Search engine optimization (SEO) is not without difficulties. However, you need not be an SEO specialist to determine whether your website is delivering what is expected, ranking-wise.
Here’s an SEO checklist that you can use as a guide. The SEO checklist is divided into three major groups: on-page, off-page and technical.
Complete on-page, off-page, and technical SEO checklist
On-page SEO factors
- Is the main keyword in the URL?
- Is the main keyword in the sub-heading (H1 or H2)?
- Is the title of the content 100% unique?
- Is there an H1 tag?
- Is the main keyword on the H1 tag?
- Are title tags 65 characters in length or less?
- Are the meta description tags 155 characters or less?
- Are the titles 70 characters or less?
- Are the description tags 150 characters or less?
- Are there relevant images?
- Are the images captioned including the targeted keyword for the page?
- Do the images have descriptive filenames and alt tags?
- Are the images compressed to the right size?
- Are the contents at least 300 words?
- Do the contents include wrong spellings, wrong punctuations and grammatical errors?
- Are the texts properly formatted?
- Does the website regularly publish fresh contents?
- Are there any duplicate contents?
- Is the targeted keyword repeated in the page for 3 to 10 times?
- Are the internal links from 2 to 10 links?
Off-page SEO factors
- How many external links are there?
- Are the external links relevant to the content?
- Are the anchor texts of the external links relevant?
- Have you performed a competitor link profiling?
- Are there any broken links?
- Are 301 redirects required?
Technical SEO factors
- Have you created a new [Google] email address for the website?
- Have you installed Google Analytics (GA)?
- Have you installed Webmaster Tools?
- Have you used Google’s keyword research tool?
- Are you using WordPress?
- Have you installed GA for WordPress?
- Is authorship markup already added on the site?
- What about semantic SEO markups?
- Have you created social media profile on Google+, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?
- Are the social media widgets apparent at the end of each page?
- Have you checked site speed?
- Is there an XML sitemap?
- Is a robots.txt file already created and submitted?
- Is the site responsive?
In reality, this checklist is for the SEO specialist. However, even a non-SEO can use this as a quick reference to check with their SEO consultant whether everything (or most) is covered or not.
Some SEO companies might have different versions of the SEO checklist to conduct SEO audits of their clients’ sites. However, the checklist above lays a solid foundation for what a perfectly optimized website or web page contains.
The SEO checklist includes technical terms that you are not familiar with. If it is too technical for you, you might as well let the SEO specialist do the SEO audit for you. Anyhow, some well-experienced SEO companies in the Philippines include audit and analysis in their optimization service packages.
Based on your or your audit results, recommendations must be made to make your website more Panda and Penguin-friendly.
Remember that none of these factors will make your website appear at the top of the results page alone. They work in combinations. While not all factors listed above can be possibly integrated on your site and onto all its contents, at least try to accomplish most of the factors listed in the SEO checklist above.
SEO factors may change. The factors relevant today may not be as relevant in the coming months. We will update this post from time to time to reflect the changes. So, make sure to visit the posts regularly.
Optimind uses the same SEO checklist to ensure that our client accounts rank high on Google results pages. We can do the same for you, allowing you to dominate the SERPs. Ask us about our SEO services!
