The Ultimate SEO Check List
When asked about the best way to carry out SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on someone's website, the answer always ends up long-winded and complicated and, the layperson, uninteresting (Maybe it's the way I tell it lol). So, here for everyone is the Ultimate SEO Check list for your website.
The first thing I will cover is do your RESEARCH.
Research
Market Research
Carry out research on the market you in which you operate. Look up other companies in your areas, see what they are doing and the find out what will work for you and your business. Look into the marketplace for your key areas of business; what are people searching for? Who is searching? What is your target demographic? and where are they?
Competitor Research
As mentioned above, carry out research on your leading competitors. You can list your top competitors on SERPs for the keywords they are using and start to utilise some of these into your SEO plan.
Keyword Research
By carrying out keyword research you will be finding all the keywords you can use for plan. Google keyword planner is good enough for this. Input a list of keywords you think you want to use and then select the best variations of these or other options that people are actually searching for. You can do two things here; select the most popular keyword searches and target these (remember, more popular will generally mean more competitive) OR you can select long tail keyword searches and concentrate your efforts on these. These are the terms that are generally more specific, searched for less (but still searched for) and they generally will have less competition.
Data Gathering
When data gathering, the first thing to look at is the state of your website against your competitors, i.e does it look fresh enough? Do you have all the relevant things on your site? Is it easier to navigate than your competitors'? Take a look at your website like a customer/client would.
Also set up analytics on your website. Google analytics will give you a wealth of data and heat mapping tools such as Hotjar will give you heatmaps and recordings of your site visitors so you can see where potential clients are visiting and clicking and where they are dropping off.
Webmaster Tools
When you are happy with your list, give it one more check with Google webmaster Tools. This will help you with the following: check for crawl errors, check for any penalties you might have, check to see if the sitemap has been submitted to the search engines, check if any HTML improvements are needed, search for broken links.
So that covers all the research, data gathering and the tools that will help you along the way. Now we look at On Page SEO below.
On Page SEO
General checks/actions:
- Add XML Sitemap
- Add Navigation
- Add Menu
- Check Meta Tag
- Use Breadcrumbs
- Add Robots.txt file
- Fix all problems found in webmaster tool
- Have the keyword in the title
- Check the H1 tag and use the keyword in there if possible
- Use long-tail keywords to capture traffic earlier
- Fix all image missing Alt text
- Fix all pages missing meta titles (60 Characters no more)
- Fix all pages missing meta descriptions (150 Characters no more)
- Check h# tags (e.g < h1 > < h2 > etc)
- Check tag order
Content checks/actions:
- Check for duplicate content
- Review visual design
- Use multi media – Optimize media size and add tags to media
- LSI keywords
- Publish the usual static pages ( Privacy/terms/sitemap/about/contact)
- "Try" to keep the indexed pages static
- Do internal linking
- Refresh/Update content regularly
- Monitor bounce rate
Performance checks/actions:
- Check mobile-friendliness (Responsive design or mobile website)
- Check multi-browser-friendliness
- Check/Improve speed
- Use good hosting
- Compress images
- Use different ways to cache
- check with Google insights for further fixes
URL checks/actions
- Incorporate primary keywords
- Use absolute URLs
- Use 301 redirects for rewritten URLs
- Set up non-www to www redirect and vice versa
Schema checks/actions
- Test site for current schema
- Refine or add markup for possible schema ( logo, article)
- If you are using wordpress then use the schemaplugin.com
Now that covers all the on page SEO you need to look at. Now we will cover the off page SEO.
Off Page SEO
- Set up alerts for your brand
- Do a link intersect between your competitors for priority links
- Check your content and see what is ranking higher, find competing sites for that and get their links
- Join Pinterest and join relevant group boards
- Blog commenting on website helps build relationships
- Get on sites that offer awards
- Contribute to newsletters
- Find events to sponsor
- Use someone's else services and submit a testimonial
- Find sites using your images and ask them to link back to your website
- Do guest podcasting
- Guest post on influencers website
- Create social media profiles
And the other stuff
- Social Media- Add social sharing buttons to your website - Add schema to link to your social profiles
- Keep up to date with goggle guidelines changes
- check your on page SEO monthly to see what you can update and keep fresh
Written by Jay Cook, Social Media & Communications Director. 12-02-18