Following an SEO checklist simplifies the process of enhancing your site’s performance by providing a clear roadmap of necessary actions. This comprehensive SEO checklist addresses every aspect of SEO, including technical SEO, on-page SEO, and keyword research.
Whether you have a blog, a Shopify store, a local business, an affiliate site, or any other type of website, this checklist will work for you. But before we dive in, let’s discuss how to maximize its effectiveness.
Using This SEO Checklist: A Step-by-Step Guide
- SEO encompasses several key areas: on-page, off-page, local, and technical. To improve your search engine rankings, you must address all these facets.
- An evergreen approach to SEO, which relies on proven methods like keyword research and optimization, remains effective regardless of trends and algorithm updates.
- With 88% of users having a mobile shopping app, optimizing for mobile is crucial if you want to reach a broader audience.
- Enhancing local SEO can be achieved by building a Google Business Profile, submitting to offline directories, and ensuring relevant business information is present across all your website pages.
Using This SEO Checklist: Google Search Console
Search Console is designed to help you monitor your site’s performance on Google search.
Viewing which keywords drive the most traffic to your site
- Submitting your sitemap
- Check out which pages Google is indexing
- Identifying and fixing website errors
Checking your Core Web Vitals scores (more on those later)In summary, if you’re serious about SEO, setting up Google Search Console is an essential first step. Learn how to do it in our comprehensive guide to Google Search Console.
Install Bing Webmaster Tools
However, Bing boasts over 100 million daily active users, making it worthwhile to optimize for.
In SEO, data is crucial. If Bing Webmaster Tools can offer you additional valuable data, it makes sense to take advantage of it.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a powerful tool for tracking traffic and cross-platform activity, monitoring conversions, accessing analytical reports, and integrating with Google Ads.
If you’re serious about SEO and want to track your progress, it’s best to sign up before you start publishing content so you can effectively monitor your website’s growth.
Optimize Your WordPress Site with an SEO Plugin
- The SEO Framework: Offers both free and paid options.
- SEO Press: Available in freemium and premium packages.
- Rank Math: Comes with an extensive list of features.
- Nitropack: Provides both free and paid plans.
- When selecting an SEO plugin, consider the following:
Plugins like Yoast simplify SEO tasks, while alternatives such as WPRocket offer additional features. These tools serve as a comprehensive SEO checklist, helping to boost your online visibility.
Other notable SEO plugins include:
Ease of Use: The plugin should be easy to install, configure, and intuitive to navigate.
Comprehensive Keyword Tracking: Ensure it can track all your keywords, not just a select few.Frequent Updates: Look for a plugin that updates regularly, ideally at least once a week, to maintain efficiency and security.
Create and Submit Your Sitemap for Better Indexing
Creating and submitting a sitemap makes it easier for crawlers to index your pages and identify any changes you’ve made since the last time the search engines crawled your site. Additionally, a site map increases visibility while aiding navigation and improving poor linking.
Create and Submit Your Sitemap for Better Indexing
There are several different ways to create a sitemap, but the most common is an XML file (XML Sitemaps has free and paid tools if you need some). Once you’ve made your sitemap, submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. They’ll crawl your site and add it to their indexes.
You have a large site.
Your site includes a substantial archive of isolated or poorly linked content pages.
Your site contains rich media, such as videos and photographs.
Once you’ve created your sitemap, the next step is to set up a robots.txt file.
According to Google, sitemaps are most effective if:
Creating a Robots.txt File
Be sure to add a robots.txt file when creating or editing a website! This file instructs search engine bots on which parts of your website they are permitted to crawl and index.
Including robots.txt in your SEO checklist has several advantages:
Improves your website’s load time unimportant pages from loading.
Focuses your SEO efforts on the most important pages of your site.
When creating your robots.txt file, consider the following:
- Which pages on your website should search engines crawl and index?
- Which pages should be blocked from crawlers?
- What parameters should be set to crawl specific pages or sections of your website?
- How often should the robots.txt file be updated?
- Once complete, your robots.txt file might look something like this.