SEO Checklist- Check it Off!

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are constantly changing their algorithms. This happens as people expect and look towards a better user experience. So with the many changes being made It’s important that your website Is up to date with the world of SEO and its do’s and don’ts. If your not constantly working on SEO you will fall behind against your competition.

The following checklist should help you get back in the game and on track to a better positioning on any search engine.

Your Basic SEO checklist:

1. Setup a Google Analytics Account.
2. Get your website listed on the Google Search Console and while you’re at it, get it on to Bing Webmaster Tools.
3. Make sure your page is loading quickly if your page takes more than 2 seconds to load you could be losing visitors, more than four and you are definitely pushing viewers away. Run the site through Google Page Speed to ensure you’re scoring at least an 85/100.
4. Your Content Management System should have an SEO plugin already equipped with it to easily write titles, descriptions, headers, image tags and page tags.
5. Your site needs to be responsive and provide an exceptional user experiences across any device. You can use Screenfly for this.
6. Make sure your site doesn’t have Broken Links. You can use the Online Broken Link Checker for this.
7. Upload a sitemap.xml to Google and Bing to ensure that Google and Bing are indexing your site constantly. You can use XML Sitemaps or a Plugin/Extension for this.
8. Perform an SEO check to see what areas need to be fixed on your website. Small SEO Tools has a great tool for checking your SEO.
9. Make sure your site is not listed on a spam server. MX Toolbox has a great tool for this.
10. Make sure to test your website speed also to see how it handles multiple visitors at one time. You can use GTmetrix.
11. Make a small investment for an SSL certificate. Buy this with your hosting/registrar provider.
12. Be sure you claim your business on all directories and social media networks.

On Page SEO Checklist:

1. If you don’t already have a primary keyword list, create one.
2. Utilize Google trends to discover which keywords are gaining in popularity.
3. Keep your Title page to around between 60-65 characters and make sure it begins with a relevant keyword.
4. The meta description should be close to 155 characters.
5. Be sure to write image or ALT tags so the search engines can read them.
6. Use anchor texts to link to other internal pages instead of the generic “Click Here” or “Learn More” text.

Content SEO Checklist:

1. Content should be written in a conversational tone.
2. Make sure the content is relevant to the title.
3. Unless you have written a scientific article or thesis your content should be easily understood by a 5th grader.
4. Have a frequently asked questions page.
5. Incorporate videos and images into your content.
6. Add rich snippets to make your content look more appealing in search results. Rich snippets include products, reviews, recipes, videos, news and events and software application.

While you want to ensure you website can check off all these items it will do you little good if you are not consistently delivering high-quality content.

The algorithm is constantly changing but if you take care of these fundamentals your ensuring yourself great success.

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