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Complete SEO Checklist

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be overwhelming, so we created this SEO checklist to help anyone who wants to rank their website on Google.

This list contains information from trusted sources like the Ahrefs SEO checklist, Moz, and other SEO professionals. We hope it helps you as much as it helps us!

Preliminary

Set up Google Analytics to monitor your website’s ongoing performance and determine where your visitors come from.

Set up Google Search Console to see which keywords your website ranks for and find high-performing content.
Connect Google Search Console and Google Analytics
If you are ranking a client’s website:
Request logins for
WordPress
   Google Search Console
   Google Analytics
   Check for full privileges for the website, hosting service, Google Search Console, Analytics, etc.

On-Page SEO Checklist

1 - Competitor Keyword Research & Keyword Strategy

Create a list of 50+ keywords

Hire a webmaster or use Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to target at least 50 low competition long-tail keywords that your competitors do not rank for.

Find long-tail and LSI keywords with lsigraph.com or Long-Tail Pro (long-tail keywords should include at least 3 words in a long-tail keyword)

Determine keyword difficulty and competition with SEMrush Keyword Checker. Target keywords with a competitive score of 40 or less and an organic click rate of 85 or more.
Check the search volume, competition, and competitor’s content depth for each keyword with Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush.

Record your keywords in a spreadsheet with this template, use your own, or use SEMrush or Google Ads Keyword Planner.

2 - Competitor Keyword Research & Keyword Strategy
Enter low-competition long-tail keywords on the following platforms to identify which content your target audience searches for:
Ahrefs Content Explorer
Quora

StumbleUpon
BuzzSumo
Twitter and tweedeck.twitter.com

Answer the Public
Do watch

Yahoo News
Google Trends
Ruqqus

Reddit
Instagram
Install YoastSEO and SEMrush on WordPress or other CMS (if applicable). Use Yoast Questions feature to create content for Google snippets.

Install snippet code using Google analytics.
Create a content cloud based on your keywords
Include at least 200 topic ideas

Separate those keywords into niches and sub-niches to identify content opportunities such as how-tos, why not, 3 reasons, Best about your niche, worst about your niche, tips and tricks, shortcuts, why and why not, competitive analysis, etc.
Include videos, images, memes, tips, how-tos, snippets, etc. to drive engagement

Content follows the skyscraper technique

3 - Content & Copy Optimization

Assess how your website’s visitors interact with your site using Yandex.
Modify your content and site’s copy accordingly.
Include 4 to 5 seed keywords for content between 800 and 1200 words.
Formatting
Pages are scannable/easy to read
Content is broken up by compelling subheadings
Content includes bullet points and lists (where applicable)
Cornerstone content is strategically highlighted
Engagement
Headlines are informative and easy to follow
Taglines are interesting
Content is value-packed
Introductions are compelling and encourages scrolling
Content shows a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T)
Title tags
All pages have an H1 title tag
Title tags are 65 characters or less, concise, and informative
Includes a primary keyword from your keyword list
Keyword placement
Primary keyword is placed at or near the front of the title tag
Primary keyword is found in the first sentence of the opening paragraph.
H1 headings contain a primary keyword
H2, H3, and H4 headings include secondary and LSI keywords
The URLs for each page and pose include a target keyword
Even keyword/synonym distribution (0.5% - 2.5% density)
Images
All images have alt tags that include the main keyword
Alt tags describe the image as specifically as possible
Use Longdesc tags for complex images that require a longer description.
Use deep captions on the page below the image
Meta descriptions
50-160 characters
Contains at least one target keyword
Is intriguing enough to generate clicks
Is relevant to the linked landing page
Each page has a unique meta description
Remove double quotation marks
Website Pages
Have a minimum of 300 words
Have dofollow links to other pages
Contains original content and does not duplicate other pages on your site
URLs
URLs contain target keyword
Remove numbers from URLs
Make sure URLs align with the content or webpage title
Write short but descriptive URLs
URLS reflect the structure of your site

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Marketing In Your Underpants is your one-stop-shop for everything digital marketing. We cover all digital marketing techniques and help you decide which one is best for you.

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Our Work

Practice > Theory.

If you want to see how we’ve applied the techniques we talk about in this blog check out our case studies below.

Case Studies

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4 - Create An Interlinking Strategy (After Technical SEO Errors are resolved)

Audit your site on SEMrush to find its internal linking score and crawl depth
For more accurate results, hire a webmaster to perform a manual audits
Link correct URLs to relevant anchor text
Balance internal link distribution (minimum six internal links per page
Crawl depth does not exceed three clicks
Identify hub pages and make a topic cluster map (not applicable to every site)
Make sure internal and external links work and link to relevant posts and pages
Link future content to relevant older content
Optimize current and future content

Off-Page SEO Checklist

For older sites:
Perform a backlink audit and check your site’s backlink profile
Assess competitors’ backlinks
Identify and fix internal link issues
Make sure on-page SEO is 100% optimized
Assess your link building options
Check and fix broken links - a necessary.
Optimize content for outreach
Update Local citation and directory profiles
Promote brand/content with PPC
Create a guest blogging strategy
Schedule consistent social media posts
For newer sites:
Create an outreach strategy
Guest blogging strategy
Monthly social media posting calendar
Create a PPC campaign
Publish and share engaging content regularly
Set up Google business profile
Install Google Maps on your website
Add URLs to a sitemap

2 - Create A Backlink Strategy

Competitor Backlink Research

Perform a backlink audit to create a list of prospects
Hire a webmaster or use Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, or Google Analytics
Direct users to your site or drive engagement on relevant web 2.0 sites by comments, images, etc
Include primary keywords but only hyperlink secondary and LSI keywords to prevent the web 2.0 site from receiving the link juice
Pick strategies based on your type of site.
For example, guest posts may not work for ecommerce sites, but brands with a social media following could encourage followers to like and share content during a contest. The more fans share, the more link juice is passed around.
60% of content, 20% of social sharing and 20% of backlinking the strategy to follow to get rank juice, SERP results.

Social Media SEO Checklist

Create a product-centric social media page directs users to your website

Focus more on engagement and less on self-promotion
When promoting your product or service:

Share features and explain benefits
Create and post high-quality content regularly
Include keywords in your posts
Include links to your website in your posts
Content should be dynamic, energetic, build an emotional connection
Connect and share in your niche and sub-niches
Reply to comments, share user-generated content, like other users’ posts
Add social share buttons to your website and other social platforms
Optimize social media pages to position yourself as an industry expert and leader
Optimize images and videos with proper branding and story-telling techniques.
Engage in meaningful interactions online
Create a community, connect, follow, give-back and then engage. People should follow you as a critique.
Measure performance and metrics

Technical SEO Checklist

Verify your web site with GSC and Analytics
Enable file editing or edit the file through FTP
When your website is ready, you can transfer heavy content like images, files, setups using the FTP server.
Perform site audit + record results

Use SEMrush or hire a webmaster to track the visitor behavior and plan your next marketing strategy

When working with a webmaster, you will need to give them WP admin + GSC logins and privileges - get client’s permission first

Check to see if the website has a sitemap - https://www.websitedomain.com/sitemap.xml

If it has one, submit to GSC (WP automatically creates sitemaps)
If not, make one:

Hire a webmaster. This step involves making sure the URLs are coded, verifying the code, and adding the sitemap to the root and robots.txt.

Check for robots.txt - https://www.websitedomain.com/robots.txt

If it has robot.txt installed, continue to the next step
If not, hire a webmaster.

Provide a list of URLs you do not want to be crawled (de-indexed)

Thank you pages (displayed after a survey or similar)
Ad landing pages (meant for pay-per-click campaigns)
Policy pages
Internal site search results
Automatically generated content (WP example: “Hello World!”, etc.

Digital Strategy

Search Engine M Optimization (SEO)

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Content Marketing

Digital Marketing & Communication Theory

Social Media Marketing

Email Marketing

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

Fix errors

URLs
Site speed
Duplicate title tags
Duplicate content issues
Pages with mixed content
Duplicate meta descriptions
Structured data items
5XX status code
4XX status code
Pages with missing title tags
Broken internal links are broken
Pages that can’t be crawled
Pages that can’t be crawled (DNS resolution issues)
Pages that can’t be crawled (incorrect URL formats)
Non-secure pages
Expiring or expired certificate
Old security protocol
Incorrect certificate name
Redirects or canonical to HTTPS homepage from the HTTP version
Redirect chains and loops
Pages with a broken canonical link
Pages with multiple canonical URLs

Broken internal images are broken
Robots.txt file format errors
Sitemap.xml files format errors
Incorrect pages in sitemap.xml
Pages with a WWW resolve issue
Pages with no viewport tag
Pages with too large HTML size
AMP pages with no canonical tag
hreflang values issues
hreflang conflicts within page source code
Incorrect hreflang links
Pages with a meta refresh tag
Broken internal JavaScript and CSS files
Subdomains don’t support secure encryptio
n algorithms
Sitemap.xml files are too large
Links that can’t be crawled (incorrect URL formats)
404s

Fix warnings

Pages with low text-HTML ratio
Pages without meta descriptions
Pages with underscores in the URL
Pages with too much text within the title tags
Pages without H1 heading
Broken internal links
Broken external links
Broken external images
Pages with duplicate H1 and title tags
Uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files
Sitemap.xml not found or indicated in robots.txt
Links on HTTPS pages lead to the HTTP page
Pages without enough text within the title tags
Pages have too many on-page links
URLs with a temporary redirect
Images don't have alt attributes
Pages have too many parameters in their URLs

Pages have no hreflang and lang attributes
Pages don't have character encoding declared
Pages don't have doctype declared
Pages have a low word count
Pages use Flash
Pages contain frames
Outgoing internal links contain nofollow attribute
Homepage does not use HTTPS encryption
Subdomains don't support SNI
HTTP URLs in sitemap.xml for HTTPS site
Uncompressed page
Blocked internal resources in robots.txt
Uncached JavaScript and CSS files
Pages have a JavaScript and CSS total size that is too large
Pages use too many JavaScript and CSS files
unminified JavaScript and CSS files
Link URLs are too long

Fix notices:

Links have no anchor text
Page has only one incoming internal link
Pages have more than one H1 tag
Links to external pages or resources returned a 403 HTTP status code
Links to external pages or resources returned a 403 HTTP status code
Links on this page have non-descriptive anchor text
Subdomains don't support HSTS
Crawl errors
Page URLs are longer than 200 characters
Outgoing external links contain nofollow attributes
Robots.txt not found
Pages have hreflang language mismatch issues
Orphaned pages in sitemaps (Connect your Google Analytics account to view)
Pages blocked by X-Robots-Tag: noindex HTTP header
Blocked external resources in robots.txt
Broken external JavaScript and CSS files
Pages need more than 3 clicks to be reached
URLs with a permanent redirect
Make sure content is a minimum of 300 words

Optimize site for mobile users
The site is secured with an SSL Certificate “HTTPS”
Disavow bad links
Optimize site’s source codes
For existing sites, create a sitemap. Ignore if the website is new or nonexistent
Create a robot.txt file on site pages you don’t want to be crawle
Add Schema markup
Use JSON-LD Markup
Resolve bad redirects
Canonicalize URLs

Local SEO Checklist

Set up Google My Business (only applicable for local businesses)
Optimize Google My Business Listing
   Request reviews from previous customers
   Add Google Maps for business location(s) in Contact Us or About pages
Include your local address on your website’s homepage, preferably in the footer
Include Google Map coordinates on your website’s homepage, preferably in the footer
   Attach a Google Map snippet in landing page footers
Research target keywords based on business, location, services, etc.
      Use local keywords related to your business throughout your website’s pages
      Create light to moderate content that points back to your content and address, helps you gain local traction and advantage
      clude pictures of your area, business operations, and candid photos that include tags related to your business and keywords
Create About Us or Contact Us pages
Include your business address, website name, and contact number on all landing pages
Add schema using schema.org
Build Citations and ensure NAHP information is uniform across all platforms and websites

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EveryDayDreamers is a full service marketing firm. We help businesses bring their products and services to a wider audience.

We drive traffic, leads, and sales towards our clients using Google Adwords, Email Marketing, Copywriting and Conversion Optimization, Social Media Marketing, general SEO best practices, and Content Creation.

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