So without further ado here are the 26 points. Make sure you keep a score to rank yourself below…

SEO Checklist

1) Create content for people not search engines.
2) Use tools like Google Insights for Search and Keyword Estimator. They are invaluable for spotting opportunities, trending search terms and competitiveness.
3) Online press releases are a great way to generate backlinks and secure a high ranking PR link using anchor text of your choice. PR Web, although expensive is page rank 7!
5) Optimise your Title, H1, H2, Alt and Meta Description tags. Make sure they are the correct character length and contain your key search terms.
6) SEO is to a large extent content. 50% of your traffic won’t come through your homepage as Google ranks pages, not sites. As a rough rule, more content = more traffic.
7) Link internally using a variety of anchor text to a diverse range of pages.
8 ) Make sure you utilise Google Webmaster Central. It’s essential.
9) Be patient – Google tends to favour an aged domain.
10) Use social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. People who read your site regularly are more likely to share your links across their social profiles.
11) Do take part in quality 3 way link exchanges.
12) Do submit content to article submission sites. These can build good solid backlinks.
13) Keep your site and content fresh with regular updates.
14) Page load time is now a Google algorithm ranking factor. Make sure your site is optimised by having all CSS in one file, minimising calls to the server and a whole host of other techniques.
15) Link bait. Write content that others want to share! Think top 10′s, best of’s etc.
16) Make sure you have a Google XML sitemap and a standard HTML sitemap.
17) Use breadcrumbs to make it easier for search engines to spider your pages.
18) Check your competitions links using tools like Link Diagnosis. Then approach those sites to share links with your site as well.
19) When you share links make sure the site in question uses relevant anchor text.
20) Link diversity. Don’t send all inbound links to your homepage. Linking should be a natural process so if you send all inbound links to your homepage Google will deem it to be un-natural.
21) Submit your site to directories. If you can get in DMoz then you are laughing!
22) Make sure your code is clean, not bloated.
23) Use canonical URL’s. Pick a structure and stick to it.
24) If you are using WordPress make sure you are using permalinks.
25) Make sure you are using 301 redirects.
26) Install Google Analytics and use it religiously to analyse incoming traffic.

How did you score?

0-5 = Google, nah never heard of them.
6-10 = You think SEO is some sort of martial art or airport code.
11-15 = You are still living in a world of META Keywords and your favourite search engine is Alta Vista.
16-20 = Now we are talking. You are 5 steps from SEO nirvana.
21-26 = Congratulations. Your name is probably Matt Cutts, Sergey Brin or Larry Page. Either that or your work in SEO. Now tweet this link and get back to work.

Appendix

In terms of my authority to speak on this subject I am fully self taught in SEO. However, I must admit that I have a background in web design not to mention the fact that I work in the digital media industry so I do have a bit of a head start. Being a big affiliate marketing fan I have two websites that I promote using true content and SEO only.

Site 1 generates 8,000 page impressions per month and is top of page 3 on Google for a big generic term that gets 200,000 local searches a month on Google on exact match. The site debuted on page 24 for this term 8 months ago so I’m relatively pleased with this progress.

Site 2 generates 7,000 page impressions per month and is in position 3 on page 1 of Google for a generic term that gets 8,000 local searches per month. This site has only been live for 4 months so I’m really pleased with how things are going.

Does that make me an authority on SEO? Not by any means but I must be doing something right I guess. Please do leave a comment below if you agree, disagree or just want to have your say.

Out of the box it’s simple to setup, you just need to plug it into the latest version of iTunes, sync up some content as you would with your iPhone or iPod, then off you go. However, the fact that you have to plug the iPad into your computer before you can use it eludes to my main gripe with the iPad. If this device is truly to replace a laptop or netbook then it needs to work out of the box. More of that later though.

Functionally the iPad is just a big iPhone, without the phone! It’s intuitive to use, like the iPhone, and after 5 mins of drooling I did find myself thinking…. “well that was fun”. 1 week later I have set up my email account, uploaded some video and installed some apps, and admittedly the laptop has been out much less. The fact that you can turn the iPad on or just unlock it and be on the internet within 10 seconds is perfect for a quick browse whilst watching TV or in bed.

Moving on to Apps, you really start to realise who the iPad is targeted at. Although Apple quote thousands of iPad Apps being already available, most of these are the long tail of mediocrity. The rest are predominantly business oriented or games. The Business oriented Apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote give a much better idea of where the iPad is going. In fact, it was an App called “Things for iPad”, which retails at £11.99 which made me realise exactly what the point of an iPad is! Yes that’s right folks the reason d’etre for the iPad is to replace the humble notepad. Perhaps I should have realised this from the name but a simple To-do list App made me realise that this could easily replace my notebook, plus add a lot of other cool stuff in. I could carry the iPad around with me every day and never need to write on a bit of paper again!

So what are the drawbacks of the iPad? Well they are two fold. Firstly, it is dependent on syncing up with a laptop. Until it can function separately, it won’t replace the laptop. Secondly is file storage. Creating Apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote, you would think that you would be able to save files and documents on to the 16GB+ of storage space, then share and manage them with the cloud, email, etc etc. Apple have actually made sharing files particularly fiddly, you cannot see a list of files saved, in fact you cannot even manually save a file in Pages, it automatically saves every 30secs. If you want to take the file elsewhere, you have to transfer it via USB to iTunes, or export and email. Also you cannot import a file, work on it and then send it back to yourself.

So in summary the iPad is an amazing product, it has a load of things going for it. Would I advise buying one? If you already have a PC and an iPhone, then no. The second or third generation of the iPad are probably going to blow this one out of the water with a whole raft of new features much like the iPhone 4, so I would wait a year or so, that is unless you are a Apple fanboy like me.

I subscribe to the belief that there are three pillars of SEO….

1) Code – Make sure your site is written correctly using META Tags, ALT Tags, Permalink URL’s etc.
2) Content – Have lots of it, well linked, with correct keyword density.
3) Connections – The authority of your site measured by backlinks and the “page rank” of those links.

The first two pillars – “Code” and “Content” are classified as “on-page SEO”. These are, dare I say it, the easier parts of SEO. The parts we can at least make sure we get right and build ourselves. However, on-page SEO will only get you so far. You will always reach a stage where you need to improve your authority and the best way to do this is through building authoritative back links, ideally one way (i.e. not reciprocal and not on a links page) and ideally with a high page rank. The debate about the actual value of backlinks is a popular one and although there are many schools of thought, a site with a few high page-rank backlinks will always outrank a site with none, no matter how good the on-page SEO.

There are two schools of thought regarding backlinking. The first is to develop great content and the links will build themselves. In some cases this might be true but it could well take a lot of time. My feeling is that this is a worthy goal but not realistic, especially in affiliate marketing. The second is to artificially develop backlinks with relevant websites.

Taking myself as an example. I am currently in the midst of trying to move my fitness site to page 1 on Google for a generic term that gets circe 500k – 1m UK searches per month. I find myelf with a decent site, decent on-page SEO and before doing any backlinking I was on page 24 of Google. Suffice to say I wasn’t seeing any traffic from this keyword. A few weeks later and I have developed a grand total of 8 backlinks, (checked with linkdiagnosis.com) and am now on page 19!

So far I have followed the usual routes for generating backlinks, i.e. social bookmarking, directory submissions like DMoz, link exchanges, Squidoo and forum posts. However, I have quickly learnt that this is a) slow progress and b) not very fruitful. I am also wondering whether this is the best use of my time. I’m quickly becoming a believer that the best strategy is to outsource time consuming and arduous activities and concentrate on what you are good at and can add value to. However before I start outsourcing I am trialling press release sites. I recently sent a press release out through PRWeb and although it didn’t come cheap at £120, it was picked up by loads of sites, inc. Google / Yahoo News. Perhaps the most crucial part is that you get a one way backlink from a PR7 site. Upon sending this release out my site moved up instantly from page 19 to page 12 for my key generic term and I’m not looking at about 25 backlinks. I also plan on trialling PR Fire which is only £20 per release.

So slowly but surely I am fighting my way up the rankings but at some point I may well resort to outsourcing link building. One of the link building sites I am investigating is super affiliate kieron donaghue’s ContentNow. It seems a little pricey but at least you are guanateed link transparency and UK links rather than spammy links many have experienced by outsourcing linking to places like India. However, ContentNow charge based upon number of email solicitations for links rather than actual guaranteed links. I have identified another UK based quality link builder that charges £250 + VAT for 25 guaranteed links which is an interesting proposition and one I may test at some point in the future.

Either way link building is a very difficult task, yet something that holds they keys to incredible amounts of traffic and affiliate riches. Perhaps one of the cleverest methods I have heard for generating back links for a bingo affiliate is detailed here.

Backlinks are always going to be an important part of SEO and the goal posts are always changing. You only need to take a look at Matt Cutts recent post on linkspam to see the measures Google are going to to stop people (and especially “thin” affiliates) from gaming the system.

As an affiliate, unless you have a big voucher code or gambling site you are more than likely on a retail based affiliate scheme and retail is SEASONAL. I’ve no doubt that my health site will pick up again in the summer, as people start trying to get the bodies toned for the beach. Google Insights for Search would appear to agrees with me but until then I need to hedge my bets. If you want to make a living out of affiliate marketing you need to have a portfolio of sites for all seasons, i.e. health for January, Mothers Day for March, Patio Furniture for the Summer. But most importantly you need to be geared up for Christmas. Whether this is Electronics or Toys, if you don’t have your biggest month in December then you probably aren’t going to be a successful affiliate marketer.

My first month was largely spent writing content, fiddling with the design and generating price comparison deeplinks manually. Any affiliate marketers out there will know what an arduous process this is and I will certainly be using Easy Content Units going forward! Or maybe a MySQL database if I really feel brave.

Month one saw me sell 10 products which was a strong start and gave me a taste for the powers of using on-page SEO alone to rank on page 1 of Google for low funnel, search terms. Something I now know as exploiting niches. However, my goal is to make this a much bigger site and rank on Page 1 for some of the bigger generic terms. I now find myself about half way through month 2 having already trebled my affiliate commission from month 1 so it’s been a great start but I now find myself with a nice looking, content rich site and very few backlinks. So I have commenced my foray into off-page SEO or generating authoritative backlinks with a high page rank (PR). I will save my exploits here for the next blog post but suffice to say this is proving to be the hardest part of SEO and somewhat of a dark art!

What I will say is that I am hooked already. I have been busy registering domains in other niches and have plans to expand and start outsourcing content production. Whilst I won’t be giving up the day job anytime soon I must say the earning potential has now become very real! Stay tuned for my next update.

Some of you by now might be thinking this is all very well but Apple already produce a product called Apple TV. Apple TV is essentially a plug-in box for your existing TV that allows you to stream content from your computer to your TV. This is a worthwhile learning process for apple, but for me, why would you want to plug something into your TV when you can just have it built in, complete with stylish Apple design cues. Apple know this and for this reason I would expect the next Apple TV product to be an actual TV.

Someday we will all be getting TV over IP.  This may be some way off yet but for the early adopters this is a very real prospect. In fact you can now get Sky TV streamed through your Xbox.  Apple already have all the credentials to lead the IPTV charge with the huge popularity of iTunes providing movie rentals and downloadable TV shows.  Any Apple TV will obviously have this built in, along with a good sized hard drive for the DVR capabilities of Sky or cable tv etc. and wireless internet connectivity.  It will inevitably utilise Apple’s App store with a host of TV related apps like news, weather, email etc.  However it’s 100% definite that any Apple TV will be a walled garden with a homescreen running a version of OSX similar to the forthcoming tablet.  As well as providing on-demand TV, and your entire music library I would expect some sort of casual gaming capability through the App store.

Any move by Apple into the TV space would be followed closely by Microsoft who clearly have a vested interest in the battle for the living room with the Xbox, and with their deal with Sky they clearly have Apple in their sights. Likewise Sony will be watching this space closely as they perhaps stand to lose the most out of an Apple TV. Of course they have great heritage with their Bravia and Playstation products but Apple would surely take a big chunk out of the Bravia market share.

At this point you look at who’s hovering in the background and surprise surprise it’s Google. While they may not be interested in product, they are interested in “organising the worlds data” as per their mission statement. If that content is Television and programming then you bet they will be there or there abouts with a vested interest selling contextual ads anywhere they can.

The amazing think about Apple is that people, (like me) will invest in a new TV because it’s Apple, because it will be built to high standards, because it will be effortlessly easy to use and because it will be seamlessly compatible with all other Apple devices. No doubt I’ll be able to doc my iPod / iPhone in the top of the TV or send movies straight to my TV wirelessly from my Macbook and for that reason I can’t wait for Apple to hurry up and build this product.

Let the battle for the living room commence.

So why am I writing about micropayments then?  Well would you be reading this article if it cost you £0.10 for the privilege.  Probably not, but I won’t hold that against you.  Micropayments are getting a fair bit of coverage at the moment for a number of reasons.  The main one is that we are in a global recession, marketing budgets are in free-fall and as such quality content providers (especially journalism – great article by Freakonomics, and news) are seeing their ad revenues drying up.  This brings us back to the debate over the free vs subscription model for online news providers which was reignited by Rupert Murdoch and the WSJ recently.

In a nutshell the WSJ is one of the only online news provider out there that has successfully maintained a subscription model ($100 p/year) and Murdoch wants a piece of this.  In an article with the Guardian last week Rupert Murdoch stated that he expects to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a “malfunctioning” business model. He also added “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”  Now Rupert Murdoch is a guy you have to respect, but ultimately he knows that if he starts charging £10 per month to get our daily dose of The Sun and The Times then we will migrate to alternatives in our droves.  This is where the idea of micropayments comes in.  By charging miniscule amounts per article News Corp’s scale would mean all those fractions of a dollar would eventually start adding up.  The WSJ also announced last week that they will be bringing in micropayments for users that don’t want to pay the $100 upfront for the year, so this is a very real prospect.

It seems that Murdoch clearly has a vested interest in micropayments but who else does.  Well predictably it’s Facebook.  Facebook have been working on a payment platform since late 2007 which is rumoured to be close to launching.  The possibilities for Micropayments on Facebook are huge.  Obviously they have at a basic level gifting, ranging through to their app platform.  The crucial thing about Facebook is that micropayments obviously work best on a large scale, so when you add in Facebook’s 200m+ audience you have a very interesting revenue model.

As we read down the list of who else could have a vested interest in micropayments it reads like a who’s who in silicon alley, Google with Google Checkout, Ebay with Paypal, Apple with iTunes / iPhone, but it could actually be none of these guys that come out on top.  Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities lies with mobile network operators.  As the mobile internet starts to gain critical mass through smartphones we could see mobile networks acting as a single billing point for online micropayments.  Techcrunch wrote a pretty cutting article on micropayments a few days ago, their idea was that you would deposit money into a Google account and it slowly depletes as you go around the web consuming content.

Thus far everyone seems to be pointing towards the future, but there are a couple of success stories for micropayments floating around already.  The first is a company called Zynga who are making a good living according to Techcrunch out of micrpayments around their gaming apps on Facebook, charging for time spent on the game or for chips in their poker game.  Gaming lends itself to being one of the biggest possibilities for micropayments.  Computer games are a premium product that people are happy to pay for.  World of Warcraft is a great example of people changing up real money for the game based currency which is sort of like a micropayment.  Habbo Hotel also have been utilizing micropayments of a kind for quite a while now to great effect.

So what are the barriers, well the main one is probably going to getting people to pay for something that they used to get for free.  The web has completely changed consumer expectations of content delivery especially with regards to how much they are willing to pay for content or rather how much they aren’t willing to pay for it.  People expect news and social networking for free now and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.  In terms of a world where we pay for news on a per article basis, micropayments might gain some traction in certain niche’s like the WSJ but I don’t think they have a future in the mainstream as people will always migrate to free alternatives.  However, micropayments may well have a bright future in gaming and mobile where additional services can be provided for a nominal fee.

I’ll leave you with something I read last week.  Apparently Twitter co-founder and current Chairman Jack Dorsey seems interested in a payment platform also so expect to hear a lot more about micropayments in the near future.

So short of having a single username and password why else do we need a single web identity?  Read Write Web eloquantly put it, “this battle isn’t about ‘single sign-on’ – it’s about the payload that comes with it (friend networks, personal data, maybe more)”.  As we know the web has become an incredibly social experience and we don’t necessarily want to create a whole new group of friends everytime we sign-up to a new site.  We want one group of friends who we can share experiences and interact with across any site / widget / application etc.  To quote Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for OpenSocial at Google ”Everything on the web is more interesting when it takes place with friends”.  Kevin Marks recently did an interview with Techcrunch on the social web.  It’s definitely worth a read.

So what’s in it for Facebook and Google?  For Facebook this is the second iteration of their Beacon system as Gig Om quite rightly points out.  The first iteration was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest faux pas in what is becoming quite a large catalogue (see the lastest homepage redesign!).  Facebook are calling the second iteration Facebook Connect and in a nutshell it allows websites owners to allow people to log into their website using Facebook login credentials. The genius of this is that it instantly opens up a world of social options.  For example you can see which of your friends are already using the site, you can leave comments and interact with the community and crucially, this will all appear in your Facebook news feed.  This is good for the user at it enriches their Facebook experience and good for the website owner as it publisices their website in users news feeds.  Of course it’s great for Facebook  as they extend their reach across the web and increase their users interdependence on them  In addition from a commercial point of view they get a load more rich user data to mine and use to target people on behalf of advertisers.  Some of the sites already using Facebook Connect are Techcrunch, Digg.com, Mashable and Vimeo.  These aren’t just small sites, they have tens of millions of users.

Facebook Connect clearly makes a lot of sense for all parties involved as users have an established network of friends.  Google, on the other hand aren’t a social network and although most of us have a Google account for Gmail, iGoogle, Google docs etc, we don’t necessarily have a community that goes with it.  So what chance is there for Google Friend Connect? As we know you right Google off at your peril.  However, in saying that I’m going to do just that.  Although Google have integrated Open ID into their system, they simply don’t have the social back-end that say a Facebook have.  They have tried with Google Talk, Blogger etc. but it just doesn’t have the richness of data and friend connections that Facebook do. Sorry Google.

In an ideal world there would be one open source standard, that is what Open ID are campaigning for and they might one day get there.  At the moment though they are getting bogged down in politics (good article by Wired on this) and are already losing ground on Facebook.  For now, it’s a two way battle (Facebook Connect and Open ID are sadly not interoperable) and my money is on Facebook.  At the end of the day you have to look at the user need. Users want a single sign-on and the same friends across the web.  Facebook control that pot of data and that’s why they will win.

Lastly, why am I not using Facebook Connect on my blog? Well my PHP skills are somewhat lacking and although I tried and got it working momentarily it ended up crashing my site.  Any volunteers that fancy helping me, drop me a tweet.

With this in mind I have been trialling a social media monitoring tool called Radian 6 courtesy of the guys at 6 Consulting. Radian 6′s software monitors news, video, image, blog, micro-blog and forum activity on a real-time basis and spits all this information out into a dashboard.  From this dashboard you can see exactly what conversations are going on about your brand, sentiment attached to the conversations, how influential they are, etc etc.  It really is a very powerful tool.

The first thing you have to do is calibrate your settings, so as an example I set out to see if I could see what kind of buzz was generated when Facebook changed their terms and conditions recently.  So I setup all the corresponding options around geo locations / languages / types of media to include, then I built a keyword query.  The query meant that each article had to contain “Facebook” and “change” and “privacy” and terms and conditions”.  It has to be this detailed to make sure it doesn’t bring up every article ever written about Facebook.  Then I set it to look back at the last 3 days (bear in mind it is as good as real time, circa a 15min lag).  Once I’ve entered this I can choose how influential to make certain elements such as time spent looking at the article vs how many comments it has had etc.

With all this setup it took me through to the dashboard.  At this point I have to say this application is extremely fast and well built.  The dashboard is essentially a drag-and-drop iGoogle style page where I can take all of the key things I want to monitor and dump them onto a page. This is what I pulled together in literally 5 minutes.

Important to note as well that every single element can be drilled down further to see the next level of data. Working clockwise from the top left I have..

1) Trending Keywords

2) Articles and level of engagement

3) Posts by hour / day / week / month

4) Top 10 most active posts by comments

5) Most Influential Posters

With the right calibration this is an incredibly powerful tool which can allow media agencies / brands to monitor everything that is being said about them online in real-time.  I’m no social media “guru” but one of the first pillars of social media is to listen. Then the decision whether to get involved is all yours!

6 Consulting are an Authorised Solution Provider for Radian 6 in the UK.  If required they can consult on and provided managed services around Radian 6.

It was big news in the online world last week when a comment by one of the founders Biz Stone, to Marketing Magazine, in the UK, caused a lot of people to start speculating that Twitter would be charging users to have commercial account.  To be fair Biz moved quickly to confirm that Twitter will never charge users or companies for an account.  So just how are they planning to monetise all that traffic then?

Well, it’s probably worthwhile look ing at Google.  Back in 2001 they had a great search engine but no business model and look at them now.  Now I don’t for one minute think that Twitter is going to find a business model like Adwords or Adsense.  In fact they will probably be looking more to the Facebook model.  To some extend I think Facebook would have been the ideal partner for Twitter, and so did Facebook.  Mark Zuckerburg himself called Twitter “an elegant model”.  So why did talks break down between Twitter and Facebook. Well Facebook were offering $500m in Facebook stock, which is essentially paper money at the moment, and also over-values Facebook.  In addition the Twitter founders feel they have unfinished business with Twitter.

Below I’ve jotted down a few ideas for how Twitter could monetise the traffic and service they provide without charging users a subscription fee.

1) Sponsored Tweets in your feed – Similar to Facebook sponsored feed ads.  This would be relatively easy to do but without the level of demographic data FB have Twitter would need to target it based upon what users are Tweeting / Favouriting.  Would advertisers like this, time will tell. Likelihood = 8 (out of 10)

2) Google Adsense / Banners – Easy win, convert all that traffic into revenue.  Only problem is it will be low yield and also many people use an App to bypass Twitter.com.  Might make an appreance but would be worrying if this was their best attempt at a business model. Likelihood = 8 (out of 10)

3) Self service contextual ad system.  Google Adwords is the best, Facebook ads it getting some traction.  This might require a redesign of the layout but there could be room for some kind of engagement ad as Facebook like to call it whereby people can engage with the content and retweet the advertiser message to their friends. Likelihood = 6 (out of 10)

4) Research tool – There’s a whole load of information floating about on Twitter as to people’s thoughts, experiences and perceptions of a companies products and services.  What if Twitter could charge companies for advanced statistics and analytics on what people are saying about them, on Twitter, in realtime. Check out my post on the real time web.  This is along the lines of the TechCrunch article, mining the thought stream. Likelihood = 2 (out of 10)

5) Facebook Connect / Google Friend Connect - Linking either of these systems into Google Friend Connect or Facebook Connect ID system’s will give both parties another level or targeting to tap into.  i.e. they would know what you are twittering and what you are searching for / what your demographics and interests are.  Advertisers would then pay a premium for this targeting.  Ultimately this relies on Google / Facebook selling the inventory. Likelihood = 2 (out of 10)

6) Classifieds – We all know what hashtags are right? Well we could have a slightly more user friendly system where people tweet their classified ads (would work great with geo-location), i.e. “looking for a housemate in Clapham, London, £600pcm, non-smoker”. You then pay a small fee for a listing in certain categories, or Twitter gets a small % share of the sale item if you were selling something ebay style. Likelihood = 4 (out of 10)

7) Get bought - Last option, is to sell up, take the money and run. Leave it to Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Likelihood = 6 (out of 10).

So there are some examples, but I guess we are all going to have to wait and see what Twitter come up with.  If you want some further reading Business Insider have run a competition with their users to create the best 11 commercial business model for Twitter.