Modern digital marketing revolves around Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Staying on top of the SEO game requires a SEO checklist for business websites. You should take SEO seriously whether you are a small business owner or a large corporation.
Search Engine Optimisation can help you rank higher on the search engine result page for whatever product or service you sell. Research shows that 93% of online interactions begin with a search engine. Therefore, it is crucial that a business website ranks high on search engines.
On-page and Off-page SEO are the subparts of SEO. On-page SEO can affect the performance of pages on a website, while off-page SEO ensures the website’s improved performance through other platforms.
To help you make sure your website is SEO-ready, we have created an SEO checklist specifically for optimizing business websites. This checklist also ensures that every web page should include essential SEO best practices so Google can find them.
Keyword Research And Density
This is an integral part of Search Engine optimisation because it allows you to better understand your target audience’s search habits and keywords they are searching for. You can optimize your site to be more relevant to your target market by knowing more keywords.
You can also use keyword research to see how easy it is to rank your site. Search for long-tail keywords with low difficulty and higher search volumes.
Your chosen keywords should appear throughout your content. However, they shouldn’t sound unnatural or off-putting to readers. Keyword density is a complex topic that should be mastered along with content editing and proofreading.
Google Search Console: Add your website
It is almost impossible to complete a SEO checklist without including Google search console in it.
Google search console is a Google service that is free to webmasters. This free set of tools from Google allows web admins to access many tools and reports to optimize websites for Google search.
Google’s search console can be used to analyze website data, determine Google’s rankings and identify and correct errors in crawling and indexing. You can also inform Google of any changes to your website.
GSC is the best tool you can use to optimize your site’s SEO. First, you will need to create an account and then add and verify web properties.
Check for Google penalties
You must ensure your website isn’t under any Google penalties. Websites that violate Google’s Guidelines to publish content can be penalized in different ways, both algorithmic and manual.
You may need to take a different route if your website is affected by a Google penalty. Continue with this SEO checklist to avoid any dispute with Google’s algorithms and manual.
Install SSL To Make Sure Your Website is HTTPS
A website’s SSL certificate affects its ranking. SSL protects any information that is shared between your website server and your website. This is a must-do item on your SEO checklist if you have not yet moved your website to HTTPS.
You can’t just add an SSL to your site for SEO purposes. It is essential that you do it right to preserve your rankings and maintain the trust of your audience in your online store.
Best User Experience and Indexing
Along with a part of the SEO checklist, this is one of the best digital marketing strategies.
Every day new websites are created. Users also enjoy frequent updates to enhance their experience. Search engines are designed to provide the best user experience. If your site doesn’t meet their criteria, it will not be able to appear in a search.
Search engines use crawlers for finding viable websites. Search engines use crawlers to detect trending keywords and find relevant websites to browse. The algorithm will index a page deemed worthy if it finds one. However, that is only part of the process. To rank your page in searches, you will need to meet other criteria.
SEO Checklist includes quality content
You need to consider content as the king of your website if you want to reap the benefits of digital marketing.
Content is also the backbone of Search Engine optimisation. Google ranks web pages using expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. This means that no matter what type of content you create, it should be consistent and of high-quality. Titles should be eye-catching and catch the attention of your audience.
The content must support and maintain their interest and provide reliable and accurate information. You can rank your content based on length, topic and media type.
Backlinks and Internal links
Next on our SEO checklist is making link juice for your website. It is essential to build links within your web pages. Make sure you provide links that are worthy of clicking. Linking to a site that is not trustworthy will damage your credibility and reduce your rank.
You want other websites to link to your site, so providing quality information will help make your pages more attractive to link to.
Make sure your website has high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites that are relevant to your niche. Backlinks are SEO boosters for your website, and they are perfect ways to beat your competitors in SEO.
Generate and Submit XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is the primary part of the SEO checklist. It informs search engines about indexable pages on your website. If you have a WordPress site, there are many plugins that can do this for you. You can also ask your developers for a customized solution.
After you have created your sitemap, you will need to submit it to Google. You can do this by using Google Search Console. When you submit a sitemap to Google, it helps Google to prioritize the crawling pages.
You should not include the XML sitemap file in conflict with your robots.txt rules. This could send contradictory messages to Google and cause your URLs not to be crawled or indexed as you want.
Optimize Your Website Structure
SEO experts should never forget to optimize the structure of any website. This is a common mistake that comes forward when auditing a website. A good site structure does not let users have more than three clicks to access any page from the homepage.
The website menu should reflect the site structure. You can improve your SEO by revising the structure of your website.
Make Sure Your Content Is Indexed
Not indexing your content is a common mistake that you can make on your website, regardless of whether it’s specific pages or the entire site. This is usually done using meta robots, but it can also be affected via robots.txt or canonical URLs. While most content is indexable by default for most websites, it’s worth checking if there are any non-indexable rules.
Your website content needs to be indexed to make it able to show on Google searches. You will get more organic traffic if you have more indexed pages. You must include the URL in your sitemap but make sure it is internal. Otherwise, you will increase opened pages on your website.
Identify Your Competitors
This digital marketing strategy is actually a prominent entry on this SEO checklist.
It means that you need to be aware of your online competitors. The competition you face online may be different from what you face in your physical store. You may have many competitors selling similar products and services. You need to stay ahead of the competition to beat them and generate revenue.
Understanding your competitors helps you to identify what is working for them and what is not. Moreover, you can get meaningful insights from competitors’ analysis to make your digital marketing strategy against them.
You can also make strategies against them by analyzing their website for backlinks, content and layout. Your website needs to be present among the audience in a more appealing way compared to your competitors.
Optimize Page Titles And Meta Descriptions
Page titles and meta titles of your webpages are more prominent in any SEO checklist. The most important SEO factor is page title optimization. Your title should include your target keywords to help search engines and users understand the content. Every page on your website should have a meta tag. Page titles should accurately describe the page content.
Conclusion
Making a stable online presence is easier than maintaining it for a long time. Our experienced marketers made this SEO checklist after analyzing the current and future marketing trends and Google’s algorithms. If you have queries regarding your website’s SEO, feel free to comment below in the comment sections.