Your Step-by-Step SEO Checklist

By this stage, you should have your website built and ready to launch. However, before you do, there are several pre-live SEO checklist steps to perform. 

Add an SEO Plugin to Your Website 

Highly recommended for those who build their website using a CMS, an SEO plugin, such as Yoast, Rank Math or Squirrly, can be used to help optimise a website for search engines. 

Check Title Tags & Meta Descriptions for Each Page

A vital component of SEO yet easy to perform, title tags and meta descriptions provide search engines with information on the overall topic of a page. 

A title tag should typically include the target keyword and be no longer than 65 – 70 characters. Meta descriptions should be an overview of the subject matter with relevant keywords and be no more than 155 – 160 characters. Ensuring the correct length is vital, as short title tags and meta descriptions lack detail, while overly long title tags and descriptions risk becoming diluted and cut off in SERPs.

You can use a website crawler, like Screaming Frog, to check your pages en-masse, or a browser plugin like SEO Pro Extension to quickly interrogate each page.

Check Page Titles & Headings

Titles and headings also impact the SEO of a webpage. Each page should feature a single H1 title and two to three H2 headings, which include targeted keywords. However, repeating headers within the same page should be avoided, with a focus on the unique copy instead.

URLs

The address of a specific resource on the internet, such as a webpage, URLs provide a search engine with an indication of what it’s about. When creating URLs, they should be short and include the leading keyword of the page.

Images 

Good imagery is vital for breaking up reams of text and bringing life to a webpage. However, images can also play an integral role in SEO. Images should have their file resized for optimisation purposes and include alt tags, which add textual descriptions of the image to improve SEO and accessibility.

Internal Linking

Often overlooked, internal links perform a vital job in helping users and search engines navigate a website. Adding hyperlinks anchored to relevant descriptive terms can help reinforce the intended use and keyword effectiveness.

Robots.txt

A robots.txt is a file designed to highlight to a search engine which pages to crawl. Installing a robots.txt. is essential for any website featuring pages, such as a cart page on an eCommerce site, that does not want crawling.

Checking your website’s robots.txt file can be done simply by adding /robots.txt. to the end of your URL. A simple robots.txt file is shown below.

Redirects

If your new website is a redesigned version of an old, pre-existing one, you will need to ensure the old URLs redirect to the new website to carry over the SEO of the former page and ensure users are directed to the correct location.

Add Schema 

Schema markup helps a search engine better understand a page’s content and can include reviews and pricing. Adding schema can better present your website when it appears in a search engine results page, with information, like the aforementioned reviews and prices, appearing alongside.

Check Mobile Friendliness 

Today, most web searches take place on mobile, making it a key factor for ranking on a search engine results page. As a result, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is essential and can be easily checked with Google’s mobile-friendly test tool.

Check Site Load Speed

As with mobile friendliness, user experience is an essential aspect of SEO, and another part of this is website loading speed. Slow performance is often off-putting to users and can impact their overall interactions with a website. Tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, track the loading speed of a website to allow you to make amends if it’s not reaching maximum performance. 

Keyword Tracking 

Keyword tracking tools, like SERanking and Serpstat, allow you to monitor and analyse keyword performance over time. Adding relevant keywords to tracking tools can be a real help in understanding how your website ranks alongside your competitors.

Set Up Google Business Profile 

An up-to-date and accurate Google Business Profile is an integral part of local SEO. With a profile, a business can reach new users through other apps like Google Maps and Google Search. It is also required to feature in the Google Maps Pack for local searches.