Having an SEO friendly website isn’t always an easy feat. It is a combination of technical infrastructure, content and discipline in an ever evolving world algorithmic expectation and appeal to users. Here are some quick tips on beginning the journey, and a comprehensive SEO checklist which was recently published by SEMrush.
Embarking an SEO friendly website
- Set specific and measurable goals
To become successful faster, you first need a basic road map of what you want to achieve.
2. Establish a routine, and stick to it
Allocate a part of your day to read about the latest SEO news, and to review your SEO tools and analytics. Make it a habit by doing it in 21 consecutive days.
3. Find a mentor
Search for social media influencers or key opinion leaders in SEO. Bookmark them and constantly refer to them. Feel free to ask them questions if you have any
4. Streamline your routine
If you are successful in establishing a routine, you will know that any routine can be streamlined further so that you are referencing the best sources, the most impactful work, the most successful case studies. Etc.
5. Learn how to say no
The internet can also be a very distracting environment. There are hard sells everywhere in SEO paid tools / programs and there are content created just to gather views. How they may accelerate your learning often remains to be questioned, so learn to avoid time wasters
6. Be smart about money
It doesn’t mean not to invest any money in your learning. But simply, learn to budget your cash, spend wisely and review the impact of whatever your spending on a monthly basis.
7. Learn from your mistakes
Mistakes in content and technical setup are part and parcel of learning. Don’t be discouraged by the mistakes that you make, keep going.
SEO CHECKLIST
SEO Basics
- Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools
What is it?
Google Search Console help you to comprehend how Google views your website. There is tracking and monitoing of your websites availability in Google search results. You can then use this information to improve your website performance.
Bing Webmaster tools is similar, and provides insights for how Bing views your website and presence in Bing search results - Set up Google Analytics
- Install and configure an SEO plugin (WordPress)
- Generate and submit a sitemap
- Create a Robots.txt file
- Check Search Console for manual actions
- Make sure that your website is indexed
Keyword Research
- Identify your competitors
- Find your main ‘money’ keywords
- Find long-tail keyword variations
- Create a keyword map
- Analyze the intent of pages that rank
- Identify questions that are being asked
- Understand how difficult it is to rank for target keywords
Technical SEO
- Make sure you are using HTTPS
- Check for duplicate versions of your site
- Find & fix crawl errors
- Improve site speed
- Fix broken internal and outbound links
- Find and fix HTTP links on HTTPS page
- Use an SEO-friendly URL structure
- Add structured data
- Check the page depth
- Check temporary 302 redirects
- Find and fix redirect chains & loops
On-Page & Content
- Fix duplicate, missing & truncated title tags
- Find and fix duplicate, missing meta descriptions
- Find and fix multiple H1 tags
- Improve title & meta tags, and page content
- Run a content audit and prune content
- Ensure images use ALT tags
- Improve internal linking
- Find and fix keyword cannibalization
- Find and fix orphaned site ages
- Is your content up to date?
Off-page SEO
- Analyze your competitor’s link profile
- Conduct a link intersect analysis
- Turn unlinked mentions into links
- Find new link building opportunities
- Set up and optimize Google My Business