Our website optimization checklist can help you with SEO best practices to boost your search engine rankings and help your business get found by those looking for your services or products.
SEO can be hard to wrap your head around — you’re basically trying to make your website appeal to both humans and search engines. But how can you do both? We put together this website optimization checklist to help you navigate the world of SEO.
The SEO Basics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential part of any digital marketing and website strategy. It can help drive traffic to your website and increase your online visibility, which means that your business is more likely to get found by those looking for your services or products.
If you’re really looking to optimize your website, then it’s best to start with the basics and understand the fundamentals. Only then can you begin to implement more advanced SEO techniques and strategies to improve your website’s rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs). So, if you’re just starting with SEO, check out these tips to help you get started.
Understand the Algorithms
Search engines, like Google, use algorithms to decide which sites are relevant to a specific search. The only constant thing about these algorithms is that they’re constantly changing. You can try to stay ahead of the curve by keeping up with the latest industry news and trends.
In December of 2022, Google rolled out the E-E-A-T update, which was actually a change to the earlier E-A-T algorithm update they rolled out in August. Also known as the “helpful content update,” these changes redefined what is considered to be low-quality content. Google wants people-first content — written by people, for people. (If you were hoping to use ChatGPT for all of your content, you won’t be doing your search engine rankings any favors.)
Update Your Profile
Before you spend the time and effort to understand SEO and start making improvements to your website’s optimization, update your Google Business Profile (GBP) first. It was previously called Google My Business (GMB), so you may know it by that name too.
Your Google Business Profile is basically where Google stores all the most important information about your business, including address, hours, website and more. This is usually the first thing visitors see before they even click on your website, so it’s the perfect opportunity to speak to both potential visitors and the algorithms.
Your Go-To Website Optimization Checklist
Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to move on to the more technical side of website optimization. While this part is a little more complicated and time-intensive, it’s also the part that can have a significant impact on your website’s search engine rankings.
Get the Right Tools
Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools are two powerful tools that can help you keep an eye on your website’s performance in search results. They help you see how the search engines crawl and index your site and even include data on search traffic and top-performing queries.
In addition to seeing how you rank in search results, these tools also allow you to identify and address any issues that may affect visibility. This is a great starting point for making informed decisions about optimization instead of just guessing and spinning your wheels.
Set Up (and Use) Google Analytics
When we meet with new clients, one of the first questions we ask is, “Do you have a Google Analytics account?” That’s because it’s an incredibly valuable tool for tracking and reporting your website’s traffic.
Inside your Google Analytics account, you’ll be able to see:
- Which pages are the most (and least) visited
- Where your website traffic is coming from, like search engines, social media, referrals, etc.
- Other important metrics, like bounce rates, time on site, page views and more
FYI: You can even connect your GSC to your Google Analytics account to see everything all in one place.
Use an SEO Plugin
If you’re using a WordPress website, then you’re in luck! You can install an SEO plugin — like Yoast — directly into your site. This is an easy, although limited, way to gauge the SEO friendliness of specific pages on your site. It can help you with titles, meta descriptions, keywords, readability and more.
FYI: We cannot stress enough how important it is to properly vet your WordPress plugins before installing and updating them. Research to make sure each one is reliable, secure and compatible with your website.
Get a Site Audit
Your site’s overall health plays a big part in your overall search engine rankings. When you schedule a site audit, you’ll get valuable insights into these important parts of your site.
Mobile-friendliness: It’s important to search engines that your website is easy to use and renders properly, regardless of what device someone is using.
Load speeds: Search engines want the visitors they send to your site to have a good experience, which includes fast load times. Our site audit can tell you what you can do to improve your page load speeds.
Crawlability: Search engines can’t recommend what they can’t read. We’ll make sure that each page is crawled and indexed by search engines.
Page errors: 404 errors are a huge red flag to search engines like Google. With a site audit, you’ll see exactly what pages on your site have a crawl error.
Security: Search engines don’t want to send people to sites that aren’t secure. We’ll make sure you’re using HTTPS encryptions and that your SSL certificate is up to date.
So, schedule your site audit today to see where you can improve your site’s health and performance.
Keyword Research
Keywords are words, or even phrases, that people use when searching for specific products or services. The goal is to use these keywords in every aspect of your site — page names, headlines, website copy, URLs, etc. — to tell search engines and website visitors that your site is relevant to their search.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when doing your keyword research:
Use tools: There are numerous tools you can use to do keyword research, some free and some paid. Answerthepublic.com is a great free tool to get you started.
More than words: Keywords can be more than just words. Long tail keywords are longer, more descriptive phrases. While they may bring in less traffic overall, they have a higher conversion rate. (Example: The keyword for this blog is website optimization checklist instead of the overused keyword SEO.)
Consider keyword density: This one ties in with long tail keywords. Broad, generic keywords (like SEO) will have a high keyword density (KD), meaning it’s difficult to rank for. More specific keywords (like website optimization checklist) will have a lower KD, making it easier to rank for.
Keyword cannibalization: Use a different keyword for each page on your website. If you have two pages trying to rank for the same thing, neither will perform as well as it would alone. Less is more.
Clean Up Site Structure
Sometimes, our clients come to us with exciting, flashy ideas for their websites. While they’re not always bad ideas, your site map isn’t the time to get cutesy or creative. Your sitemap is a great example of speaking to both people and search engines. Both need to quickly understand how your site is laid out and find the pages they’re looking for.
Focus on Content
This may be the last on our website optimization checklist, but that doesn’t mean you should let it slide. Relevant, consistent and up-to-date website copy is a critical part of driving traffic to your site.
Fresh, up-to-date content tells search engines that your site is active and relevant to those searching for businesses or products similar to yours. You can also encourage search engines to crawl your site more often with frequent content, helping to boost your place in search results.
Get Help From the Experts
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably pretty serious about improving your website’s optimization. With all the technical aspects involved, it can be overwhelming to tackle alone. But don’t panic yet — our team is here to help. Let us optimize your site (we are the website experts, after all) while you focus on growing your business.
