This is a list of important SEO strategies to be included in any successful SEO program. Taken individually, each strategy can help to improve your search engine rankings. When you combine all the strategies shown here into each page of your website, you will improve your search engine placement. This SEO checklist will help your page rank higher in the SERPs. The following SEO strategies carry varying weight, depending on your niche and your competition. These strategies have not been arranged in order of importance.

Keywords-Keyword Phrases

Keyword selection and optimization are crucial to the success of your site. Targeting the wrong keywords or keyword phrases can limit your sites success. The first place to start selecting your keywords is Google Adwords: Keyword Tool. Once you have determined the keywords best suited for each page, use the keywords in each SEO strategy. When you use your keywords effectively you won't need to spam.

Page Titles

Page Titles are another important area of seo. The page title is shown as the heading in the search engine results pages. When formatting your page title for the search engines, and you would like to add your site name to it, make sure you put the title of the article first, then the site name. If your site is built on a cms (content management system) like Drupal cms there will be a module available to do that for you. This is a very important SEO strategy.

Canonical URLs

A relative newcomer to SEO, this is a very powerful strategy. Canonical URLs allow you to specify a base URL and reroute other URLs with similar content to it so that the rerouted pages give up their link juice to the base URL. This SEO strategy could be considered among the top three strategies on this SEO checklist.

H1-H2 tags

H1 tags should be used for the title of your article and h2 tags for subtitles will help your page rank higher. Use your keywords in the title and subtitles. Below the h2 tag (h3, h4, h5) you won't gain much advantage.

Meta Description

Some say the Meta Tag is making a comeback. When search engines began, the meta tags were very important, they don't carry as much importance today. They have shown promise in social bookmarking and networking.

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords still have importance in the search engine placement of your page. They give you another opportunity to list your keywords for the search engines. They also help with social bookmarking and networking and are listed as tags on some sites.

Backlinks-Incoming Links

SEOs consider backlinks to be the most important off page seo strategy. Backlinks are incoming links to your site and the search engines give them a lot of weight when they rank your page. Make sure your links come from respected sites from your niche. This SEO strategy is the best way to increase your page rank, some SEO experts feel it is the only way. I feel that it is a combination of page structure, content, and incoming links.

Image ALT tags

Image ALT tags will give you another opportunity to get your keywords on the page. Use your keywords in the image tag. This is missed a lot in SEO, by adding the tag it could move your page ahead of your competitors. This is an often overlooked SEO strategy.

Page URL

The URL of each page should have clean URLs. This means , if you use a cms (content management system) like Drupal cms, you want your URLs to look like this http://www.drcyberspace.com/seo-checklist-seo-strategies(i.e. without ?q= in the URL). as you can see even the URL contains the keywords of your article, this helps your page to the top of the search engine results pages. This strategy could be higher on this SEO checklist, it's very important in helping the search engines locate your content.