1. SEO Basics Checklist

Set Up Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is a completely free tool. Integrating your website with Google Analytics allows you to watch website activities such as session duration, pages per session, bounce rate, and other metrics separately through the website, as well as statistics on the traffic source.

Set Up and Optimize Google Search Console:

Another free Google service that helps you maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot your site’s appearance in Google Search results is Google Search Console. It also provides several important tools and information about your website that can help you improve its performance, such as how frequently your site appears in Google Search, which search keywords show your site, how often searchers click on those queries, and so on.

Set Up and Optimize Google Tag Manager:

Tag Manager allows you to create and manage your own conversion tracking, web analytics, remarketing, and other tags. There are practically infinite methods to track activity across your sites and apps, and the user-friendly interface allows you to alter tags at any time.

Some of the Benefits of Google Tag Manager:

• Simple (kind of) event tracking
• It’s free
• Built-in tag templates
• Custom templates
• Security
• User permissions
• Growing popularity
• Friendly and helpful community

2. Keyword Research Checklist

Understanding Search Intent

When a user types a query into a search engine, Search Intent, also known as User Intent, is the most important component. Commercial, informational, navigational, and transactional intent are all common types of user intent. It not only helps you improve your SEO rating, but it also helps you get more relevant leads.

Types of SEO Keywords

Short-Tail Keywords — These keywords are short, usually three words or less, as the name suggests. These are more generic and are designed to attract a wide range of visitors to your website.

Long-Tail Keywords — Unlike short-tail keywords, these keywords are longer and more precise. Long-tail keywords might help you reach a more specific audience looking for certain products or services.

Fresh Keywords – Fresh keywords have a wide reach surrounding a popular word or topic. Fresh keywords don’t last long, so you’ll need to keep track of their efficacy and make adjustments after the initial buzz has died down.

Evergreen Keywords – These keywords are always relevant. Even if your content needs minor updates now and again, an article centered on an evergreen term will still be authoritative a few years after it is published.

Use LSI keywords 

Finding keywords that are related to your target keywords is the next stage. Semantic keywords, or LSI keywords, are a type of keyword. A semantic term is one that has a significant relationship with another.

The reason for this is that Google no longer ranks pages based on specific keywords, preferring instead to rank pages based on subjects.

So, by locating LSI keywords for your major keywords and including them into your content, you are assisting Google in gaining better comprehension of your material, which results in higher ranks.

The LSI Keyword Generator and a Google search are the best ways to find LSI keywords.

3. ON Page SEO Checklist

Add target keyword in the URL and Keep it short

This is the first thing Google reads, even before your page’s content. Search engines use your webpage’s SEO-friendly URL, along with keyword in the URL, title tag, link anchor text, and the content itself, to find out what your content is about. According to research, shorter URLs rank higher than longer ones.

Add Keyword in the Title and Meta Description

On-page SEO’s title tags are still one of the most powerful factors. When people search on Google, they will see the title tag. As a result, your target term should be included in the title tag. If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin makes it simple to change your page title.

Search engines no longer consider the content of the meta description as a ranking indication. Writing an engaging meta description that includes your keyword can, however, improve your CTR.

Also, if the keyword the user sought is mentioned in the meta description, Google highlights it.

Add Keyword in H1 tag and Body of the page

Even if the significance of the H2, H3,…, H6 tags for SEO is questionable, using your major keyword in your H1 tag is still a good strategy. Make sure that there is only one H1 on the page, and it comes before any other heading tags.

Use your keyword at least three times in the body of your website, with one of them at the top. You can still rank with fewer words, and you don’t want to overload your site with unnecessary content, but we don’t recommend creating a new page unless you have roughly 100 words of content.

Optimize Images

The ALT tag and file names, among other factors, are used by search engines to “see” images. When identifying your images, try to be as easy as making them. Screen-reading tools use alt text to describe images to visually impaired users, and search engines use it to better crawl and rank your page.

4. OFF Page SEO Checklist

Link Building

The activity of adding your website or content link on other websites is referred to as link building. Links lead to the development of an online presence and the creation of a credible brand image. They can help in creating future leads by driving traffic. External links to a website from high-quality pages assist to build trust and organic reach.

Paid links, such as ad campaigns on a website, are termed nofollow and do not count in the Google Page Rank algorithm. Keyword stuffing and purchasing backlinks are also despised upon by search engines, and they will restrict your path to a higher search ranking.

Internal Linking

Internal links are connections within a domain that link one page to another within the same domain. They’re often used in the main navigation.

These links are helpful for three reasons:

Users can use them to navigate a website.
They support the creation of a website’s information structure.
They assist in the distribution of link equity (ranking power) around websites.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is a powerful SEO tactic that might also enhance your online visibility and web traffic. Here’s how:

Backlinks: A backlink is generated whenever your content is highlighted on a bookmarking website. Backlinks are and have always been a key factor in determining a web page’s rating.

Website Traffic: Bookmarking has a direct impact on ranking and, as a result, may help you increase visitors. People are more likely to visit your website directly if your business is on one of the bookmarking sites. Thousands of new visitors each month can be engaged if the content is interesting.

Social Signals: When Google, Yahoo, and other search engines want to know how big and popular a site is, they’ll look at its social signals. One of these factors is the use of social bookmarking.

Blogging

Guest blogging, one of the most valuable off-page SEO activities. When you make a guest spot as a writer on another website or blog, the site will usually enable you to include a link to your own site in the article or author bio. As your name and brand are being showcased in a new location, this is an additional bonus point for your brand awareness efforts.

5. Technical SEO checklist

Check and Optimize robots.txt file

A robots.txt file instructs search engines about the rules of engagement for your website. Sending the correct signals to search engines is an important part of SEO, and the robots.txt file is one of the methods to convey your crawling preferences to search engines.

You may use the robots.txt file to block search engines from accessing specific areas of your website, avoid duplicating content, and provide search engines with useful instructions on how to crawl your site more effectively.

Good Site structure

In terms of SEO and usability, the structure of a website, blog, or eCommerce store is essential. It should be easy to use, navigate, and fast, and it should accomplish its objective: attracting new customers, increasing email subscribers, making a transaction, generating income from advertising, or just providing data in the best possible way.

Optimize and Submit XML Sitemap to search engines

A sitemap is a collection of links structured in a hierarchical order. It may be made for either humans or search engine bots. Its main objective is to assist in the comprehension of a site’s structure and to direct users/crawlers to the appropriate sections of the site.

Checkout Best Free Chrome Extensions for SEO

Moving to SSL 

The search engines (particularly Google) are rapidly changing the goalposts, so staying competitive and innovative is essential. Moving to SSL can help you enhance your SEO, site speed, and visitor trust.

A secure connection is provided to visitors on websites where they may exchange personal data with you if your website is HTTPS enabled (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). HTTPS offers extra levels of security when a user shares sensitive information, such as credit card numbers.

Check and Optimize 404 Page

The computer version of “Not Found” or “Page Not Found” is a 404 error (HTTP 404), also known as a “header response code,” “HTTP status code,” or simply “crawl error.”

In other words, this response code effectively informs search engines – and users – that the resource (or requested URL) being referred does not exist or cannot be located.

When page URLs are broken or never existed in the first place, search engines, website visitors, and webmasters receive a 404 error. We can repair the problem for future website users (usually via a 301 redirect to the new location of that content), retaining the value of the page that formerly existed, once we can detect where these error codes occur.

Check the loading speed of your Website

To your visitors, your website must load quickly. While it may not be the solution you want, it is the one that your website visitors will value. You can continue to improve your website and better serve your visitors by tracking your bounce rate (in Google Analytics) and page load time (using the Chrome plugin “Page Load Time”).

There are numerous factors that affect page performance, including the browser, device, web hosting provider, and content on the page, which is why you should focus on the needs of your visitors.

It would be impossible to include everything that is important in one checklist because SEO is a continuous process. Fast-loading websites, engaging content, and clear page and image descriptions are all examples of things that make searchers’ lives easier. We hope that you find this checklist useful in establishing your SEO strategy and improving your rankings. If you’re looking to learn more about marketing and branding, check out our other blogs.