The success of a website depends on how well it attracts users in the long run. There are many ways to improve traffic to your site. One of the easy and free ways is to optimize your site to get organic traffic from search engines. Sites that rank high on the search engines get more visits than sites with low rankings. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of rules that a website owner must follow to make it search engine friendly and rank higher.
What is SEO check list?
The SEO checklist is a guide to help record every SEO action to optimize the site and help to rank on the first page of Google. It comes with a detailed guide drawn up after careful research to help expand a website’s reach on search engines. This is a great strategically planned guide and all you have to do is follow the directions to be able to achieve your goals and vision.
SEO checklist will help you stay organized and focused on your website, and fulfill the outlined plan. It also includes assessing the progress of the site and further planning to reach the top rank. Thus, the SEO checklist will provide you with a series of standard operating procedures to follow.
SEO basics
SEO consists of a huge list of facets that are necessary for effective search engine promotion. Some of them are very important, others play a secondary role. SEO is a continuing process consisting of four aspects:
- Keyword research
- Content Creation
- On-page SEO
- Off-site SEO/link building
- Technical SEO
Keyword Research
Every SEO strategy starts with keyword research. First, you need to identify the main topics and consider what keywords and phrases are relevant to the topic.
It is important to identify the habits and interests of your target audience. Your keywords and phrases should be relevant to their search purpose. By doing it right, you will be able to reach your target audience and maintain quality search traffic to your website.
The next step is to research your competitors’ keywords. Integrating competitor keyword research into your plan is a great way to find out which keywords perform best in your industry. On the other hand, you can see that some keywords are highly competitive and not worth the effort. Or, you can focus on long keywords with less search volume and less relevant content, but which provide you with more opportunities to improve your SERPs.
Content creation
Content is the face of your business. With the help of graphics, words and video on the site, you can convey to users the philosophy of your brand, demonstrate expertise, and, of course, gain the trust of search engines. The right content strategy will accelerate your site’s growth several times.
The content of the site will help you gain the trust of search engines and users. The most important thing is to maintain balance. It is very important to create SEO-optimized website content that will not only help you rank in search engines, but also retain potential customers. Informative, unique texts will help build long-term relationships with clients. Users will certainly return to the site again and again, where they found useful and new information for themselves, and vice versa, they will not re-visit the site with frankly low-quality content. And these are all traffic and behavioral factors. Content should always have value.
Technical SEO
Technical website optimization is the main step in website promotion, it is focused on ensuring that pages load quickly, there are no problems with indexing the site, they have good graphics, and the content is easy to interact with.
Technical SEO is the process of aligning a website with the technical requirements of a search engine. The key elements of technical SEO are:
- Scanning,
- Indexing,
- Visualization,
- Site architecture.
Technical optimization will improve or increase:
- Crawling and indexing of pages by search robots,
- User experience,
- Conversions,
- Authority of the site,
- Page loading speed.
Technical optimization components:
- website loading speed,
- correct server response codes,
- presence of a 404 error page,
- correctness (validity) of HTML, CSS, JS code.
Indexing setup
- setting up page indexing in robots.txt,
- XML sitemap,
- HTML sitemap,
- configuring canonical URLs.
Microdata:
- attribution,
- breadcrumbs (breadcrumbs),
- reviews,
- rating of products or published content (“stars”),
- prices and availability of goods,
- special page descriptions in search results (recipes, movie descriptions, creative works, programs, etc.).
On-Site + Content SEO
The success of the entire SEO site directly depends on the work on internal optimization. This set of measures includes the creation of a competent structure of each page and resource as a whole, the correct compilation of meta tags, high-quality texts written for the necessary keyword queries, internal linking of pages, etc.
You should pay attention to:
- title tags /duplicate or missing/,
- duplicate or missing meta descriptions /improve your page’s title tags, meta descriptions, and content/,
- uniqueness of content,
- multiple H1 tags,
- H1-H6 headers,
- easy to read colors,
- Image alt tags,
- convenient site navigation,
- internal linking.
Make sure you don’t cannibalize keywords and perform a content audit, update the content, and remove low-performing material.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO is a technique for promoting sites in search engines by building up external links to the promoted site in order to improve the position of keywords in organic search.
Factors affecting external SEO
– External links from other sites to the promoted site;
– The number of reposts/likes through social networks;
– Text mentions of the promoted site name, domain without links on other sites.
Components of off-page SEO
External links:
- donor quality (age, topic, attendance),
- list of anchors (a complete list of key phrases by which the site will be promoted),
- near-link text,
- number of links,
Registration in search engine services:
- services for webmasters (adding a site to a search engine, gluing a domain, adding new pages, checking indexing),
- useful services for business (maps, reference books),
Social activity:
- links from social networks,
- the number of likes and reposts.
Conclusion
SEO is a long-term strategy that can provide you with lasting benefits. You will find that this has a significant impact on your business. However, you should understand that SEO is not something that will benefit you once you start paying attention to it. The results become apparent over time, at least six to twelve months.
It may seem like a lot of work, but if you follow the right approach, you will be amazed at the success it brings you as search visibility increases your chances of getting the results you want.
SEO is a combination of internal and external optimization factors. Only with the help of an integrated approach to promotion you can achieve great improvement in site rankings. Keep in mind that for your SEO efforts to succeed, you will need a doable plan, expertise and our SEO checklist.
