Working in SEO requires being on a constant lookout for new trends and technologies, as well as keeping up with ever changing recommendations from Google. Axioms and facts that were valid and religiously followed a year ago may not be true today. This means that we – SEOs – get to work in a very exciting albeit challenging field. After all, the most difficult bits are usually the most interesting ones, aren’t they?
In this sea of ever-changing standards and processes it’s nice to have some rock solid reference points you know you can always turn to for a quick piece of advice. That is when the cheat sheets come in handy.
Here is a selection of my go-to resources which have helped me several times when I felt short of ideas:
1. Annie Cushing’s Audit Checklist
This thorough checklist covers most aspects of SEO you want to be looking at when gauging the health of your website, including indexing, accessibility, links, architecture, on page factors, keywords, structured data, content and some others.
2. SEO Cheat Sheet from Moz
Chance is that you’ve already heard of this one. Moz have been publishing (and updating) this neat and helpful cheat sheet since 2008. On 4 pages you will find compact information about most common aspects of technical SEO, such as important HTML elements, HTTP status codes, best practices for url, robots.txt, sitemaps, structured data, international targeting and others.
Who is this for: This cheat sheet is ideal for SEO beginners, but also can be a nice memory refreshment for more advanced SEO professionals.
3. Excel Formulas from Exceljet
No SEO can live without extensive use of excel. While you probably know the most used formulas by heart, every now and then one can find himself or herself in a need of help. This is where Exceljet is valuable: it’s a database of 300 excel formulas, how-tos and explanations including examples.
Who is this for: Absolutely everyone.
4. Advanced Google search operators from Nancy Blachman and Jerry Peek
Being familiar Google Search is an inevitable side effect of working in SEO. However, if you wish to bring your googling game to another level, try bookmarking this guide listing advanced search operators and tricks how to get the most out of Google.
Despite the fact that some of the tips have become obsolete or are no longer supported by Google, there are still many gems worth a spot in your bookmark list.
A few examples:
allintitle: will limit search within titles of documents
related:url will find websites similar to the one following column
5. .htaccess Cheat Sheet
This website lists “all [the] rules you will ever need” when it comes to managing your server through .htaccess files. And to be fair, it does pretty much what it says on the tin: you will find tips on how to implement 301 redirects, how to force www or non-www of your website, set expire headers or enable gzip compression.
The best part: it all comes without annoying ads or javascript slowing down the page.
Who is it for: Technical SEO
6. Google Algorithm Change History
Google changes its search algorithm hundreds of times each year. Keep track of all of the important major updates with this cheat sheet from Moz to understand sudden drops (or increases) in traffic and rankings.
7. Regular Expressions from Cheatography
Regular expressions (Regex or RegExp) is quite a boring name for a very powerful “alphabet” allowing to search for complex expressions, such as email address, URL, IP address etc. in texts (e.g. in source code).
Where can this be useful:
- In Google Tag Manager – to set up triggers or variables
- robots.txt – the rules for bots are written using regexp
- htaccess file
Hopefully you’ll find a few of these cheat sheets will come in handy and help you stay atop the ever-changing trends of Technical SEO. We’ll keep this post updated as we find new useful resources.
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