The complete SEO Checklist for your websites

Find the crawl errors

Crawl errors mean that the search engine fails to view the page on your website. It means that the page does not appear on the search results. You can find your crawl errors in Google search console coverage report.

Create your sitemap

The sitemap is a list of pages of your website and it tells search engines about the structure of the website. It enables search engines to better crawl your website. You can easily create your website’s sitemap at XML sitemaps generator.

Create a robots.txt file

Robot.txt file is a plain text file which is placed in your website’s root directory and it tells search engine robots which pages on your website to crawl and which is not to crawl. It means you can stop search engines from crawling sensitive files. You can use the robot.txt Tester tool to write or edit robot.txt files for your website.

Find broken links and fix them

Broken links are links that no longer work. It negatively impacts your website’s SEO and user experience. You can use Screaming Frog and Google search console to find your broken links and fix them immediately.

Secure your website with HTTPS

HTTPS is a Google’s ranking factor and Google chrome indicates HTTP site as a “Not secure”. It directly impacts your user experience so it is necessary that switch your website to HTTPS.

Fix duplicate content issues

Duplicate content is the content that appears on the internet in more than one place. It directly affects your ranking. You can use 301 redirects, canonical tags or Google webmaster tool to fix this issue.

Make sure that your website loads fast

Loading speed of your website is very important for ranking and it really impacts your user experience as well. You can check your website’s speed with Google page speed insights and aim for 85+ for better results.

Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly

If your website is not responsive you are not going to get rank well. Check your website is mobile-friendly or not with Google mobile-friendly test.

Find a primary keyword

First, you need to find out one main keyword for your blog post or for your website pages. Primary keywords are base keywords which are more relevant to your business. Ask yourself, which keywords are used by your audience to find the information about your product, service, and content.

Discover new keywords

Now you need to expand your potential keyword list. You can use tools like Google keyword planner, Ahrefs keyword explorer, and Ubersuggest to expand your keyword list. You can also use autocomplete tools of Google, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo to expand your list.

Study your competitors

Competitor’s keyword analysis helps you to get new keyword ideas. You can use tools like Spyfu, Semrush, and Ahrefs to analyze your competitor’s keywords.

Narrow down your keyword list

After gathering your keyword list, you need to cut down your list to choose your ideal keyword. You can use search volume data from Google Keyword Planner or Keyword Everywhere Extension to cut down the list. You can also narrow down your list by keyword difficulty and Ahrefs site explorer will help you to measure the keyword difficulty.

Aim for highly relevant, high search volume keywords and avoid too specific keywords. Choose a mix of short and long-tail keywords and aim for low difficulty score keywords.

Choose and apply the chosen keywords to your website

Once you finalize your keyword, you need to apply those keywords in your title tags, meta descriptions, URLs and the body of the contents.

Make your Title tag attractive and add the keyword in it

Place your keyword in front of the Title tag. Include modifiers in the Title tag like “best”, “review”, “ultimate”, and “top”. Keep your Title tag between 50- 60 character length otherwise it will be cut off in search results.

Use SEO- friendly URLs

Keep your URLs as short as possible and short URLs rank better in Google. Choose static URL instead of a dynamic URL and include the keyword in it. Always use hyphens in URLs and don’t use underscores.

Write a compelling meta description

Meta description is not used as a ranking signal but a compelling meta description can increase your click-through rate. Make sure to include keywords in your meta description and Keep it under 160 characters.

Use one H1 on the entire page

Include your primary keyword in your H1 tag and make sure that there is one H1 tag in the entire page. Wrap your subheadings in the H2 tag.

Publish long-form content

According to some recent study, content between 2000 -2500 words get high rank in search engine result pages. It also helps to get more backlinks and more shares.

Drop your keyword in the first 100 words

Place your keyword in the first 100 words of the page that will help you to get better ranking in search results.

Use relevant external and internal links

High-quality, relevant outbound links add value to your content and it shows Google that your content is trustworthy and well-researched. Internal links are also very important for SEO and use keyword-rich anchor text in internal links.

Optimize your images with “alt” tags

Make your alt tags descriptive and it should describe what's on it. Include your target keyword in your image file name and alt-tags.

Use LSI keywords

To avoid keyword stuff you can use LSI keywords instead of using the same keywords. You can use LSI graph to generate semantic, long-tail and LSI keyword.

Add schema markup

Adding schema markup can improve your on-page SEO. It helps search engines to better understand your content and it also increases your visibility and click-through rates.

Use social sharing buttons

Add social share buttons throughout your website and make it obvious that helps to increase your social shares.

Identify the purpose of the content

To create effective content you need to identify the purpose of the content because that will give a clear direction to content writers. (e.g. website traffic, build brand awareness, generate leads, grow your social community, etc.)

Identify your audience

If you want to create engaging content you need to find out who is your audience, what your audience wants to know, what is your audience’s interest, what type of content they prefer and what the real issues your audience face.

Create an attractive headline

Do you know? 80% of readers will read headline copy only. So it is really important to make your headlines attractive.

To create attention-grabbing headline you can use numbers, emotional adjectives, and negative superlatives. Make sure that your headline is short and simple. To create curiosity you can create question headlines.

Hook your readers with the opening lines

The first few lines of your content is very important because that is act as a deciding factor. If you fail to hook your readers with your opening lines you may lose your readers.

To attract your readers you can start your content with attention-grabbing quotes, you can ask thought-provoking questions and you can promise a solution to the reader’s problem or you can explain the importance of the content in your first few lines.

Create In-depth, High-quality content

You need to add value to your readers through your content. Provide well-researched and accurate information to your readers. Include relevant statistics, interesting facts, and information in your content from trusted sources.

Explain the concept with examples that will help your readers to understand the concept easily. And always remember it, never copy your content from other websites.

Optimize content with targeted keywords

Include your targeted keyword in the headline, subheadings, and body of the content. You can also include 3 to 4 LSI keywords in your content. Make sure that include keywords naturally, don’t stuff your keywords in your content.

Focus on readability

Readability plays a significant role in reducing bounce rates. To increase the readability you need to break up the long blocks of text with images, bulleted points, quotes, and subheadings.

Use multimedia contents

Use multimedia contents like images, videos, graphs, charts infographics, annotate screenshots, GIFs, and Slideshares will help you to make your content more interesting.

Optimize your content for voice search

In this digital era, voice search is growing rapidly. To optimize your content voice search use long-tail keywords in your content because people use many long-tail keywords in voice search than text-based queries.

Most of the voice searches are in the form of questions. So to optimize voice search, create content that answers those questions.

Use Moz’s link explorer to analyze your link profile. There you can check your domain authority, page authority, spam score, and complete link accounts.

Analyze your competitor’s link profile

With the help of Ahrefs and Moz’s link explorer you can easily understand your competitor’s link building strategy. Now you can replicate your competitor’s backlinks by guest post.

Find the best ways to build inbound links

Guest post, forums submission, and directories submission are the best way to build backlinks to your website. Create infographics is one of the effective ways to get more backlinks to your website.

Use social media to link building

Share high-quality contents on social media that is another opportunity to get quality backlinks to your website.

Track unlinked mentions

Sometimes people mention your brand without links. In that case, you can contact the authors and request them to link back to you if possible.

Regularly review your link profile to find the bad links

Bad backlinks are harmful to search engine ranking and Google's Penguin update will penalize the website which has toxic backlink profile. Low domain authority, high spam score links are known as bad links.

Remove the bad link from your link profile

You can use Google’s disavow backlinks tool to remove the bad links from your link profile.

Add google map to the contact page

Add Google map of your business location in the contact page of your website will help you to boost the local SEO value of your website. All you need to do is go to Google Maps, enter your business address, click share and embed a map from the top left menu.

Add NAP on the home and rest of the other pages

Add a name, address and phone number in the footer of your website’s home page and the other pages. It is an important ranking factor for local SEO.

Keep your NAP information consistent

Your contact information should be consistent in all channels. It means your name, address, and phone number should be the same on Google my business page, directory listings, and social media profiles.

Register your business with Google My Business

Register your business with Google My Business is one of the important ranking factors for local SEO. All you need to do is create an account in Google my business, fill out your business details, optimize your profile with keyword rich description, and add images of your business.

Register your business with other directories

You can also register your business with other directories like Yelp, FaceBook, Bing places, Yahoo local and Foursquare.

Use structured data markup

Schemas or structured data markup helps to optimize your listings for search engines. With the help ofGoogle and Schema.org, you can get more information about local business schemas.

Encourage your customers to leave reviews and respond to all the reviews

Ask your customers to leave feedback and respond to them immediately that will help your rankings in search engine result pages.