SEO Checklist with Free Tools

                    SEO Checklist with Free Tools

Organic traffic by improving search engine ranking and finally get the conversion. Let’s check the points one by one important from an SEO perspective with a free basic SEO checklist plus tools to analyze it.

SEO Checklist for On-page

1. Tracking Codes

Add all tracking codes first in the basic SEO checklist. This can be event tracking’s such as phone or email. Google Analytics code for checking traffic and the Google webmasters or search console for technical details and resolving errors such as 500, 404 etc.

2. Robots.txt

It is a file used by crawlers to index or non-index pages based on the allow and disallow feature. All secured and non-index able pages should be blocked.

3. Meta Title

Title tags are the main indicators of what the web page is all about. It is clickable only when it explains the terms in the search query. You must check title optimization tips if you need to optimize it as it is responsible for ranking your keywords.

Duplicate Tags: It confuses the search engine to set relevancy of the page. It can duplicate title, duplicate tags & categories.

Missing Titles: Search engines and users understand from the title that what a page all about is so make sure to have the title for all web pages.

Long Title Tags: Title length should not be more than 65-70 characters.

4. Meta Descriptions

Meta Description is the text that is written below the title and required to describe what the landing page is all about and if a user finds that information useful then only he will click the page. It should include all the targeted keywords. It should be 150-160 characters.

5. Keyword Research

Keyword research is a very important step of basic SEO checklist, but including it in the meta tags according to recent updates is not essential. Only put 1-2 keywords in the meta tags.

6. Redirections

301- Moved permanently

Whenever a domain or URL is changed then it should be redirected to 301 to a new domain or optimized URL for the convenience of users and crawlers.

302- Moved Temporarily

Whenever there is maintenance then the URL should be temporarily moved.

301 vs. 302

The difference between 301 and 302 redirections 302 passes the authority so can’t be used if you already decided your preferred URL version or domain.

7. Keyword Density

It refers to the occurrence of a number of words per article and should be maintained around 2-3%.

8. Anchor Text & Internal Linking Optimization

It is a text that is hyperlinked to another page on the website. It should be descriptive enough as it contributes in the relevancy. Internal linking optimization should be relevant including target keywords and point to pages optimized for it to increase the reach of the post or page.

9 Broken Links

It gives 404 errors as the page or image has been deleted, so should be fixed by permanent redirection as it gives an error of page not found and not good for user experience. So, should be fixed on priority in the SEO checklist.

10. URL

It should not be long, under 110 characters and static separated with hyphens. It should be different from the domain name and include target keywords.

11. Duplicate Content

It refers to the content present on 2 or more pages with different URL. This is treated as the duplicate and penalized so make sure to use canonical tags to prioritize one page by giving 301 redirection to pass authority to one page.

12. Image – ALT tag

It should be used to describe images containing main keywords.

The size of images should be less than 100 KB.

13. Heading Tags (H1 /H2 /H3)

There are 6 heading tags in HTML by which H1, H2 & H3 are very important from SEO perspective. H1 is used for main heading, H2 for sub-heading & H3 for normal text.

14. Speed Test

Website should open in less than 5 seconds otherwise, for that, you have to minify css & js scripts by using a plugin for WordPress. Also, don’t forget to test the speed in the free tool or page speed test by Google.

15. Mobile Friendly Site

Website should be mobile friendly to be ranked high for the increasing number of mobile users day by day. So, optimize mobile site separately.

16. Schema Mark up Implementations

Increase the visibility in search engine result pages by enhancing the rich snippets that are displayed just beneath the page title. So, you will get better results, especially in local SEO.

For User Experience

17. Website loading time should be less than 5 seconds.

18. Proper navigational menu following website hierarchy.

19. Call to action in header and footer for conversions.

20. Mobile friendly site increases the user experience and engagement.

For Content

21. Site should have a blog and press section to increase more awareness about product or service and updating fresh content regularly.

22. There should be static pages for main services and word count should be 300 or more for ranking well. A Crawler needs at least 300 words to determine viability. So, target your page for more and relevant content justifying the Title.

SEO Checklist for Link Building or Off-page activities

23. Link Building: Links pointing to your website from the authoritative domain will be considered to be one of the ranking factors. Target low performing keywords as anchor text and do the regular link building activities to increase the domain and page authority of your website. For more details, check link building techniques.

24. Social Media Optimization: Share the link on social media channels regularly to increase visitors. As a result, you will get better results as social signals matter in the ranking of a website.