Your website is basically nothing without search engine optimization (SEO). You can build a beautiful website with incredible graphics and epic video content and yet it would never get seen without SEO. But. . . where do you start?
When it comes to an SEO checklist, we’ve broken down the process into five categories to help you successfully approach your SEO strategy.
1. The Basics
- Get set up on all the platforms: Google Analytics, Google Search Console (GSC), Bing Webmaster tools, etc. And yes, people do still use Bing.
- Some of these platforms will also have some additional actions after you get set up, so don’t forget to check those out!
- If you have a WordPress website, install an SEO plugin (if you don’t already have one, we recommend Yoast).
- Generate and submit a sitemap to GSC & Bing Webmaster.
- Create a Robots.txt file so Google knows which pages to crawl.
- And don’t forget to check that your website is indexed.
- If it’s not indexed, not only will Google not be able to crawl it, but your intended audience won’t see your website.
2. Keyword Research
- Determine your competitors.
- Analyze keyword gaps as well as ranking page intent.
- Find your main “money” keywords, longtail variations and question keywords.
- Create a keyword map to help prioritize the search volume and keyword difficulty.
We suggest using the following keyword tools: AHREFS, Semrush, and Google Ads Keyword Planner.
3. Technical SEO
- Run a site crawl and fix any issues, such as broken links, broken images, orphaned pages and so on.
- Verify that your website is secure and begins with HTTPS.
- Utilize an SEO-friendly URL structure by using keywords and not making them too long.
- Ensure your website is built to not only support desktop devices, but is mobile-friendly as well.
- Check PageSpeed Insights to make sure your site’s page loading speed isn’t too slow – the slower it takes for a page to load, the more likely your website visitors will bounce.
- Check for duplicate versions of your website.
- Review canonical tags so Google chooses the correct URL when comparing duplicates.
- You can also consider adding structured data to help search engines determine what your site is about.
4. On-Page SEO
- Run a content audit to determine ways for an effective content structure (utilizing topic clusters), assist pages with light content and optimize for keywords.
- Optimize images by improving image alt tags (or alt text) with keywords.
- Fix title tags and meta descriptions that are duplicated, missing, too short or too long.
- Also fix pages that have multiple H1s.
- Keep an eye out for keyword cannibalization – this way each page has a designated main keyword and multiple pages aren’t fighting for the same topic.
- Update content that may be outdated.
- Also consider improving your content for readability.
5. Off-Page SEO
- Review your competitors’ link profile and conduct a link intersect analysis to find ways to improve your site’s backlinks.
- Don’t forget to target your competitors’ broken backlinks too!
- Implement the Skyscraper technique for ways to improve your content and boost your backlinks.
- Review site pages and blog posts for unlinked mentions to turn into links.
- Ensure you’re working with your social media managers and PPC team to leverage your digital PR.
- Create your Google My Business profile.
Talk to the SEO Experts
Not sure where to start or have questions about your current SEO strategy? We can help! Request an SEO RFP or contact us today to get your SEO on track for success.
