(A definite and expert-written step-by-step SEO checklist to boost your website’s ranking and social media presence.)

Why does your business require an SEO checklist?

You need the best SEO practices in your list, from SEO basics to analyzing techniques for your off-page signals. The following list will guide you in making the best use of SEO services for your website. This SEO checklist works for any business, be it an eCommerce store, local business boutique, or anything that aims to rank higher.

Five essential components of an SEO checklist and how to use them?

The best way to get things on track is to get an SEO specialist to analyze your website and evaluate each item on the list. It is important to note that the first time around, it is recommended to skim through things and analyze what works for you. Not every SEO checklist is supposed to be the same, so you can add and remove components from your customized list.

1. SEO Basics Checklist

The basics of SEO are what you must understand if you are struggling with optimizing your website for search engines. Furthermore, ranking the website will become more challenging if the competition increases. Therefore, the following basics must be understood and implemented as your SEO strategy.

• Set up the Google Search Console
  The Search Console will provide valuable information considering your site. It will also provide you with rich data that you can use to improve the visibility and the organic traffic on your website. In addition, other data like the keywords your visitors are using, crawl errors, and sitemaps can be deciphered easily using this tool.
• Set up Google Analytics
  If you cannot understand the data and use it accordingly for your business, then the data is of no use. Also, you will not make the right decisions without the right data and the correct interpretation of it. Google Analytics is a free marketing analytics tool that interprets data and provides helpful insights.
• Install and configure an SEO plugin
  Additional plugins are necessary if you use WordPress as the content management system for your site. These plugins ensure that the site is optimized with the best features with no compromises on the functionality. But plugins can be decided on personal preference.
• Develop a sitemap
  The purpose of the sitemap is to guide search engines on the pages to be crawled and their corresponding canonical versions. These URLs contain your site’s primary content, leading to them being indexed and crawled. After the development of the sitemap, make sure to submit it to the Google Search Console.
• Verify that Google can index your website
  An overlooked part in the SEO basics checklist is checking if the pages are getting indexed by Google. You can use a Site Audit Tool to ensure that all pages are crawled and indexed.

  2. Keyword Research Checklist

  If you do not have a keyword research system, ranking higher will become an impossible task. If you are not ranking correctly, the website traffic will not be converted as it should. Make the following keyword research tasks a part of your SEO strategy.

• Identify your competitors
  One of the quickest and the most successful keyword research methods is identifying those terms that work for your competitors. A thorough competitor analysis will help you in determining the most profitable keywords that can be applied.
• Figure out those keywords that bring revenue
  You should be aware of those keywords that generate revenue. These are those terms that drive leads and sales and bring more conversions. Most keywords in this category are of high volume and have high competition. You also use the Keyword Overview tool to determine the terms that fit your products and services.
• Search for long-tail keyword variations
  Long-tail keywords are known to deliver higher conversion rates despite their low volume. Therefore, your SEO strategy should target both long-tail keywords and head terms.

3. Technical SEO checklist

Some of the best technical SEO practices that you can incorporate are:

• Use HTTPS encryption on your website.
• Check for duplicate versions of your site on the Google index.
• Identify crawling errors through the Google Search Console and fix them.
• Improve site speed for better User Experience.

Fix broken inbound and outbound links. Make your site mobile-friendly for better Google rankings.

4. On-Page SEO and Content Checklist

If your users do not find good content or user experience on the site, the organic traffic and ranking are bound to drop. There is a lot of competition regarding content, so you need to make the best use of keywords in blogs and articles. Make sure that your content fulfills the following requirements:

• Find and fix missing, duplicate, and truncated title tags
• Find and fix missing and duplicate meta descriptions
• Run a content audit and prune the content
• Use Alt Tags for images
• Improve internal linking

Update the content regularly on your website.

5. Off-page SEO checklist

For off-page SEO factors, you can implement the following:

• Analyze your competitor’s link profile
• Analyze link intersections and discover new opportunities
• Turn unlinked mentions into proper links
• Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile.

Conclusion

These five simple SEO factors with their categories are all you need to nail your SEO and ranking game. Apart from these five, you can figure out other SEO factors that positively impact your website. This SEO checklist, combined with other SEO services, will surely deliver promising results if used for a while.