SEO has become an essential part of the website development process. Search engine optimization is really good for business visibility and can bring your business more leads. To help you with this, we have prepared a basic SEO checklist. Let’s start:
This is one of the most critical tasks in this checklist. If you have not done this, then all the other points can be a complete waste. Don’t just go with the most popular keywords. You need to perform keyword research to find the best keywords that suit your target audience. You can use Google Keyword Planner or a keyword generator for the same. Choose keywords based on volumes and competition. Once you have your primary keywords done, create a content development plan that will boost your content and help you find your ideal customers.
Quality always beats quantity. Try not to copy content from other websites. Create your content which is easy to read and useful for the readers. Also, try to use primary keywords based on the website page. Break the content in short paragraphs and add interlinks as well.
Meta title and description help search engines to understand the content on the web pages and index them based on the primary keywords that you have used. Prepare a bespoke meta title and description which contains relevant keywords for each page of the website. Just make sure the meta title should be less than 60 characters, and the meta description should be less than 160 characters. It is a straightforward task, but it is very effective.
Having an SSL certificate is a must now. You may lose a lot of users because of the security warning message that we get when the website is not SSL secure. It not only increases the user trust but also helps to boost SEO ranking as well. Here are some good SSL providers in the market:
You need to make sure that your website loads fast. The first impression is the last. Reasons why speed is essential:
– Page speed is one of the significant SEO ranking factors
– Fast websites are easier to crawl
– Lower bound rates
– Better user experience
You can check your website on Google Page Insights or GTmetrix. Now, what all things can be done to improve the website score:
– Optimize images
– Minify js and css
– Leverage caching
– Proper image scaling
– Nicely written code
– Implementing CDN
Robots.txt simply tells the search engine crawlers which pages and parts of the website to index or not to index. You can generate your robots.txt from any of the free tools available online.
A sitemap is nothing but a list of URLs that acts as a roadmap for your website that helping Google search engine crawlers determine which pages are essential on your website. WordPress provides many plugins that will help you create a dynamic sitemap, like Yoast. Otherwise, you can generate an XML sitemap from one of the free tools available. You can develop your sitemap.xml using a tool called Screaming Frog. It is a pretty easy task; you just have to add your website URL and then click start. Once all the crawling is done, you can export the sitemap from the top navigation bar of Screaming Frog. Now, you just have to the root directory of your website files(public_html).
Add your presence on social media. These platforms won’t directly impact your SEO rankings, but they will help you get your business a name on the internet. Please add your website links to your social media accounts. This is the first important thing that you can do.
Mobile responsiveness is a must at Poppy Pulse. It directly affects both SEO rankings and user experience. In 2019, Google switched to mobile-first design indexing. So, you need to make sure that your website validates the Google mobile-friendly test and runs for all devices.
SEO friendly URL structure helps search engines to crawl your pages, and it also allows them to understand the content of the web page. It should be simple and easily readable. Make sure that it doesn’t include any underscores, question marks, or file names. It should be something like this: 6 simple reasons you need a new website in 2025.
Also, try to keep them as short as possible. Short links tend to rank better.
It may look like a lot of work, but actually, it is just 3-4 days of a task. You can contact us if you need help to increase some organic traffic on your website.
