SEO Checklist

Overview

What is SEO?

For those who don't know what SEO stands for, it's an acronym for Search Engines Optimization. It is a set of techniques to improve the ranking of a site in the pages of search engines . These techniques or methods should be taken into account by all business site owner, without exemption and those when creating or redesigning a website . But because the list of these SEO improvement techniques is very long and sometimes complex to set up, it happens that some companies do not pay all the attention they should. Often due to a lack of culture and internal skills in SEO or natural referencing, it is not uncommon for the entire internet budget to be devoted exclusively to website creation. By not budgeting part of the web creation or redesign budget for SEO optimization, the site will likely be very beautiful and well made, but it may not generate as many visits as it should. So what must be taken into account to generate or retain traffic when designing or redesigning your website?

The challenge of being ranking first in the search engines

The dream of any business on the Internet is to be on the first page of Google and if possible in first, second or third position. Obtaining this ranking makes it possible to capture more than 60% of clicks during a search while a result on the second page will only capture a very low percentage of clicks. We then better understand the challenge of appearing in this top 3 on a given theme. Hence the interest of an SEO checklist. Achieving this performance depends on many parameters such as competition and the technical and semantic qualities of your website. Without forgetting the popularity and the number of links pointing to your site. All these parameters can be improved by what is called SEO optimization or SEO optimization. Even if these techniques are constantly evolving and are essentially dictated by Google's algorithms; a certain number of good practices remain immutable and implementing them often makes it possible to find oneself in a good position in the search engines. We therefore offer you a more or less exhaustive seo checklist of the techniques to put in place to give you every chance of positioning your website on the first page of Google.. This list is of course generalist, but it is quite complete and can serve as a basic seo checklist to start your natural referencing work and improve your organic traffic.

The SEO checklist - Audits and Research

The SEO audit phase is essential. It consists in collecting all the information on its site if it already exists, but also information on the competitors. Information, more than important, because it will determine the level of difficulty to pass in front of them.

Benchmark and competition audit

  • - Carry out a market study of the company's business sector.
  • - Who are the known and unknown competitors?
  • - What are their acquisition channels?
  • - What is their popularity?
  • - How are their content structured?
  • - What are the representative keywords of the editorial content?
  • - What content and keyword strategies do they have in place?
  • - What is their position?

Data collection on its own website

  • - Perform a keyword research that the website dates back to.
  • - Study the data from Google Analytics.
  • - List the backlinks that point to the site.
  • - If possible, look for a niche theme that will position you without a lot of effort.
  • - Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Center.
  • - Detect crawl errors.
  • - Detect penalties.
  • - Check the sitemap of the site.
  • - Identify Google recommendations for improving HTML pages.
  • - Detect broken links.

SEO actions to do on the website

This list enumerates the recommendations to be made on the pages and the website itself.

General

  • - Add an XML Sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Center.
  • - Add a navigation menu.
  • - Add a Breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs to your site.
  • - Create a Robots.txt file - Find out how with our tutorial
  • - Use canonical URLs.
  • - Do not index tag pages or category pages.
  • - Resolve all issues raised by Google Search Console.
  • - Use Meta Tags.
    • - Title H1 H2.
    • - Use long tail keywords to get traffic sooner.
    • - Check the correct use of Meta Tags.
      • - Title 60 characters maximum.
      • - Description 150 characters maximum.
  • - Correct all images that do not have an ALT tag.
  • - Checked that your title tags follow the logical logical order.

Content

  • - Check that the site does not contain duplicate content.
  • - Use multimedia files.
  • - Add your content in the right categories.
  • - Try to keep static pages indexed.
  • - Make internal meshing.
  • - Have quality outgoing links.
  • - Refresh update the content regularly.
  • - Monitor the page bounce rate.
  • - Outsource CSS codes.

Performance.

  • - Check if the site is Mobile Friendly.
  • - Check that the site is cross-browser friendly.
  • - Also check the version of the browsers for which the site is compatible.
  • - Check and improve the loading speed.
  • - Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service - Optimization and distribution of content.
  • - Use good hosting.
  • - Compress images.
  • - Use multiple caching methods.
  • - Check the site with Google Insights.
  • - Regularly check the Pagespeed and Yslow indices.
  • - Monitor the website.

Urls

  • - Add the main keyword in the URL of the page dedicated to it.
  • - Use absolute URLs.
  • - Simplify dynamic URLs and avoid the use of dynamic URLs.
  • - Use 301 redirects for rewritten URLs.
  • - Configure access to the site with and without www.

Structured data

  • - Test the structured data of the site. For this you can use the structured data test tool from Google
  • - Add missing structured data that will depend on your content types:
    • - Item
    • - Delivered
    • - Classes
    • - Events
    • - Job offer
    • - Local company
    • - Notice
    • - Nobody
    • - Product
    • - Recipe
    • - Service
    • - Software
    • - Video
    • - Faq
    • - How-to

SEO actions to be done outside the website

Here are now all the actions to put in place outside your site, but which will participate in improving its natural referencing.
  • - Set up alerts on the company name and its products or services
  • - Prioritize search for backlinks from your competitors that do not link to your website
  • - Acquire links with a high URL Rating.
  • - Distribute content on social networks.
  • - Publish articles on influential sites.
  • - Be present on sites that offer awards.
  • - Set up a newsletter.
  • - Be present on institutional sites.
  • - Find the site of the local chamber of commerce.
  • - Find events to sponsor.
  • - Don't overlook new bloggers.
  • - Submit articles on curation platforms.
  • - Submit presentations on Slideshare.
  • - Make press releases.
  • - Find sites that use your images and ask them to link to yours.
  • - Find resource pages.
  • - Create badges that your community can reuse on their site.
  • - Monitor the links that point to your social networks.
  • - Post in the forums.
  • - Select a few relevant directories and subscribe to them.
  • - Find competing sites that are performing well and analyze their strategy.

Social media

  • - Add share buttons to your site.
  • - Add structured data to link your site to your social networks.

Optimization and conversion

  • - Use Google Analytics and visit analysis tools.
  • - Continue to improve the loading speed of your site.
  • - Define and track conversions.
  • - Watch the bounce rates.
  • - Be sure not to generate duplicate content while doing AB testing.
  • - Monitor and monitor the ranking of the site.
  • - Regularly check the server configurations.
  • - Monitor the use of your company name or brand name.
  • - Keep up to date with changes to Google's algorithms.

SEO support services and useful SEO tools

To implement all these recommendations, there are a very large number of tools and services. Some are free and others pay.

SEO audit, natural referencing monitoring and NetLinking analyzes

  • - Ahrefs - popularity and netlinking.
  • - Remove'em - optimization of link anchors.
  • - MOZ - SEO diagnosis and natural referencing monitoring.
  • - Majestic : popularity and netlinking benchmark.
  • - SEM Rush - SEO monitoring platform.
  • - Ryte - Website SEO optimization tracking tool.
  • - SE Ranking - All in one SEO tool.

Benchmark and statistical analyzes

Performance

SEO tools for WordPress

SEO and organic linking tools