A Complete SEO Checklist For Your Website

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has no longer become optional, but indeed an important requirement of websites. When many factors create a good website, SEO is important for most of the digital marketing plans. Many website owners struggle to implement SEO, or they don’t have much thought to put in SEO. You can find SEO services in Gurgaon who guides you with a complete check for SEO. This would enable your website to be gain wider visibility. 

This article presents you the various SEO checklist for the website in the following category:

• Technical SEO
• On-page SEO
• External SEO

Technical SEO

Before you focus on some specific content that must get more SEO rank, you should ensure that your website can be crawled and indexed. This falls in the technical SEO category. The following pointers will help you with it.

• Free Reporting Platforms –

  Ensure that you have Bing Webmaster, Google Search Console, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, etc linked to your website. These tools provide you with good analytic data and help you in the long run.

•  XML Sitemap –

  This is like the table of content for your website. The sitemap file denotes the modern way of submitting your web pages to the search engine. Many of the website platforms, have this XML sitemap built in or have add-ons/plugins. This will create a dynamic sitemap that syncs your webpages on your website always. You should have a static one that you will be able to generate by many free tools available. 

• Robots.txt –

  This text file provides search engine instructions as what part of the site should not be indexed. The search engine looks at the content they can find by default. In case you do not want to restrict the search engines to index any page on your website, ensure that this text file is accurate, validates in Google search console, and doesn’t block important content to be indexed.

• Domains –

  In case you own more than your primary domain name, ensure that you are aware of every additional domain name. 

• Site Architecture –

  It is better if you have more structure and hierarchy that you could build into your navigation and sections of your website. This will have a good impact on the users and search engine and present organized content and topics. It is a great goal to get your directory structure and URLs that match the literal page and the file structure of the content. Hence, it is a great starting point to set back and map out your website architecture or sitemap. It would make you think about the content, prioritize your site’s few aspects, and the way you want to funnel your users. 

• Speed –

  You get statistics about your website usage, that users tend to spend less before bouncing. The search engines incorporate page speed into their ranking factors. Find out ways to reduce JavaScript and heavy loading pieces of code in your webpages. Also, find out ways to cache or load elements externally. Few great developer tools guide you to identify the right areas to optimize in your website so that your webpage load times to competitive levels.

• Mobile-Friendly –

  Mobile-friendly applications is very important these days. Ensure that if your website is built in a mobile framework it validates a test that runs through Google’s mobile-friendly test. Perform User Experience (UX) and Quality Assurance (QA) testing as much as possible. This would ensure that it would work for users on all devices.

• 404 Pages –

  Create a custom 404 page and place some good and helpful information in it. You should not end up losing a visitor with a default browser error. Create a 404 page that contains useful links, site search functionality, navigation, and contact options.

• SSL –

  Having a secure website is very important. If your website is not under SSL, then you might end up losing users before they enter your site. Place trust in your website by implementing the steps of an SSL certification.

• Plugins, Add-ons, or Extensions –

  In case you make use of a content management system, there might already be using plugins or other code extensions that you trust. Many platforms have tools that you could add to your site and provide additional control over the analytics functions and SEO. You should check out for trusted plugins that provide maximum functionality and control.

On-Page SEO 

Whenever SEO is mentioned, we tend to think about on-page factors like a content, keywords, title tags, etc. The search engines have a look at the context way more than its keywords. Hence it not just enough if you update meta tags or body copy. Context is taken care of by seeing the on-page elements in a page and then finding out ways about the way pages relate to each other within sections and navigation of the website. The following pointers will help you with on-page elements:

• Topics and Keywords

  – Before you build context, you should know what it is built for. If your keyword research is not done, you need to do it and find out what topics and phrases your audience use to find your website. Make use of SEO tools to find out the right phrases, terms, and topics that align with your website. Then you can drill out individual words that apply to the website architecture. You should know the terms that matter, link to your content, and then work on the rest of the on-page factors.

• Content –

  Content is there to show its relevance to the website.  A few words on your website will become tough to compete with those sites that are full of content. Writing rich content for users that vibrates with them and is clear to the search engine is a good sign for your website. Don’t make use of outdated strategies that harm the user experience and place you at risk with the search engine.

• URL –

  This is the main part of a page and is sometimes overlooked. Present a clean directory structure that contains context and keywords as to what the page is about.

• Title –

  Have a unique title tag. Align it to your content and website. Be aware of the length and keywords that are most relevant to the page topic.

• Meta Description –

  Have a custom and relevant meta description for every page. Whether your page is static or dynamic, ensure that it is helpful to the user. Make sure that your webpage contains keywords that are relevant to the content and helps to build context using the title tag.

• Image Alt attributes –

  This is one of the important parts of any website. Alt text is useful for a search engine to figure out what an image is about. 

• Structured Data –

  By using relevant structured data markup for your website content, you can provide another signal to the search engines and relate the segment or category your website is in. 

External SEO Factors

External factors cannot control your website and does not have to be part of your checklist. However, external factors have some influence on your status and validate your website as a subject matter expert. Few of them are:

• Links –

  Inbound links to your website has an important role in SEO. Your website should have great content to ensure that anybody landing from anywhere should be able to convert.

• Local Search –

  Local directory and search sites are the main if you have a physical business. When you properly own your listing, it helps to identify and protect your brand.

• Social media –

  Social media increases your SEO efforts even though it does not directly impact your rankings. Your website link that lists in social media should be active and correct.