Are you attempting to increase your website’s organic traffic? Are you looking for an SEO checklist that will show you exactly what you need to do to achieve your goals? We’ve compiled all of the tasks that will lead to SEO success in 2022 and beyond in this article.
The SEO Setup
To get the most out of this checklist and use it to improve your SEO, you must first understand the various components that makeup search engine optimization, or SEO as it is commonly referred to.
Understanding SEO Components
SEO is a set of rules that you can implement on your website to ensure that search engines can easily access, crawl, and index your content. The overall goal of SEO is to improve websites in terms of content and usability so that both users and search engines are satisfied.
Google Search Console Can Help You Validate Your Website
Google Search Console is a free Google service that provides webmasters with a number of tools and reports to help them optimise their websites for Google search. You can use the Google search console to see what Google knows about your website, analyse your Google rankings, find and fix crawling and indexing errors, and notify Google about website changes.
GSC is the most important tool for improving the SEO of your website. You must first create an account before adding and verifying your web properties in the Google search console.
Create A Google Analytics Account
You’ll need analytics and reporting tools to track your SEO performance, and Google Analytics is the best tool to use (and it’s free). Installing the Google Analytics code on your website and familiarising yourself with basic SEO reports is the first step.
Keep An Eye Out For Google Penalties
Making sure your website isn’t penalised by Google is one of the most basic SEO checks you should do right away. Google imposes various penalties (both manual and algorithmic) as a form of ‘punishment’ on websites that violate their Guidelines.
If your website has been penalised by Google, you may need to take a different path to recover (if possible) before continuing with the SEO checklist.
Technical Checklist
Your goal with technical SEO is to make it as easy as possible for search engines to find, access, crawl, interpret, and index your website. It’s called “technical” because it has nothing to do with the website’s actual content or its promotion.
Make Your URLs Search Engine Friendly
The URL of a webpage is referred to as a permalink. It’s called a permalink because it’s not expected to change over the course of the page’s lifespan. You should check and double-check that all of your website pages have SEO-friendly URLs for SEO purposes. The following are characteristics of SEO-friendly URLs:
- They’re short and to the point.
- Keywords are included.
- They separate the words with hyphens (-).
Make Your Website HTTPS By Installing SSL
One of the well-known ranking factors is having an SSL certificate installed on your website. Any information shared between your website and server is secured with an SSL. If you haven’t already done so, making the switch to HTTPS should be a top priority on your to-do list. For SEO purposes, simply installing an SSL certificate on your website is not enough; you must do so correctly to avoid losing your current rankings.
Check The Google Search Console’s ‘Coverage Report’ For Any Errors
If there are any issues with crawling and indexing, it will have a negative impact on your SEO. It can have a significant impact on your rankings, so checking the Coverage report in the Google search console for errors is something you should do on a regular basis.
Examine And Improve Your robots.txt File
Robots.txt is a file located in your site’s root folder that instructs search engines on which pages of your site they can crawl and index. A robots.txt file misconfiguration can result in major errors or even the de-indexing of your website from search engine results.
Check The Visibility Settings In WordPress
If you’re using WordPress as your content management system, you should double-check the robots.txt file and the visibility settings in WordPress to make sure you’re not accidentally blocking search engines from accessing your content. SETTINGS / READING is where you’ll find the option.
Check Your Comment Settings
Another thing to double-check is that any links in your comments section have the nofollow attribute. Comments are beneficial to SEO and should be enabled on your blog, but all outgoing links must be nofollow to avoid a Google penalty for ‘unnatural links.’
A nofollow link tells search engines not to give the target website any PageRank (or link juice). The INSPECT option of Google’s developer tools is the simplest way to check.
In Google Search Console, Look For Sitemap Errors
It’s not over once you’ve submitted your sitemap to Google. Check the Google Search Console for sitemap errors on a regular basis.
Make Your Homepage More Structured By Adding Data Markup Data
In today’s SEO world, schemas and structured data are critical. They can significantly improve your website’s visibility in Google search results, and they’re also good for local SEO and voice SEO.
Many people make the mistake of forgetting to include the necessary structured data on their homepage, which is a huge mistake. For a variety of reasons, your homepage is one of the most important pages on your site, and it should be treated as such when it comes to SEO.
On-Page SEO Checklist
On-page SEO focuses on the content of your page and has two main objectives. To assist you in creating content that satisfies user intent and to provide guidelines on how to create SEO-friendly content that search engines can understand. Here’s a checklist for on-page SEO:
Make Sure Your Page Titles Are Optimised
The most important SEO factor is page title optimization. Include your target keywords in your title to help both search engines and users understand what the page content is all about. You should also follow these best practices in addition to using keywords in the title:
- A unique title tag should be used on each page of your website.
- The title of a page should accurately describe the content of the page.
- The titles of your articles should be succinct and informative (typically less than 60 characters).
Don’t forget about your homepage when optimising your titles! Meta descriptions appear in search results, and they’re a great way to ‘market’ your page to users. By utilising your existing content and rankings, good meta descriptions can increase your CTR (click-through rate) and get you more search engine traffic.
Google Your Brand Name To See If It Exists
Searching for your brand name on Google and reviewing the results is a check that you should make (and that not many people do). You must ensure that nothing negative (such as a negative review) appears for your brand name, as this can harm both your reputation and your SEO.
Make Sure Your Target Keyword Appears In Your First Paragraph
This is one of the most basic SEO content principles. Including the keywords you want your page to be known for on Google in the first paragraph makes it more relevant for both search engines and users. It’s not necessary to go overboard; just mentioning your target keyword once or twice will suffice.
Keyword Research Checklist
Keyword research is an important part of the SEO process. You’ll be targeting the wrong keywords if your keyword research is incorrect. This means you could either fail to achieve high rankings because the keywords are too competitive, or you could end up ranking for keywords that have no real value for your company. Follow the best practices in the keyword research checklist to ensure none of the above occurs.
Learn How To Optimise Your Content
To get the most out of your keyword research, you need to understand how to use the results to optimise your content. Stick to these simple guidelines:
- In the page title, include your target keyword.
- In the page URL, include your target keyword.
- In the H1 tag, include your target keyword.
- In your H2 and H3 headings, use long-tail keywords.
- In the image ALT Text, use keywords that are related.
- In your copy, use synonyms and related keywords.
- Incorporate LSI keywords into your content.
Off-Page SEO Checklist
Here’s a list of things to think about when it comes to off-page SEO:
Obtain Links From Websites With A High Level Of Authority
How to obtain links that can positively influence your rankings is an important item on the off-page SEO checklist. This is one of the most difficult and time-consuming aspects of SEO, but it is crucial.
Examine Your Link Profile For Bad Links And Remove Them
Things can get a little messy when you’re trying to build links to your website. You might end up with ‘bad links’ on your profile, which could get you in trouble. As a result, it’s a good idea to review your link profile on a regular basis and take action as needed.
Conclusion
Using a checklist to improve your SEO is a great idea. The information in our SEO checklist above covers nearly every aspect of SEO. If you can make your website comply with all of the above, you can rest assured that it is in good SEO shape, which will eventually translate to higher rankings and more traffic.
