SEO Checklist
How confident are you that your SEO efforts are all paying off? When you first started, you probably had SEO strategies for your marketing plans. But when was the last time you checked your metrics? If you’re still relying on the same on-page SEO techniques that were developed years ago, it’s time for MojoSEO.
In the ever-changing landscape of the online marketing world, you have to stay aware of the changes and updates that happen from time to time. You might be surprised to see what’s on our up to date SEO checklist that can impact your business presence in ways you have never imagined.
SEO can be categorized into three sections:
1. Basic SEO
Here are the things that must be included in your checklist:
- To be able to understand the performance of your marketing efforts, you must have a clear insight into your visitors’ demographics. Installing Google Analytics can help you.
- If you want to analyze the factors that affect your search traffic, you only need to add your website to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- If your website takes more than 2-4 seconds to load, then you are throwing away a lot of potential customers. Make sure to the speed of your website pages using Google PageSpeed Insights.
- Customize your contents with the help of an SEO plugin. If your site is equipped with a Content Management system, then you can easily input the title, description, image tags, headers (h-tags) and page tags.
- Ensure that your audience will have a smooth browsing experience by offering them a responsive website.
- Broken links are some of the most annoying things for users. Monitor your broken links using SEO tools. There are plenty of free options in the market.
- Make sure that your website’s HTML and CSS coding at W3C is validated.
- Keep an eye on your pages with maximum potential and position it on the top. You can do this by creating and uploading a sitemap.
- Control what pages will be crawled by search engines by creating and uploading Robots file.
- Check if all the elements of your website are working smoothly. You can do this by running an SEO check. You just have to submit your website to Google Search Console.
- Check the pages that redirect to 301 and 302. There are plenty of free tools that allow you to check up to 500 URLs for FREE.
- All of your SEO-related efforts can be easily ruined if your website is hosted on a spam server. Run a test on your mail server IP address.
- If your website cannot handle multiple users at once, it can affect your rankings. It can ultimately lead to losing customers. Test your website load from time to time. Implement upgrades as necessary.
- Build trust with search engines as well as with your audience by installing an SSL Certificate.
- Allow no one to use your personal brand by claiming your business on existing online directories and social media platforms.
2. On-Page SEO
There’s a high chance that you already have a list of keywords. But if you haven’t, then here’s a quick guide.
- Go to Google Adwords. Use your Gmail ID for logging in.
- Select Tools > Keyword Planner. Choose “Search for new keywords using phrase, website or category.”
- Input your primary keywords, then select your industry, enter the URL of your fiercest competitors, choose your geography, and then run a search for ideas.
However, keywords are not the only factors that are being checked by search engines. They are also looking for context. Here are some tips that will help you catch with the up-to-date search engine algorithms.
- Wikipedia can help you a lot when it comes to searching for contextual keywords for your niche. Jot down these contextual keywords and look for synonyms using Thesaurus. Also, keep an eye on the long-tail keywords and keyphrases that usually appear at the end of Google SERPs.
- Run a search for popular keywords with the help of Google Trends. Moreover, monitor how a set of keywords perform in diverse geographical areas.
- Use SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush for analyzing the top-performing keywords and backlinks of your competitors. Find out terms that are related in your industry and jargon to complete the list of contextual keywords.
Create Relevant Title, Meta Description, and ALT Tags.
- Beginning with a relevant keyword, limit your page title from 60-65 characters. For the meta description, the limit us around 155 characters.
- If your business operates in a restricted geography, make sure to include your contact number. This allows people to place a call directly once they have seen your phone number in the SERPs.
- Do not forget to include relevant ALT image tags. This is because search engines cannot view the images just yet.
Recognize the Importance of Internal Links and Headers Tags (H-tags)
- H-tags are used to divide and organize your contents into subsections. This also makes your content appear shorter than it really is and more interesting to the viewers. Work on internal link building. Strategic anchor text is highly recommended to be linked to your other internal pages.
3. Optimizing your Content
It is not impossible that one day, mobiles will be able to talk back to us. Artificial intelligence continues to evolve. When that time comes, will your content be able to catch up with the trend?
Here are the golden rules of Content Optimization:
- Write in a natural, conversational and reader-friendly tone. Unless you’re creating a thesis or a scientific paper, your content must be easily comprehended even by a fifth grader.
- Work out the title. Make sure it can easily grab attention and interest.
- Initiate conversation by creating an FAQ page. Be consistent in providing answers that are related to your products or services.
Aim for RankBrain Success
Google’s algorithms and those of the other search engines are fast evolving. RankBrain, also known as Google’s AI, provides answers to complex search queries. Currently, it holds around 15% of search volume. Aside from determining the keywords and the context, it also determines what searchers click on and learns from its mistakes.
Here are some key factors to consider in positioning your website for RankBrain success:
- Provide great content to your audience so that it will get a high number of clicks.
- Write in a reader-friendly way with a natural tone.
- Deliver meaningful insights and information to your site’s visitors.
- Use eye-catching videos and images.
Provide a Great User Experience
Have you checked the appearance of your content on the results page? Do they look helpful and nice?
- Present your content in the best way possible by adding rich snippets to your HTML. This enables you to present your content in a way that a user can get the real sense of it immediately.
In Summary
If you want to be technically impeccable in the competitive online marketing world, you need to keep an eye on your website’s SEO health. You must also recognize that this marketing strategy isn’t just about technical optimization; it is also about being able to deliver firm and reliable content to the right audience.
If this sounds like a lot of work, that's why we started MojoSEO - Sign Up and we'll take care of this for you.
