The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!
Marketing a website isn’t particularly difficult. It’s usually just a matter of knowing what to do, how to do it and having the skills and time to get it done. With that said, marketing a website isn’t particularly easy either. There are so many factors and variables in play that at any given time that the job can be quite overwhelming. Obviously I can’t address the issue of whether or not you have the skills or time, but I can help you out with the “what to do” piece of the puzzle.
I’ve always been a lover of checklists, especially when it comes to getting things done. Especially when it comes to remembering what things need to be done! So over the last several years I’ve been putting together checklists for all kinds of things pertaining to website marketing.
Below is my master website marketing checklist covering over 400 specific items over 23 topics. These topics include things such as website development, SEO, usability, accessibility, etc. This list doesn’t cover any “how tos,” which are essential ingredients to successful online marketing, but sometimes you need to first know what to do so you can then discover how to do it.
For the sake of brevity, I have kept each check point to its briefest form providing very little explanation. I don’t cover why any particular item is included, how important it might be, or what it even means. This is just the checklist in its rawest form.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll provide some additional explanation and insights to the lists below. And since this list is always a work in progress, any additional thoughts and insights are welcome. I’m always adding and removing things as I see fit. Which brings me to one more note: many items are included here based purely on my own preferences and by no means constitute an absolute truth or necessity.
Domain name & URLs (click heading for additional details)
Browser issues (click heading for additional details)
Site logo (click heading for additional details)
Design considerations (click heading for additional details)
Architectural issues (click heading for additional details)
Navigation (click heading for additional details)
Content (click heading for additional details)
Content Appearance (click heading for additional details)
Links and buttons (click heading for additional details)
Home page (click heading for additional details)
About Us page (click heading for additional details)
Contact Us page (click heading for additional details)
E-Commerce considerations (click heading for additional details)
Product pages (click heading for additional details)
Basket page (click heading for additional details)
Mini baskets (click heading for additional details)
Checkout process (click heading for additional details)
Login & My Account pages (click heading for additional details)
Help and FAQ pages (click heading for additional details)
Forms and errors (click heading for additional details)
Site search (click heading for additional details)
Privacy and Security pages (click heading for additional details)
Site map (click heading for additional details)
Stoney deGeyter is the President of Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. Stoney is a frequent speaker at website marketing conferences and has published hundreds of helpful SEO, SEM and small business articles.
If you’d like Stoney deGeyter to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him via his site or by phone at 866-685-3374.
Stoney pioneered the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing which is the driving philosophy of how Pole Position Marketing helps clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Stoney is Associate Editor at Search Engine Guide and has written several SEO and SEM e-books including E-Marketing Performance; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!; Keyword Research and Selection, Destination Search Engine Marketing, and more.
Stoney has five wonderful children and spends his free time reviewing restaurants and other things to do in Canton, Ohio.
Great article, thanks! Many thanks!
To quote my favorite Everybody Loves Raymond line – HOLY CRAP! What an awesome checklist. Thanks so much for compiling that. I’ve already hit the print button and will begin implementation right away.
Now this is a comprehensive, print it out, keep it forever, staple it to your forehead kind of list. Thank you so much for this great resource!
This is a great checklist and I’m going to have to take some time to really absorb everything on it.
Thanks to Kim Dushinski for tweeting about it. I would have hated missing this.
Act on your dream!
JD
some of these suggestions require more explanations as those few words provide a mild understanding
@bootstrike, you’re absolutely right. And starting tomorrow I’ll be providing some additional explanation for each. Check back for that.
Wow. Great list. It must have taken a long time to put it together.
I’m bookmarking this for sure.
Thank you.
What an awesome check list!! I love, love, love check lists…. I use them for everything. This is wonderful, Stoney.
I will try to apply your techniques to my bean bag chair site. Thanks for all your helpful hints
I haven’t read the entire list yet, but you’ve saved me a lot of time already, so I’ll say thanks for this!
Print and stapled to all proposals going forward 🙂
Yep, great list, thanks! Looking forward to the additional insights.
I love the list, but here is one piece of feedback:
Put it in a table, and rate each entry’s importance.
There are 400 things here, and on any given site, I might have time for 20% of them. I’d like to make sure I get the top 20%. Think of oh ySlow is structured. Sure I can add E-tags, but gziping content and reducing external JS calls is WAY more important.
Thanks for your work!
Jacob
Thank you Stoney. Very usefull detailed article on SEO.
Excellent list Stoney – will make sure Victorian Government has a read – thanks for publishing it.
Lovely list mate. Cheers!
Great resource – kind of grouped together a whole range of resources from different areas, thanks very much!
How do I get this great article in my boss’ head?
Thanks for this great resource. Did u think about a printable PDF-Version with checkboxes?
Omigod I’m in checklist heaven!
This is a fantastic list. I’ll definitely be using some of these suggestions to clean up my own website.
Thanks.
What’s ‘browser hijacking’?
Stellar job here Stoney. Keep up the great work!
wow, this must have taken a long time. but rest assured many of us will make damn good use of it. Thanks!
WOW – I think you just made a lot people’s lives easier & better!
@ Jacob That’s a good point and I wish I had time to do that. I’ve been fiddling with this list for months and I still couldn’t even put each point in a chronological order or order of importance for each section. Maybe someone with more time on their hand can do that for me. 🙂
@ Roland yes, different options are being considered. Hope to have something together by the time we head out to Small Business Marketing Unleashed.
@ Carolyn Browser hijacking is when the site you are visiting takes over. This is most frequently seen when you click a link and the browser resizes automatically. But it can also prevent you from using your right-click they way you want, etc.
@ SEO Diva I’m not a fan of hyphenated domains unless you already own the non-hyphenated version. The reason for this is because it requires a whole lot of extra effort to “brand” that hyphen into someones mind. If you tell the m the domain name verbally there is a good chance they’ll forget to add the hyphen by the time they get to a computer. Now you’ve just driven them to a competitor!
Bitchin’ checklist! It’s great to have this for checking my work. And good on ‘ya for taking the time to transform this into a checklist + tutorial for those who aren’t familiar with the content!
Great job! Thank you.
Could anyone explain me why “No underscores in filenames”? ta.
Oh Wow!
What more can I say excepting for Thank You, Thank You, Thank You : )
@ Pavel underscores look like this: _
When used in a file name it might look like this: big_picture.jpg.
The better way to go is big-picture.jpg
hope that helps.
Ahhhh, checklists make me happy. Happy Christa? Check!
Specificity rules in search engine marketing and your checklist just moved the Free Line. Looks like a great outline for an ebook.
This really is top notch. Been thinking about compiling something like this for a while now I don’t need to. Thanks!
This is a great list. Many thanks! Subscribed to the feed as well.
Just adding my thanks. Awesome best damn web marketing checklist I’ve ever seen. Marking this one in many places. I’m even going to print it out hardcopy.
Good stuff Stoney. Thanks.
I agree with 98%, disagree with 1%, and don’t understand the rest (LOL).
@Pavel: Underscores require the use of the shift key and slows down typing considerably (most people have to shift gears to remember where the underscore is). And, of course, as Stoney mentioned, they can be forgotten just as easily as hyphens.
There is the additional problem that people often don’t see the underscore (especially in a link that’s presented underlined) and interpret it as a space.
This has to be the best list I’ve ever seen in one place. Nice quick, and links to articles that expand on each item. Awesome. Thank you.
@ Jon I just want to point out that the expansion articles will be rolling out over the next couple of weeks. I’m linking them as they are posted.
Most excellent list … gave it the thumbs up in Stumble! You have concisely summed up at least a years worth of reading.
I always enjoy reading your articles Stoney, but this is one of the best.
This is a good article. I’ll be looking for others.
Thorough, excellent list. Thumbs up, stumble-wise.
You get my vote too. I normally don’t believe in ‘me too’ comments, but this really is a remarkable list. A lot of effort must have gone into it, so the least I can do is say thank you.
Cheers!
That’s a super checklist which I am sure will prevent many costly errors and omissions by web designers for their clients in future. Many thanks.
Absolutely a great check list and site. I stumbled you!
Thanks, that is a fantastic checklist. Usually I write up a very brief list myself and so does each department, but never thought to put them all together as a start to finish!
This is something you could document and sell… While I might actually pay for it, I’m more likely to “share” it from a peer. 😉
@ Everyone
I just want to say thanks to everybody who commented and enjoyed the checklist. I also hope you’re enjoying the posts that have been expanding on each of these lists.
Now if I could get all of you go to up and hit the FETCH and SPHINN buttons that would be awesome!
@ Robert, we’re talking about putting the list into some kind of printed format. It’s already shared so you don’t have to feel guilty about passing it on… but I wonder if I could still get people to pay for a nice shiny chart too! 🙂
Stoney,
Is there a master page that lists all of the checklists? I’d like to be able to reference them easily on one page, depending on what I am optimizing.
Thanks and great job!
@ Stoney: Ooohh… shiny!!! But yeah, it’s all about adding value, right? 😉
On a serious note, I’d love a comprehensive checklist. The more official it looks the easier it will be to get the powers-that-be to follow them. While I’m fairly lucky with my development team sometimes the client needs a little push in the right direction too. I have a feeling the shiny chart would work well with the, “I need a website! It must do everything” crowd.
This list is huge! Thanks for such a great checklist we all can use.
@ Brad – you’re looking at it my friend. As the additional checklists go up I’m coming back here to link to them. So bookmark this page and you’ll get what you want!
@ Robert – I’ll see what we can do! 🙂
@ Tara – you’re welcome.
Really very valuable information and has been used (and will continue to be used) to tweak & fine tune our fledgling website….Bravo!
Found you on Stumble Upon!
Great list! I will bookmark and follow your advice.
Thanks so much!
Well done! Informative and comprehensive.
Kudos!
Man…makes me realize I have so much to do to improve my blog to even meet half the items on this list. Well, no time like now to start improving. Is it possible to buy site designs that already have most of the above features so that I all I need to focus on is content.
This is a very useful piece of work. Keep ’em coming :o)
probably the most complete checklist to seo
Love your series! It’s so nice to have so many of these good points summed up.. great to point both clients and students to!
One link error I noticed: on your master checklist page here under the Products heading you’re pointing to article 11 rather than 12.
“Product pages (click heading for additional details)” points to
http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/the-best-damn-web-marketing-checklist-fo-11.php
which is the E-commerce details.
thanks again for the great work!
@ Sadelle, thanks… all fixed!
Great list!
Would it be possible that you create an easy to print cheat sheet with checkmarks next to each item? Printable as a pdf?
This would make the list even better!
@ Sandra – thanks, we are working on something now, hopefully something real nice.
This is a great very detailed checklist. Thanks for taking the time to put it together, some of these suggestions will be very handy for newbies into web design.
www.alldigitalmedia.com
very useful articles…..I think seo off site more important and power full for geeting free traffic than seo on site, I already implemented for my web……so I am focus on off site optimisation…thanks
Thanks man! This is an awesome list!
Very impressive list. I’ll be working on applying this list to my sites.
In your content section, “re-assurances” is a typo. You don’t need to hyphenate prefixes. It’s to the left and a few lines down from “No typo, spelling or grammar errors”.
Excellent. Thanks Jacques!
Very handy list, now it’s not possible to forget anything.
I am so glad you made web marketing so much easier for everyone. Notice the sarcasm. But definitely a very handy list.
Great checklist for Webdesigners to create a well-integrated, executed and tested design. A summary for this checklist is that a website should be simple and logical to use, so users don’t need to think about it.
Hi Stoney,
That’s a very long list 🙂
Talking about the progress bars, I also did some research on major etailers and how do they display the bar. I wrote an article about the findings, called CHECKOUT – Progress Bar Survey. Take a look and please let me know what you think.
Cheers,
TraiaN
Sorry, the link should be www.pitstopmedia.com/sem/checkout-progress-bar-survey
Hello Stoney, I have a question about the use of keywords in content. Everyone tells us that we should use a certain % of keywords to get noticed by the search engines for the terms we want to be found by. The other day I ran across a site in google generic search, position 1 on page 1. When I went to the site and did a search for the keyword I located them by, it was only found one time in all their pages. Do you think this is rare, Stoney? Let me know what you think.
I already thanked you for the work you’ve done here Stoney, but I can’t find the post, so thanks again and great job.
@ HHO – Don’t worry about the percentage of times the keyword is used. That has little relevance as there is no magic percent. If you analyze top ranking sites for different keywords you’ll see that it varies. Google looks a lot of factors, even to the point where a page can rank using the keyword only one time (or even no times). Links will often play a role in this.
However, don’t think that means you don’t need to use your keywords at all. Just be wise about how you do it and make sure it reads naturally.
The ‘site map’ section appears to have the first five items from the ‘privacy& security’, while two kinda make sense three don’t. Certainly doesn’t match the description on the expanded ‘site map’ page. HUGE help, thanks for providing such a comprehensive resource. regards.
You know Stoney, thinking about all this keyword stuff, I remember one site I put up that was an instant pr 2. It had no meta tags, no title, no links, and no thought about keywords. Now that’s original…LOL..Happy Holidays Stoney
@Dauntless – Right you are. I’ve edited the post above. Thanks for pointing that out.
Great list! What about language versions? How do you recommend treating them (linking from home page or section pages, or part of universal navigation)?
@ smonnes – Great question that I don’t think I have an answer to. Most sites generally have visitors select that option before being directed to the proper home page. But you have to be careful about this and employ cloaking methods to ensure you don’t screw up your SEO efforts.
Aside from that, it might be smart to include it in the global navigation, if possible.
Great checklist!
It’s the mother list of all lists. I just found it today from Guy Kawasaki’s post on Twitter.
Thanks for posting it Stoney.
Great list, it’ll be recommendation for website analysis. Many thanks
I love it. That’s a seriously comprehensive list. Great job. I want to print it and paste it on the walls of my office as wallpaper to keep me in check.
Thank you for this amazing post. When learning from scratch and new to the game, information can be pretty sparse and take a lot of time to find. This is the most comprehensive checklist I have found yet! I will begin the process of figuring out how to make as much of it happen as possible. True value here!
Your article about website analysis amazing!. visit this one gotoWebinar a Social Networking site check out the URL below.
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/611282625
This is such useful information that I’ve bookmarked it! I hope it never disappears.
Nice really nice.. jist might want to cut it up into segments or use AJAX to bring some of the content.. but shoot very well written an organized sorry I can’t say the same for myself!
Cool work!
Norman Flecha
STRAIGHTALK
wow.. awesome article..
this is a great help for web marketing thing..
Keep it up!?
I swear I’ve seen this somewhere before…
Thank you for this amazing work. This list help me to improve my webside-quality and to avoid mistakes 😉 Ralph
great seo list ,thanx for ur useful info..
Awesome list, I reference this a lot.
Great list, suprised I missed this one. Awesome stuff.
THIS HAS A CRAPPY TITLE!
What it should be called is: What are all the possible features/principles that I could have /use on my website. Maybe to make it useful to people. This has little to do with the “Marketing” of a website
Can anyone please recommend a training portal covering sales and marketing web seminars? My company is planning to take up training for our staff online, a different approach to the contemporary off line seminars. I would like to know whether any websites out there can help us in delivering best content and trainers on sales, marketing, time management, prospecting, etc,. and how long these web seminars lasts? what’s the price they are going to charge to attend these trainings?
Can anyone please recommend a training portal covering sales and marketing web seminars?
My company is planning to take up training for our staff online, a different approach to the contemporary off line seminars. I would like to know whether any websites out there can help us in delivering best content and trainers on sales, marketing, time management, prospecting, etc,. and how long these web seminars lasts? what’s the price they are going to charge to attend these trainings?
Very comprehensive guide line … I like it very much.
Thanks for sharing.
Many thanks, I have a lot of work with my website now!
This is a great comprehensive list. I have put it as my favorite in Digg. I see a lot of useful actionable list that I could apply and take advantage of.
Now, the biggest challenge is to get external links back to you site… tough.
Thanks so much for the extensive checklist. Any budding web developer should be aware of this. I am a student and have a presentation on SEO. Can I distribute your check list? It will be very useful to all my classmates!!
Thanks again!
Bhanu.
I love it! Perfect list when launching a site or reviewing client sites. Thanks for the awesome list!
Cheers, a really well thought out and thorough check list, god i’m going to be busy going through each point in detail..
Thanks for great information Stoney deGeyte. Good learning information and comments here. I have some questions regarding two things.
1) Domain name & URLs
———————————
# No underscores in filenames
and
2) Architectural issues (click heading for additional details)
————————————————————-
# Unique titles on all pages
1) What is the impact of underscore ( _ ) in file names? Is it affect crawlability or SERPs?
2) If i have an e-commerce portal having 1000s url then how it possible to give each page unique title?
Please clarify this two things if you have any idea on that.
Thanks
@ Daniel – Search engines used to treat underscores differently than hyphens, but that’s not so much of an issue now. The big thing is usability. It’s a bit more difficult to get someone to remember to type in a URL using underscores than hyphens, and when you are posting a URL with underscores they can often look like blank spaces. This can prevent people from remembering them properly later.
If you have a site with 1000s of pages then you are likely pulling from a database. You can craft a title tag template with a variable or two added in. That variable can be a product number, product name, manufacturer, etc. Adding variables can ensure every title tag is unique across your site.
Wow. Great list. Good way to spend my evening. I love the way this article was written and put together.
I think its a great checklist, but don’t be fooled into thinking you will get good search engine rankings without strong linking. It may be the difference between 4th and 5th, but unless you get strong links to the site, you still won’t rank on the first few pages. I guess I’m say don’t spend too much time getting bogged down in dotting all the i’s.
Awesome list!! Thankyou – this is such a detailed and perfect list! If i had only one page to look at for inspiration it would be this one! Well done!
This list has nothing to do with marketing a website. Nothing. So, ironically, you’ve violated your “Title reflects page info and heading” rule.
John, I’m guessing you were expecting a post about active marketing OF a website not a post about how to make a website a marketing vehicle for a business. Those are not necessarily the same thing. This post is about how to use your website as a marketing tool for your business. Build a site, get it out there to the search engines and convert visitors. Now if you want to do marketing that promotes the website outside of the search engines, that’s a different checklist altogether.
Wow amazing list! I will bookmark this and keep coming back
Great list! Definitive a tool to keep handy!
You should have seen my eyes as I was reading this list. I looked like Johnny 5. lol, Great List. It’s my new best friend!
Thanks to Guy Kawaski’s tweet.
Awesome. I’m impressed.
Thank you so much for putting all that together. You could have charged good money for that list! Once again, I bow to you.
great list. thanks for sharing. bookmarked, link love will be provided.
Absolutely great article (I’m sure you’ve heard that a couple of times already!)
One of the thing that puzzle me is there is no mention of setting online marketing objectives and measuring achievement toward them: what about adding a little section on web analytics and online measurement? 🙂
Stéphane Hamel
Web Analytics Association Director
http://WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
Stephane, excellent suggestion that I’ll take into consideration for my next update. Though I primarily focused on changes one can make to site itself rather than focusing on extermal/analysis factors. A checklist on Analytics can easily be it’s own 400 plus tips. I like to think of it this way, everythign in this list can be tested and tracked to see how it performs.
Forget marketing guide. That should be a standard website style guide! Great job.
Excellent list. Will be using it from now on. Thanks.
Definitely an awesome list.
Even though I knew most of it, I hadn’t implemented some.
BTW, what did you mean by
“Don’t link screen captures” ?
vj
If you use screen capture images on your site don’t hyperlink them to the page.People with small screens or visual problems can get confused not realizing they have moved to the next page while seeing the exact same thing.
Wow, great list! Very detailed.
Stellar job here Stoney. Keep up the great work!
Excellent list — question: Since this was posted in Sept. 2008, how often have you added to this list? A lot happens in a Web year!
@Craig – this list hasn’t been updated but I do occasionally update the PDF. I have some planned updates that I haven’t gotten to yet though. I get to it when I can.
A great list to follow not only for the web design agency but also a client. Educating a client should always be part of a Web Design & SEO company.
Since this was posted in Sept. 2008, how often have you added to this list? A lot happens in a Web year!
Amazing post stoney. Total web checklist at one place i want to digg it it may be useful in future for me. excellent resource!
This is a fabulous post. Although not updated for 2010, still I was able to pick up lots of information in this great article. Thanks a lot.
what a fabulous list … but so much to remember , would love to see the new list for the year 2010 !!
Oh my! Just bumped into this. Very nice, thanks. Any chance of seeing an update for 2010? Since the series type articles seem to work well, maybe that’s how you can reapproach this? With each section above being revisited as a chapter in a series. That would be handy. Thx again.
This list is crazy big. I couldn’t believe how exhaustive it was. Thanks a bunch as I was looking for something like this.
Now if only if it was in a printable pdf…
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