Search Engine Optimization or SEO is something you can’t ignore as a website owner. While millions of websites are on the Internet, bringing your website to a higher rank is not an easy task. But if you have an SEO checklist, it will not be impossible. This blog post provides you with an ultimate SEO checklist you must know with ten best practices. 

Introduction

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is something you can’t ignore if you have a website & you want visitors for it. Anyone who owns  or manages a website always thinks, “How do I get more visitors to my website?” 

Well, if you know what SEO is & how to do it correctly, there is no need to panic. If you like to be familiar with SEO, read our blog article on Ultimate Guide To SEO. 

This blog post is about the Ultimate SEO checklist you must know to increase your website traffic. Read this blog article, to get a sound understanding of the SEO checklist with the best practices you must follow. 

If you follow this Ultimate SEO checklist & best practices, Search engine optimization will be a piece of cake for you. 

Basic SEO checklist 

1.Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free Google tool anyone can use easily. Anyone means SEO specialists, business owners, admins, website developers, and more. 

You can get valuable insights about website performance & suggestions to improve organic visibility & organic traffic. Website owners can track the changes in visitors to the website & the causes of a drop in traffic. 

Functions of Google Search Console:

• Search Console helps to understand how Google sees your websites. 
• Search Console tracks & monitors website presence in Google search results.
• Search Console assists you to analyze website performance in Google searches.
• Search Console helps to identify & solve issues of your website (Indexing issues, spam issues & other site issues). 
• Search Console helps to include new elements to your website. 

You can add Google Search Console to your website by following these steps. 

1. Register or log in to your Google Account.
2. Visit the Google Search Console homepage. 
3. Add a property to track by search console. This property can be your entire domain or a URL.
4. Then verify your ownership of the domain & URL. 
5. Finally, track your website performance. 

Google claims that Google Search Console is for everyone. This tool provides actionable data that we can use in many ways.

Google Search Console provides some reports for web developers to create an SEO-friendly website. 

And some reports are great for SEO professionals looking to improve a website’s search engine results page (SERP) ranks. The tool’s more basic features are ideal for busy site owners who only want to keep their sites running.

2.Sitemap

The sitemap is a method to show Google which pages on your site are significant. A sitemap’s goal is to help search engines identify which pages should be crawled.

It’s just a collection of URLs that describe your site’s core content so that it may be crawled and indexed. Google accepts various sitemap types, although XML is the most popular. 

You can create an XML sitemap using the sitemap generator tools available. Once you’ve created your sitemap, be sure to submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

A good sitemap serves as a roadmap for your website. It  allows search engines to quickly locate all of your important pages. Sitemaps are necessary not only for search engines.  They can also benefit visitors looking for a specific page on your website.

3.A Robot txt file

You can control who crawls & indexes your website. You need to have a robot txt file to control who crawls & indexes your website.

A robot txt file is a simple text file located in the root directory of your website. The robots.txt file on your site tells search engine crawlers which pages and files they can and cannot request from your site.

It is most commonly used to prevent specific sections of your site from being crawled. When used correctly, Robots.txt can increase crawl frequency, which can help your SEO efforts.

Benefits of robot txt files

• Robot txt files prevent Google bots from finding & crawling your private folders. 
• You can use robots.txt to prevent bots from accessing individual scripts and pictures, preserving valuable resources for human visitors.
• Robot txt files help crawlers know where your sitemap is. 
• Prevent crawlers from indexing web pages with duplicate content. 

4.Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a tool provided by Google to help website owners understand what their visitors are doing on their site. You may use the tool to track and analyze critical information about your site and visitors. 

Google Analytics provides a complete view of your website performance. It gathers data & properly analyzes those data.

Then it produces reports for you to view the valuable insights. You can use such reports to learn a lot about your website and the visitors who access it.

Analytics reports can provide valuable insights into how to improve your marketing. The information gathered can assist you to answer a variety of questions concerning your marketing activities. 

The more information you have about your site visitors and target audience, the better. Google Analytics is a data platform that provides a lot of information. Accessing and analyzing the right reports can help increase the ROI you see from your SEO strategy.

Getting started with Analytics is a super easy task. You must first create a Google Account . Once you’ve made an account, log in to begin adjusting GA and adding Google Analytics to a website.

5.Bing Webmaster Tool

Bing is not as popular as Google but is the second most popular search engine. 

Bing provides tools for optimizing your website’s appearance on Bing Search. These are known as Bing Webmaster Tools, and function similarly to Google Search Console.

There are numerous benefits to having a Bing webmaster tool account for your website. Webmaster tool is designed to bridge the gap between webmasters and search engines. And they are the only true channel of communication between you and Bing. As a result, you must register your website with Bing webmaster tools.

• You can identify health issues on your website through the warnings from the Bing webmaster. 
• You can find out how many web pages are indexed by Bing search engine.
• You can troubleshoot crawler access issues. 
• You can identify what keywords your website is associated with. 

6.Check Google Penalties

You should perform a basic SEO check to ensure that your website has not a Google penalty. 

Google has several penalties for websites that violate the provided guidelines. 

If you got a penalty from Google, you should follow a process to recover it. 

7.SEO-friendly URLs

A URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. In simpler words, a URL is the address of a webpage. Every web page on the Internet has its URL.

A permalink is a website’s URL. It is called a permalink because it is not supposed to change throughout the page’s existence.

For SEO purposes, you must ensure that ALL of your website pages have SEO-friendly URLs.

A friendly URL accurately describes the page by using keywords that are easy for both search engines and users to understand.

SEO-friendly URLs are short & descriptive. And also they include keywords. You should use hyphens to separate the words in the URL. 

8.Installing an SEO plugin

The majority of website owners use WordPress for their websites. If you use WordPress, you need SEO plugins for optimization. 

Following are some SEO plugins you can use for your website. 

SEMRush- 

SEMRush is one of my favorite SEO tools so far. Many SEO experts, marketing managers, digital marketers, bloggers & businesses use the SEMRush tool. SEMRush provides you with a bunch of tools to increase your website traffic. 

You can use SEMRush to get organic keywords & search phrases to rank higher on search pages. And also, you can perform competitive keyword research & see what keywords your competitors use. 

Another valuable tool by SEMRush is the SEO Writing Assistant tool. It helps you to enhance your website content to get a higher ranking. You can integrate the SEO Writing Assistant tool with WordPress to create more SEO-friendly content. 

Along with advanced SEO recommendations, you can create SEO templates and receive simple ideas for improving your content’s SEO.

Yoast SEO-

Yoast SEO is a well-known WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize WordPress websites for search engines like Google. 

You can easily add SEO title tags & meta descriptions to all the posts on your website with Yoast SEO. 

And also, you can add graph metadata & social media images to your blog articles by using this tool.

Yoast SEO creates an XML sitemap for every pieces of content on your website. It  makes it simpler for search engines to crawl your website. If you previously used another SEO plugin, it also makes it simple for you to import your SEO data.

Other elements for a better user experience include readability analysis, Google and social previews, and quicker load times.

Ahrefs-

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO analysis tool for bloggers, organizations, and marketers. It is a well-liked substitute for SEMRush and provides many comparable tools and capabilities.

It enables you to perform an SEO audit, do keyword research, analyze competitors, look for backlinks, track keyword ranks, and more. It also has a comprehensive content analysis tool that assists you in improving content while focusing on specific keywords. 

We can merge and upgrade the appropriate content to improve our rankings with Ahrefs. It has’ improved ability to identify duplicate content and keyword obsolescence.

Rank math-

Rank math is a simple WordPress SEO plugin you can use to optimize your websites. You can import data from other SEO plugins if you want. 

Rank math helps to add title tags and meta descriptions to your blog posts. And also, you can create XML sitemaps, integrate Google Search Console & prevent access to plugin features. 

This tool provides suggestions about the internal links & external links you have used, alt tags & anchor text. 

9.Use HTTPS

HTTPS is a short form for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It is a website communication protocol that encrypts data using SSL or TLS.

This enables confidential and secure data transmission over the internet. HTTPS is not a major ranking factor. It is a lightweight ranking factor.

But having HTTPS is important for a website. If you are not using HTTPS you should switch to it today. HTTPS will protect your visitors’ data. 

If you collect any passwords, payment details & contact details, you must have HTTPS on your website. 

Today, websites that ask visitors to provide sensitive information as a requirement employ Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure as a standard. Therefore, password protecting accounts and online banking transactions are the key application areas.

10.Short & descriptive URLs

Searchers can better understand the content of a page in the SERPs by using short, descriptive URLs.

For example, the following two websites are on the content marketing guide, 

www.seojournal.com/article/1256

www.digifix.com.au/guide-to-content-marketing

When you look at the first URL, you can’t get a clear idea of what this webpage is. But when you read the second URL, you can see what that website is. 

Set your primary keyword as the URL slug to create a short & descriptive URL. Since long URLs frequently get shortened in the SERPs, keeping them short is a good idea.

11.Image Optimization

Many people ignore image optimization without knowing the benefits it gives. Below are some image optimization tips to get more organic traffic. 

Name images properly- 

A file name of an image gives a clue about it to Google. So using generic file names like IMG0034.JPG is not a good practice.  Instead, you can use a name that describes the image. For example, if it is an image of an Italian Pizza, you can use Italian-pizza-delicious.jpg. 

Keep your filenames simple and meaningful.

Descriptive alt text-

An image you post on your website has an alt text that defines it. It is what users of screen readers see when using the browser. Browsers will also offer alternative text if there is a problem showing visuals.

Choose the best file type-

Most images on the web are JPEG, PNG & GIF file types. They all employ various compression techniques. As a result, there is a wide range in file sizes among the three file types. Images frequently make up the majority of a page’s overall size, which can increase load time and cost. 

Page loading time is crucial for search engine optimization. PNG is the ideal format for line drawings, text, etc., while JPEG is best for images. Moving graphics work best in GIF format.

Image sitemaps-

Images are a crucial source of knowledge about the contents of your website. By adding information to an image sitemap, you may provide Google with more information about your images and the URL of any images we might not otherwise find.

Images are automatically included to your sitemap if you’re using WordPress and Yoast SEO.

Conclusion

If you are new to SEO, you will be overwhelmed first. But no need to worry. Our website has many blog articles written on search engine optimization. Having a general idea of search engine optimization is essential. I hope this ultimate SEO checklist will be beneficial for you. If you use it wisely, you will be on the top of search engine result pages. 

And if you need any assistance with your search engine optimization, our team at DigiFix is more than happy to help you. We have helped many companies to create the best SEO strategies. 

You may like the following articles as well,

Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization

8 Best SEO tools you must know in 2022

On-page SEO checklist :6 elements