchor text, which is clickable text users see as a result of a link, is concise and descriptive, for example Running shoes instead of click here
• If only icons are used for a link to download or other actions e.g. a PDF file then PDF is written in the alt text. These images are not included as background CSS images.

9. Create a unique URL

• Use all lowercase characters
• Use hyphens to separate words (E.g. home-entertainment NOT home_entertainment or home&entertainment)
• Create static URLs when possible, avoid session IDs and dynamic characters
• When possible use 115 characters or less

10. Have all necessary URL redirects been implemented correctly?

• Do non-www versions of every URL 301 to www versions (or vice-versa)?
• Do URLs that end in / 301 to versions that have no / (or vice-versa)?
• Do all mixed case URLs 301 to lowercase versions?
• Do test version sub domains (e.g. alpha.site.com) either 301 to the root domain or are the password protected?
• Are 301 redirects implemented for any URLs that are eliminated, to point visitors to the new version of the URL or if there is no new version does the 301 redirect to the root domain or a related directory on the site?
• Use the "rel=canonical" tag if the content may be considered duplicate and closely mirrors a more authoritative page

11. Make the page accessible to users and search engines

• Add the new URL to HTML and XML sitemaps

12. Has the xml sitemap file been updated to reflect the new changes?

13. Does running a crawler such as Linkscan through the site deliver error codes?

Are there any chain redirects (e.g. 301 to 301 to 301)?

14. Has a change log / list been created to easily identify and diagnose issues that could affect SEO?

• Is the addition of or reduction of links on a page tracked?
• Have rewritten page copy and Meta information been backed up?
• Have new pages been added?
• Are and URLs eliminated or redirected?

15. Control all formatting and layout by CSS

• The HTML does not contain any formatting or layout information, this is all contained in the CSS referenced in the document
• HTML tables are only used for tabular data and not for controlling the layout of webpages. Table structure is kept simple without extra rows or columns and empty cells or span cells are avoided
• Thetag is used for table headers, adding an id totag improves the experience
• Relative units are used for font sizes and line heights in the CSS (em rather than px) to enable flexible re-sizing. Font size and style are consistent throughout the site. Fixed font sizes are avoided for all containers including tables.
• The page is readable and functions correctly when the text size is changed i.e. doubled or reduced.
• Navigation bars are coded as a list i.e. unordered list or ordered list
• The CSS should contain no hidden links as these will be detected by screen readers

16. Page identity

• The page design is optimized for 1024x768 resolution
• The pages load quickly (a 25kb file takes less than 10 seconds to load over 20kbps)
• An RSS feed is offered in case of new content such as news, blog sections

17. Copyright

• The copyright link is included in all the pages
• Pages refer to the current year in the footer for copyrights

18. Compatibility

• Site is compatible with current and penultimate versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari for desktop and similarly popular browsers of mobiles such as IPhone, Android, and Windows 7.