SEO Checklist

You can set up one web counter, but it is better to install several ones in order to prove given results. You can check here how to install Google Analytics.

Additional info: How to Set up and Edit Goals in Google Analytics, About Goals in Google Analytics, Google Analytics Features.

By the way, Bing Webmaster Tools have a bunch of useful functions that can assist you to define and remove these errors.

Additional info: Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Webmaster Guidelines, Webmaster Tools Help Center, How to Add a website to Webmaster Tools,How Google Search Works.

In GA go to: Acquisitions > Search Engine Optimization > Queries and follow the tips. Linking the two services will help you to get more accurate statistics of all organic traffic on your website including the Search Queries.

Additional info: Access Google Search Consol Data in Google Analytics, Set Up.

If you have a local business you can add it in Google Places for Business that will help users of a specific region to find useful information. It is better to add your website into one category, but not at once into several ones. It is a great way to offer coupons that can be displayed to those users that find your local business in Google maps.

Additional info: Local businesses, How to add your business to Google maps.

Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain

If you want to access the whole website for index you can use this rule: User-agent*. If you want search engines not to index specific files you can use the rule: Disallow: (and the URL you want to block). To test a site’s robots.txt file in Google Search Consol you can click Crawl, than Blocked URLs and click the tab Test robots.txt.

Additional info: About Robots.txt, Block or remove pages using a robots.txt file.

It is better to create a sitemap as Google can’t always find all pages on your website and define its importance that’s why XML Sitemap can fix it. If you have more than 10 000 pages you should arrange all content into several sitemaps.

Add some keywords into your list. You can analyze your competitors with different tools in order to find out the best keywords and search queries for PPC usage. Check out these tools Semrush, Google Keyword Tool.

Additional info: Keyword Planner

As soon as you choose keywords, cramp your list of keywords in your field and mark how much traffic each keyword can bring to your website. You need to divide your keywords into groups according to the pages they will be used for. Yes, every page of your website needs to have a unique set of its own keywords not overlapping (and of course not duplicate) with the keywords of other pages.

Additional info: What your customers are looking for?

A “hierarchy” is nothing more than a way to organize your information — something that is simple and makes sense. Your hierarchy will also become your navigation and your URL structure, so everything important begins here.

Additional info: Information Architecture for SEO

• Try to write unique titles for each web page.
• Include one keyword into your title and keep 70 characters for each title as search engines show the first 70 characters.
• Don’t use more than 2 or more keywords.
• Try to make up a short and informative title.
• Try to avoid such keywords as free, cheap as it will look like spam.
• Avoid duplicate titles.
• You can use a brand name in your titles but it is no need to use it on each page of a website as it will decay the user perception.

Additional info: Page titles

• Write unique meta description about 160 characters as Google shows the first 160 characters of a meta description.
• Include one keyword into a meta description. Avoid keyword stuffing.
• All meta descriptions must be informative and shows the main idea of a page.
• Meta descriptions must be written for people, primarily, but not for search engines.
• Use a brand name in your description, but not in each one. Avoid the usage of such words as free, cheap.

In Google Search Consol>Search Appearance>HTML Improvements>Duplicate Meta Descriptions you can check all meta descriptions and duplicate content

• Use a target keyword in your URL as search engines rank better such files;
• Do the utmost to make your URL short without senseless signs such as &4%34@!$$%%;
• Use hyphens for your URLs. Don’t use underscore;
• Use a minimum amount of folders into your URL. For examples, use seranking.com/folder1/keyword-research instead of seranking.com/folder1/subfolder1/keyword-research

Additional info: SEO Friendly Site URL Structure, Understanding SEO Friendly URL

To make your URL’s more effective it is recommended to use Canonical URL’s as a preferred version for your page. Just indicate your preferred URL as a Canonical attribute (rel=”canonical”) for your content.

Additional info: Canonical URLs

• If you have lots of titles, use heading tags h2-h6.
• The best combination will be the usage of h1-h3. You don’t need to use extra titles.
• Don’t use H tags with other tags such as strong or em.
• Don’t use a heading tag into your images as it will be considered as spam.

• Alt tags can improve your usability and availability. With the search by image you can get traffic on your website.
• You should consider Alt images are more important for search engines than title images.
• Try to describe your images with no more than 5 words.
• Use one keyword in Alt images, avoid keyword stuffing.

Additional info: Image publishing guidelines, About Images

• 404 error when entering an address domain;
• A download link you offer is not working;
• An article you refer was removed by admin;
• A website or a blog is closed or is not working anymore.

To detect such broken links you can use such plugins as Broken Link Check or use Google Search Consol: Crawl > Crawl Error

Additional info: Speed Suggestions, Site Speed in Search Rankings

Additional info: How many links per page?

• Create a sitemap in html format that helps search engines to index your website and users to find a right article or information.
• Insert backlinks into articles of your website at the bottom of the web page. You can insert 3-10 backlinks.
• Make internal linking in your article referring on other articles of your website. Try to include no more than 5-10 backlinks in each article.
• Insert backlinks into your images. It works well but it should do it in a right way.
• Make a sitebar on each page of the website with the recent articles. Don’t forget to block this section from indexing in order to avoid duplicate content.

Additional info: Killer Internal Linking Structure, Link architecture, Internal links

301 redirect is a status code that says that a page permanently moved to another location. You may directly create these in htaccess file with the following instructions.

You can check the defined syntax of HTML and detect some discrepancies. It will help you to display your website in different browsers in a right way, cut down your speed page and affect your rankings in search engines results. You can check the markup validity of your website with online tool validator.w3.org.

Additional info: Validation, Verification: HTML file

Additional info: Breadcrumbs-Rich Snippets, Breadcrumbs in Google

• Analyze news and events in your field;
• Make a deep research about your product, service;
• Make some interviews and audience research;
• To increase the relevancy of your website there are several ways how to create a content that can attract more clients on your website:
• Make an interview with famous experts in your field;
• Create a list of tips, ratings and etc. For example, “5 Ways…”, “10 Best…”, “Top 6…”;
• Make some polls and votes;
• Create some educational sections, i.e. different dictionaries, reports, guidelines, tips, checklists and etc;
• Regularly update your articles, read over again old articles and add something new into them. Analyze what topics you should create in order to refer to your written articles. Search engines, in particular Google, love fresh and new ideas;
• Write reviews about popular products, services, books and something that people need most of all from search engines;
• Compare popular products, services and etc;
• Be the first who can inform fresh and new events in your field;
• Use some phrases and quotes of famous people in your niche;
• Make some predictions and outcomes;
• Share your stories based on real events;
• Use humor in your articles as even some stupid and funny things can be viral over the net that can attract more traffic;
• Organize some interesting and useful contests;
• If you have an on-line shop, try to post your price list as people need to know prices and compare where to buy, what to buy and how much to buy.

Content writing guidelines:

• Your article must have at least 300 words of unique content, but it is better to write more than 300 words. Just keep the golden mean not too short and not too long;
• Use your target keyword and long-tail keywords that can be greatly included in your article and look natural and useful for your website;
• Don’t use duplicate and rewritten content. All articles, titles, meta descriptions and heading tags should be unique. Check your articles for plagiarism with Copyscape.

• Write only unique content. Avoid duplicate content. All your pages must have unique content.
• Check website content for plagiarism. You can use the tool Copyscape.
• Avoid grammar and spelling mistakes, although sometimes you can get some mistakes for search engine results. But it is better not to abuse of it as your content can be considered as of low quality.
• Keep keyword density with max 3-5% in each article. Avoid keyword stuffing as you can get Google penalties for that stuff.
• Use interlinking with your target anchor links. Make sure that too optimized content can create a negative impact on your website.
• Don’t’ use ad bots that close the main content as it really irritates and distract users’ attention. This method of promotion can decay your usability and your website rankings.

Additional info: Irrelevant keywords

Additional info: Frequent update

• Try to make a worthy and useful material, regularly update your blog.
• Optimize your articles for a blog and share them via social networks (Google Plus, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and etc.).
• Create informative, quality and fresh articles with carefully chosen keywords.
• If you run an ecommerce website you can write not only about your products, service, industry, but you can write about something that is closed connected with your product that can attract your users.

Additional info: Increase Your Blog Activity

• Use keywords in headlines and video descriptions;
• Create backlinks on your video with your anchor texts. It is better to use 50% of exact and mixed keywords and 50% of keywords with your brand name, domain name or natural phrases like “click here”, “link here” and etc.
• Write 10 characters for video descriptions with your keywords.

Additional info: Video Rankings, How to Rank Your Video in Google

If you want to find a good copywriter it is important to check their recent articles, social accounts and etc. Specify deadlines, make up a list of ideas you want to see in your article referring to trusted and quality resources, and also keep the possibility to edit the article in future.

Additional info: How to Find a Good Guest Blogger, Guest Post Rules

 Additional info: Keyword Stuffing

Search engines robots (including their mobile versions) can’t find your website if you block the access to it. That’s why you can decide whether to allow access or block search engine robots from the mobile version of a website. If you decide to access the site than use the rule: User-Agent “Google-Mobile” in robots.txt file.

Additional info: Mobile-Friendly Test, Create an effective mobile site, Website Mobile Friendly

Additional info: Mobile URLs, Mobile site development

Additional info: Redirecting Mobile Users, Google Starter Guide

• Analyze how much your backlinks are natural and unique;
• Check all anchors that refer to your website and how much they are effective;
• Check all errors that can be in your backlinks, detect all broken links, 404 errors and etc;
• Detect what web pages are more visited and what ones are less visited. Think how to improve this page or pages.

Additional info: how many links per page?, How to use backlinks?

You can analyze competitors’ backlinks with the following tools: Majesctic SEO, Ahrefs, Opensiteexplorer.

Additional info: Competitor Analysis, How to analyze SEO competitors

• Check each page and resource, Goolge PR, a number of backlinks for each page, geographical location;
• Use your keywords in anchor text that will help search engines to detect the relevancy of your backlinks;
• Try to get Dofollow backlinks that are indexed by search engines as they give a significant weight to the web page. Therefore, if you have a blog site and some articles have links that refer to trusted resources you should make the nofollow tag for these links and Google will ignore such kind of bakclinks.

Additional info: rel=nofollow for links, Quality links to your site

• Be creative and bright to write quality article with infographics, videos, images and etc. Google loves such articles that can affect your keyword positions in search engine results.
• Use only unique and new material.
• Publish your articles on quality and trusted websites with good traffic and authority.
• Try to keep balance and post articles 2-5 articles per week. You shouldn’t post 10-20 articles per week as Google will see you use guest posting as the basic way to get backlinks.
• Firstly, write for people, define your target audience and detect what they really want and their FAQ. The best way to find out that is to read forums and blogs that can give good ideas to write useful articles.
• Insert the anchor text where it can be really needful to give additional information.
• Use some real stories, use humour that can attract people’s attention.

What you should avoid:

• DON’T use guest posting as the main way of website promotion.
• DON’T write too optimized articles.
• DON’T post your articles on low quality and non topical websites.
• DON’T use duplicate and spin content.
• DON’T insert a lot of backlinks in your articles for link building.

Additional info: Guest Posting, Guest Blogging for SEO

It is not necessary to register on such forums and insert your links in the first comment. You can be banned and won’t get any sense from that link as it will be deleted. If you post a link on forums make sure that this link is dofollow. What is really great is to create your own forum and take an active participation into forum discussions. What concerns blogs, read only topical and interesting articles for you where you can really leave comments with your link that will help people to get additional information, cast back author’s opinion or just give some advice about something. Leave comments on blogs with good authority and traffic as these kinds of blogs will give significant results. Try to choose dofollow blogs, but you can vary them with nofollow blogs, of course, if a blog site is really worthy. You should notice that most of comments are moderated that’s why you should write more extended and good comments, but not just “Thank for your article” or “It is a really informative article” as you can just like or tweet and the author will know you like his article. Don’t spam and post comments on non topical and low quality websites in order to get more backlinks on your website. Make sure if you have a lot of spam links you can get Google penalties.

6. Answers the Questions in Your Field
You should take an active participation to answer questions in Yahoo Answers, Google Answers. Try to post broad and useful answers. If you want to give more additional information you can insert the link in your answer. Avoid spam and don’t need to place your links wherever you want. Include the links where they really need in order to completely disclose the entire answer.

7. Write reviews about your product, website, service
Write a well-detailed review that people can view all benefits of your product, mention some key features that differ you from your competitors. Make it catching, try to avoid terminology as some people can’t know them what will cause some difficulties. If you decide to use some terms, try to explain them into your reviews. Reviews should be clear, understandable and well-formed. Don’t need to write just about these features that other competitors also have. Be creative!

Additional info: Tips for Writing Great Reviews

• Create interesting and useful videos, use some humor, don’t use lots of texts into videos;
• Don’t forget to mention about your brand;
• Don’t make videos too long, make it short and clear (it depends on your topic);
• Call your users into action;
• Make audience orientated videos and take into account their preferences and needs.

Additional info: Viral Video Marketing, Video Marketing Mistakes

• Don’t spam;
• Avoid keyword stuffing in your articles;
• Don’t publish your press releases on low quality websites;
• Don’t write duplicate and rewritten press releases.

What you should pay attention:

• Write informative and useful material that will engage users and induce them to get more detailed information about your product, company and etc;
• Use 2-3 keywords in a press release;
• Write unique press releases;
• Leave your contacts and website address that people can find you at any time;
• All press releases are written in third person;
• Publish your press releases on quality and good websites with high PR and good traffic;
• Use multimedia files, for example, images, videos and etc;
• Use subtitles, highlight an important information in bold or italic;
• At the begging of your press releases you should include your logo that people can define your brand name.

Additional info: Google Counts Press Releases

 Additional info: Myth Busted: My Industry Isn’t a good Fit for Social Media

Additional info: Get the Social Share Button for Your Website

• Share only interesting, useful and new content;
• Share videos, infographics, charts, tables and other multimedia;
• Make some contests, polls, events, webinars that can engage your fans;
• Make some interviews with famous people, experts in a specific field;
• Analyze audience activity, what they need, FAQ, give them useful tips;
• Take an active participation in discussions, ask people’s opinion about products or etc;
• Try to get real FB likes, Google+ Shares, Tweets, don’t use autofollowing services and bots;
• Remember to Include your links into social profiles;

Additional info: Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website, Social Media Marketing Tips