1. DOMAIN NAME
Registered domain has been carefully selected using brand or keywords and resolves correctly to www (or no www) version.

Brandable domain name registered / in use
Domain name does not contain hyphens, numbers or mispellings
Domain is not due to expire

2. KEYWORD RELATED
Content has been written with targeted keywords used intelligently throughout the appropriate pages.

Comprehensive keyword research performed
Competition / expected traffic assessed
Primary and secondary keywords selected
Keywords documented / approved by client
Keywords grouped per category / site structure determined based upon

3. CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Content has been written with targeted keywords used intelligently throughout the appropriate pages.

Content type determined / approved by client
Content creation assigned to designated person(s)
Content development commenced based upon keyword research
Content received and approved for use
Content published

4. META TAGS
Each page contains its own unique title, meta description, and main heading (H1).

Keyword rich/relevant title tags, keywords close to beginning of title tags
Title tags 10 – 60 characters, no special characters
Keyword rich/relevant description tags
Description tags less than 200 characters.
Keyword rich/relevant keyword tags
Keyword tags less than 10 specific keywords / keywords not stuffed
No keyword meta tag duplicates
Keyword rich/relevant header tags, H1, H2, H3

5. SITE NAVIGATION
Site navigation is clearly marked using plain text links. Flash, JavaScript, or form-based navigation, if used, has a plain text alternative.

Most relevant navigational links most prominent onsite (header, sidemenu etc)
Secondary site navigational links within site footer (privacy, disclaimer etc)
Text based navigation replacing any image or flash based navigation
Site pages or filenames “linked to” contain relevant keywords/phrases
All internal onsite links are valid / no broken links
Site consists of efficient, tree like, category based structure
No more than 2 clicks to any page sitewide
Intra site linking
Implementation of breadcrumb navigation
Keyword relevant mouseover text across all links
Removal of any links pointing to external spam, porn, gambling etc related sites
All external links valid and working

6. URL ELEMENTS
URLs contain targeted keywords, are short, contain no query strings or session IDs, and are correctly referenced by the appropriate rel=canonical link element.

Keyword rich/relevant URLs/pagenames
Removal of non descriptive URLs
Implementation of category based URL structure (www.domain.com/category/page.html)
Implementation of hyphenated URLs
Removal of overly long page names

7. SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION
Site has been registered with and submitted to Google and/or Bing webmaster tools with correct settings.

Submission to Google
Submission to Yahoo
Submission to Bing
Submission to any other desired search engines

8. SITEMAPS
Both an HTML and an XML sitemap have been created for the site. The XML sitemap has been correctly submitted to Google and/or Bing webmaster tools.

Creation of HTML sitemap
Creation of XML sitemap
Check and validate XML sitemap
Submission of XML sitemap to Google webmaster tools.

9. ANALYTICS
Analytics software is correctly implemented on every page and tracking is active.

Creation of Google Analytics (or other tracking software) account
Creation of tracking code
Implementation of analytical code onsite
Confirmation of correctly installed and actively tracking code

10. HEADERS AND REDIRECTS
All redirections correctly use a 301 header response. Page not found is correctly set up to return a 404 header response.

Update htaccess file with appropriate redirects if required (301)
Create custom 404 error file
Test both 301 redirects and 404 error files

11. IMAGERY
Images have been reduced in size to prevent slow loading times which can hamper rankings.

All images have descriptive/keyword rich file names
All images have appropriate ALT tag information
Images load quickly without delay

12. RSS FEEDS
RSS feeds have been created and published onsite. Feedburner account created, all RSS feeds pinged.

Creation of RSS feeds (eg feedburner.com)
Implementation of RSS feeds onsite
Submission of RSS feeds to external websites
RSS feeds pinged

13. SOCIAL WIDGETS
Implementation of social widgets on all pages site wide. Share this buttons and link to us pages created.

Implementation of ‘share this’ social widgets onsite
‘Link to us’ page created
Testing of social widget functionality

14. DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
Site has been submitted to both free and paid directories, including Yahoo and DMOZ. Descriptive text used throughout submissions.

Submission of site to free directories
Submission of site to paid directories
Submission of site to Yahoo directory
Submission of site to DMOZ

15. ARTICLE MARKETING
Content published to various article marketing websites. Resource boxes created using descriptive anchor text.

Creation of content for article directories
Article directories sites chosen
Resource box creation/link text
Publication of content to article marketing sites (ezinearticles.com etc)

16. PRESS RELEASES
Press release written, received and published on selected press release websites for news syndication.

Creation of content for press releases
Press release websites chosen
Link/anchor text noted
Publication of content to press release sites

17. MULTIMEDIA PUBLISHING
Mulitimedia content created. Content proofed, and published across various multimedia sharing sites. Podcasts published onsite, videos posted to youtube etc

Creation of content video, audio etc
Publication of multimedia content onsite (eg podcasts etc)
Publication of content and material to selected multimedia sharing sites (eg.youtube.com)
Descriptive link/anchor text implemented

18. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Site has been submitted to leading social bookmarking sites. (digg, reddit, delicious etc)

Submission to digg.com
Submission to delicious.com
Link sharing with Facebook, Twitter etc
Bookmarking of a collection of most relevant pages

19. WEB 2.0 SITES
Creation of numerous web 2.0 (external third party sites) in an effort to provide keyword rich high quality anchor text backlinks.

Creation of squidoo pages
Creation of hubpages
Creation of blog
Bookmarking and pinging of external sites

20. COMMENT POSTING
Blog commenting and forum posting performed and completed across various topic related websites.

Blog commenting
Forum posting