SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is a set of practices utilized to improve the appearance and rank the positioning of websites on search engines.
Optimizing the SEO of your website will help you to rank on Google, meaning that you will appear in more searches, which will therefore increase your site's traffic.
I've put together the ultimate checklist for you to achieve SEO success, without overwhelming you with all of that technical jargon! Here goes...
Setup Google Search Console and Google Analytics ~
Google Search Console is a fantastic free tool that gives you valuable insights into your site's performance and a heap of data that can easily be utilized to increase your site's organic visibility and traffic.
Google Analytics is a free marketing analytics tool that also allows you to review data and insights on how many people visit your site, who they are, their demographic, and how they interact with your site.
Having access to this data provides you with an insight into your traffic performance, and enables you to make smart decisions on how best to improve this.
Do your keyword research ~
Keyword research is an essential part of your SEO strategy and should be the first step in your SEO planning process. Before writing the copy for your site, ensure you have done your keyword research first.
What is your ideal customer searching for? What words will they be using that you should include in your SEO? Your target market's search terms are your keywords.
Check your page titles and meta descriptions (are your keywords included?) ~
Page titles and meta descriptions are short snippets of HTML code that are found on every webpage. They show the title of the webpage and its description (similar to the title and blurb on the front and back of a book). They tell you what the page is about before you click the link.
The title and meta description of a page help search engines understand what's on that page, and will appear on search engine results. So, it is important that your page titles and descriptions are SEO-friendly, and relevant to your brand, to help the pages appear in appropriate searches.
Optimize images and add in alt text ~
The images on your website are crucial to ensuring that your content is more accessible for users, and are equally important in terms of SEO. Optimized images are high-quality, and delivered in the ideal size, format, and resolution for the optimum user engagement experience.
Alt-text is used to describe the image on a web page and lives in the HTML code. It isn't visible on the page for most users, it is there for those who are visually impaired and can be used by screen readers by converting on-screen content, including images, to audio.
But, as well as being vital to improve accessibility, alt-text can also improve the relevance of your website and help your rank on Google.
Use internal and external links ~
A link or hyperlink is a clickable part of text, an image or a button, on a webpage that leads from one page to another. Internal links are links between the pages of your own website, and external links are links to pages on other websites.
Having both internal links and external links throughout your website will improve its SEO benefits. Think of links like friends that you would go to for advice - by using links you're showing search engines that you're trustworthy, knowledgeable, credible, and have some form of authority on what you're talking about.
Make sure the 'mobile friendly' version of your site works efficiently ~
Mobile-friendly SEO is the process of optimizing your website to ensure that your site looks great and functions properly on mobile devices. If your website isn't mobile-friendly, it can impact both your SEO and your audience’s initial perception of your business.
An easy way to test mobile-friendliness is to use Google’s mobile page testing tool. To improve the mobile user experience of your site, the best things to do are to improve the site’s load time, focus on the user experience, ensure the font is legible on smaller devices, be wary of using pop-ups and optimize title tags and meta descriptions.
Fix any broken links ~
As I explained above, using links improves the credibility and authority of your site. Therefore, having broken links on your website directly harms SEO rankings.
Take time to go through your website testing all the links, including all of the buttons and image links, and check that they all work. It might be that there is a typo somewhere, or a link you initially added no longer leads to a live page.
Check the loading speed of your site ~
The loading speed of your website is a crucial aspect of SEO ranking. There are plenty of free website speed tests that you can use to check the speed of your website and see what improvements you can make.
A few ways to improve the loading speed are to enable compression, reduce redirects, optimize images, leverage caching and optimise your code
Create amazing content ~
This goes without saying, but the main thing that will drive traffic to your site is providing your customer with content they just can't live without! So, make sure that everything on your website is relevant and beneficial to whoever you want to drive to your page.
I hope you found this helpful! Feel free to drop me a line if you have any Qs.
L x
Laura Mackenzie
Creative Virtual Assistant at Kelp Collective