SEO Checklist from Bruce Clay, Inc.
Published on Dec 13, 2016
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
The 36 Point SEO Checklist
A checklist of basic items to review for better search rankings
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science and art of increasing traffic to a website by helping it rank higher in non-paid search results.
The SEO checklist is adapted from a resource given to attendees of SEO godfather Bruce Clay's search engine optimization workshop.
While not exhaustive, the SEO checklist should remind you of the many items to review for higher search engine rankings.
See explanations of these items in the companion piece to this presentation at
http://bit.ly/
bci-seo-checklist
36 items to check
for better search engine rankings
1. Mobile Usability
- Google prioritizes website's mobile user experience over the desktop user experience.
- Consider text and button size, content above the fold, pop-ups and blocked resources.
- Check your site with the mobile-friendly tests from Google and Bing.
2. Mobile Keywords
- Include keywords used by mobile users in your optimization strategy.
- Consider "near me" and variations as keywords.
- Consider conversational queries like questions and sentence-style voice searches.
3. Accelerated Mobile Pages
- AMP is a special kind of page that loads very quickly for a visitor from Google.
- AMP has SEO benefits as well as restrictions and limitations, so investigate if AMP could be right for your content.
4. Head Section Order
- The tags in a page head section must be in the correct order.
- The order is title then meta description then meta keywords tag.
- Out of order tags can produce search engine crawl errors.
5. Page Title
- The content of your title tag may display as your page title on the search results page.
- Include important keywords in the first 70 characters.
6. Meta Description
- The content of your description tag may render as your page description on the search results page.
- Write a compelling, keyword optimized description in 156 characters.
7. Meta Keywords
- Search engines don't index the meta keywords tag.
- Use it to assign primary keywords to a page so that optimization targets are communicated over teams and time.
8. Heading Tags
- Include headings on a page to structure content for readers and search engines.
- Optimize heading tags by using them in order and including keywords as appropriate.
9. Word Count
- Google says content quality is among its top three ranking factors.
- Word count should be sufficient to support thorough coverage of a topic, especially compared to word count of competitor pages.
10. Call to Action
- A CTA is how you tell your visitor the action to take next.
- Include a prominent and clear CTA on every page to move visitors through your conversion funnel.
11. Image and Video Optimization
- Images and videos improve time on page and reader engagement by adding visual interest and breaking up text.
- Optimize media with alt text, keyword-rich file names and speed enhancements from file size to dimension tags.
12. Structured Data Markup
- The better search engines understand your content, the more opportunities you can have for search visibility.
- Structured data is HTML code used to describe content to search engines.
- See structured data types at Schema.org and match them to your content.
13. Social Meta Tags
- Craft a headline, image and page description for your content as it will be seen when shared on major social media sites.
- Optimize social meta tags for interest, length, keywords and call to action.
14. URL Optimization
- Shorter URLs are better.
- Include keywords in URLs if you can.
- Use hyphens instead of underscores to separate words.
15. Fully Qualified Links
- Always link to other pages on your site by starting the URL with http.
- Relative links are the alternative to fully qualified links.
- Relative links can cause search engine crawl errors.
16. Content Freshness
- Google says maintenance is a requirement of quality content.
- Periodically review and update your content so that it is up to date and never inaccurate or misleading.
17. Externalized JavaScript & CSS
- Allow search engines to read keyword-rich content as soon as possible.
- Check page source code to see if excessive JavaScript or CSS pushes down rank-worthy keyword-rich content.
- Externalize JavaScript and CSS whenever possible.
18. Contact Information
- Google says that contact information on a website is a factor in determining website trustworthiness.
- Visibly and clearly include business contact info, like phone number and address, on the site.
19. Testimonials
- Google says that user testimonials are a signal of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
- Feature customer testimonials on your site for the benefit of search engines and visitors.
20. Privacy Statement
- The privacy statement signals trustworthiness to visitors and search engines.
- The privacy statement should clearly describe how collected data is used.
- Link to the privacy statement from your site-wide footer navigation.
21. Text Navigation
- Site-wide navigation signals to search engines the important pages and themes of a website.
- Ensure there is text navigation, rather than JavaScript or Flash navigation, because text links are the most search-engine friendly.
22. Sitemaps
- An HTML sitemap links to every page on the site, is linked to in the site footer, and helps a visitor navigate the site.
- An XML sitemap lists all the URLs of a website, just for search engines.
- Use both HTML and XML sitemaps for visitor and search engine accessibility.
23. Robots.txt File
- Use the robots.txt file to tell search engines of any pages or directories of the site not to access or index.
- Include a robots.txt file at the root of the site, even if it is blank.
24. Keyword Research
- Identifying keywords to write content about and optimize the site with is a never-ending process.
- Use keyword suggestion tools, keyword statistics tools, and competitor research tools to identify new keywords.
25. Linking Strategy
- Hyperlinks are one of Google's top 3 search ranking signals. Links from relevant pages are weight. Link anchor text signals page relevance.
- Link to other pages on your site using the SEO strategy called siloing.
- Consider the authority and relevance of another site before linking externally.
- Don't engage in link spam.
26. Server Configuration
- Errors at the server level can cause trouble for visitors and search engines alike.
- Diagnose server using the free Check Server Tool.
- One server error code to look out for is 404, which signals a page is not found.
27. Static URLs
- Dynamic URLs are created as database-driven websites query the database.
- Dynamic URLs are problematic. They can cause duplicate content (the same page indexed under multiple URLs). They are usually too long, not descriptive and hard to share.
- Rewrite dynamic URLs to be clean, short, descriptive static URLs.
28. Static Content on Home Page
- If content on the home page is constantly changing, Google may not understand what the page or site is about.
- Maintain sections of consistent, keyword-optimized text content on the home page.
29. NO SPAM
- Search engines fight tactics meant to manipulate the ranking algorithm, tactics known as search engine spam.
- Don't use manipulative spam tactics, from paid links to keyword stuffing and beyond.
30. No Duplicate Content
- In order maintain quality search results, search engines filter duplicate content from results.
- Identify duplicate content by querying Google for strings of content and seeing if multiple results are returned.
- Rewrite content on your site that is substantially duplicated.
31. Website Analytics
- Website analytics platforms tell the site owner about user behavior on a site.
- Ensure the proper set up and regular monitoring of a web analytics platform like the free Google Analytics.
32. Webmaster Tools
- Google and Bing offer a suite of free tools to website owners.
- Webmaster tools reveal crawl errors, penalties and search traffic reports.
- Sign up and verify your site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
33. Crawl Errors Report
- When a search engine has a problem accessing a page or resource, it's called a crawl error.
- Crawl errors cause depressed search visibility if a site isn't properly indexed by Google.
- Regularly check the crawl errors report in webmaster tools to diagnose issues.
34. Manual Penalty Review
- A website can suffer ranking penalties in two ways: algorithmically and manually.
- A manual penalty refers to a search engine ranking demotion placed not by algorithm factors but by a human spam fighter at the search engine.
- Review a report of manual penalty actions in Google Search Console.
35. Algorithm Updates
- Search engines update their ranking algorithms hundreds of times a year to fine-tune the signals used to calculate page relevance to a query.
- Major algorithm updates result in highly volatile search rankings.
- If you notice a significant loss or gain of search traffic, your page rankings may be affected by an algorithm update.
36. Site & Page Speed
- When page load time is higher than 3 seconds, visitors are likely to abandon a page.
- Page speed is a ranking factor for mobile search results.
- Address page speed issues reported by tools like GTmetrix and PageSpeed Insights.
