While many of us may sneer at checklists as being condescending and unhelpful (I used to myself), several recent studies have demonstrated how effective they can be at eliminating mistakes and improving efficiency.

In one such study a group of doctors were given checklists to go through before surgery, and asked to check them each time a patient came in. Many found the process degrading as the items on the checklist were so simple and apparently obvious.

But after a few months it was found that this strategy did actually help to significantly reduce the number of errors, and was subsequently taken up by the institutions on a permanent basis.

So with that in mind, it’s possible that occasionally looking over an SEO Checklist like the one below, could help you to ensure that your site both maintains and further develops its performance in the search engines.

Here are the things you should be doing on a regular basis to keep your site that way – the Pillars of SEO as I like to call them.

Content Generation

You need to be generating lots of high quality content for your website if you intend to stay at the top of the search engines. When Google spiders your site it does so by looking at the content. It is this content that will demonstrate to Google that your site is very much alive – still being edited and still relevant. Tt’s also what will bring visitors back time and again. You must ensure your content is high quality though, so if you can only have one or the other, prioritize quality above quantity.

Keyword Research

You need to discover which are the most targeted and topically relevant keyword phrases and synonyms to include in your content and articles.

Link Building

Actively and constantly building inbound links to your site, either yourself or through an outsourced service is of fundamental importance. Essentially you should ensure that your site is linked to by as many sites across the Internet as possible, and you need to continue to encourage this as regularly as possible. You should try to make sure that all the links you build are relevant and that they are from trusted and well known sites.

Research

To keep your SEO as effective as possible, and to avoid falling foul of changes to Google’s algorithm, you need to ensure that you keep yourself regurlay updated on the latest happenings in the world of search. This is one of the most important aspects of good SEO and what keeps it relevant, but unfortunately it is also the element that most webmasters forget. If you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to have the most up to date information at all times.

Web Design

Generally tweaking and improving your website is something that should be an on going process. Each time you review the look and design of your site from an SEO and marketing perspective, consider this an iteration cycle. Web design is something that not only affects how visitors see your site, but also how Google sees it, in terms of linkage and content.

Review Stats

This is another element that a lot of would-be SEO experts often overlook. There are two basic yet essential elements to performing efficient and effective SEO. You need to know what terms people are searching with to get to your site, and asses which SEO strategies have been successful in the past, so you can do more of them; and which ones failed and should be avoided in future.

Vadim Kirichenko is an SEM expert who believes best way to earn online is to blog for fun and monetize your website using PPC advertising.

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