SEO Checklist: A Complete Guide for SEO Optimization in 2022

SEO Checklist

Are you looking for an SEO checklist to improve your site’s SEO? If yes, you are on the right way.

Everyone wants to make their site powerful, attractive, and user-friendly, isn’t it? Also, all are chasing for top SEO rank. So how to get it? Well, keeping these questions in mind, today we came up with this article. In this, you are going to know different SEO checklists along with some powerful SEO plugins.

Whether you are a beginner or an expert, this article will help you out in many ways. so go through this without missing any rules. I am sure, you are going to get a well-optimized WordPress website. And, also your site will soon be seen at the top of search engine ranking.

So, here we go:

What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? 

SEO Checklist

SEO, Search Engine Optimization is one of the most important elements for any website. It manages multiple strategies, and actions, and provides best practices to bring your site to the top of the search engine. So if you want to improve your website’s position in search engines, you just need to optimize your SEO with an SEO checklist.

Types of SEO

There are two kinds of SEO: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

On-page SEO

One Page SEO

On-page SEO is responsible for optimizing different parts of your website that affect your search engine rankings. In this, you need to look after a number of ranking factors including site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, and others. So with On-page SEO, you can handle all these and can change your own website. Some of the features are:

  • Implement breadcrumbs
  • include the SEO page structure requirements: H1 (must be), H2, H3, etc.
  • Fix metadata like SEO title, Meta Description, Main Keyword
  • Add ALT tags for images
  • Remove duplicate content
  • Add rich content including embedded video, infographics, and social media

Off-page

Off Page SEO

Likewise, Off-page SEO will increase the authority of your domain by getting links from other websites. Generally, this only refers to links. Some of its features are:

  • Get listed in Google My Business
  • Backlink analysis
  • Video marketing and social media marketing for inbound links
  • Get links from unlinked brand mentions
  • Compatible with site audit tools to find competitors’ broken backlinks
  • Create backlinks through guest blogging, outreach, and influencer marketing

Why is SEO Important?

SEO is Google’s way which determining sites ranking on search engines. The best part about SEO is, that it keeps the search results fair. Organic search results cover more digital real estate and receive way more clicks than paid advertisements.

We have listed some of the importance of SEO. Here, have a look:

  • Reduces the ability to manipulate SEO results
  • Increases visibility
  • Increase web traffic
  • The more authority your site has, the higher your ranking will be
  • Creating a better visitor experience
  • Increases your page load speed
  • Helps you build better relationships with your audience

Well, if you want to increase your site’s organic traffic and rank on Google, you need to go through the SEO checklist. By keeping the importance of SEO for a site, we have listed different checklists in this article. Just go through each of them and customize your site’s SEO in a more powerful way.

SEO Checklist

We have mentioned some of the important SEO checklists which will cover your bases for SEO Optimization. We have broken this checklist down into sections. It focuses on overall areas of SEO like the basics, keyword research, technical SEO, on-page SEO, and content and off-page factors. 

With these checklists, we are pretty sure you can have your SEO-optimized site within a little time.

Basic SEO Checklist

Some of the services will offer by WordPress SEO plugins. So, for a WordPress website, we recommend installing Rank Math, Yoast SEO, or another popular SEO plugin.

Set up Google Search Console

Google Search Console

If you want to take insights into your site’s performance, you must look after Google Search Console. It will provide you with invaluable insights to increase your site’s performance organic visibility and traffic. Also, you can learn about its importance, setup, and many more.

For this, it is better to go with Bing Webmaster Tools. It is the perfect platform for providing data and insights to search engines. This tool will help you to find keywords that users are finding your site on the SERPs. 

Install and set up Google Analytics

Google Analytics

Work goes right only if you provide correct data. To make this thing happen, you will require Google Analytics. It is a free marketing analytics tool with which you can view data and insights into the number of people visiting your site. Not only that, but you will also know who they are, and how they are engaging with your website.  

Besides this, you will also need to connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console to import data from the latter.

Add a robots.txt File 

One of the important elements for your site’s SEO is the robots.txt file. It will inform you about pages and files that web crawlers can or can’t request from your site.

The most important thing, it will also prevent certain sections of your site from being crawled. If you already have your robots.txt file, check it at https://www.wpentire.com/robots.txt. Else, you need to create it.

Create and Submit a Sitemap 

Your sitemap will decide whether a particular page should be crawled or not. It is something like a list of URLs that specify your site’s main content.

Sitemap

Your site’s sitemap will inform the crawler which files are important. It also provides some valuable information about these files. Since Google supports a number of different sitemap formats. But still, XML is the most commonly used.

To find your sitemap visit https://www.wpentire.com/sitemap.xml. If you don’t have one, just create it with any available sitemap generator tools. that are available. 

WordPress SEO plugins will help to create a sitemap. So, you don’t need to worry if you have an SEO plugin installed.

Ensure that your Site is Indexed

The process of storing every web page in a vast database is simply called indexing. To check whether your site is indexed or not, go to Google and search for “site:yourwebsite.com”. Here, you will notice a number of your pages Google has indexed. Similarly to check the index status of a specific URL, use the same site:yourwebsite.com/web-page-slug operator.

Indexed URL on Search Console

But in case your site is not indexed, you need to follow the following steps:

  • Visit Google Search Console
  • Navigate to the URL inspection tool
  • Go to the search bar and Paste the URL you’d like Google to index 
  • Wait until Google checks your URL
  • Click the “Request indexing” button

With this process, you are informing Google that you’ve added something new to your site and that they should take a look at it. If you are indexing your website, it means you can solve underlying problems preventing Google from indexing old pages. 

Keyword, Audience, and Competitor Research

Another important element you should include in your SEO checklist is focused on keywords and your audience. The stronger your focus keyword, the more you get the traffic. Also, you need to look after your competitor. It helps you to upgrade your site and motivates you to bring something unique and powerful. Here, we have mentioned some of the basic rules with which you can handle your keywords, audience, and competitors. 

  • Search for core keywords 
  • Long-tail variations
  • Research your competitors and keeps up[dates about them
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis
  • Create a list of relevant keywords
  • Search intent analysis of keywords

Long-Tail Keywords

Long Tail Keywords

When it comes to SEO checklists, you cannot forget about using long-tail keywords. Discover Long Tail Keywords With “Google Suggest”. It is one of the best ways to get long-tail keywords. So how to use it? 

  • First, type a keyword into Google
  • Don’t press enter or the “Google Search” button
  • Instead, check out the keywords that Google shows you
  • You will see “Google Suggest” keywords
  • Keywords come straight from Google searched by people
  • These are the great keyword, choose the best-searched keyword

Maintenance 

Another SEO checklist is the maintenance of your site. To do this, follow the given rules:

  • Always try to maintain your website for better performance. If your site runs well, you will get more attraction on your site. And it is obvious, that more traffic helps you to get a top SEO rank. And for the maintenance of your site, you need to look after the following things: 
  • Analyze site performance
  • Make sure your site is responsive
  • Include the keyword in your URLs 
  • Audit & monitor your site 
  • Check for broken links 
  • Try to shorten URLs 
  • Check page depth

Emotional words

Emotional words are one of the most useful SEO checklists that you keep remembering. If you want to increase your SEO score, you must look after your emotional words. It will help you to rank your site at the top. Some of the emotional words are:

  • Amazing
  • Awesome
  • Incredible
  • Remarkable
  • Astonishing
  • Odd
  • Weird
  • Genuine
  • Ultimate
  • Complete
  • Innovative
  • Fast
  • Crazy
  • Hot
  • Proven
  • Powerful

Install and Configure An SEO Plugin for Better SEO

WordPress is the most popular CMS around the world. And if you are using this, you need to add some SEO plugins to get a better ranking on search engines. Such plugins will add great functionality and features that are required to properly optimize your site.

Some of the popular and most used SEO plugins are:

Rank Math

SEO plugin: SEO checklist

Rank Math is something like a swiss army knife for an SEO Optimized WordPress website. It provides you with full control of your on-page SEO. Actually, Rank Math combines the power of multiple plugins which have been mostly used before. And despite being a new plugin, it is able to create its own demand. On one hand, it is simple and easy to use. And on other hand, it is very useful to get an SEO-optimized website.

Features:

  • Lightweight plugin
  • Simple and easy to use interface
  • All posts and pages run through an SEO Analysis tool
  • Clean user interface 
  • Easy to understand
  • Automatically adds alt or title tags to images
  • Comes with a 404 monitor 
  • Provides Redirection module 

Yoast SEO

SEO plugin: SEO checklist

Yoast SEO is one of the most powerful WordPress SEO plugins. Because of its features and services, it is also known as the king WordPress SEO plugin. With this, you will get a responsive design and impressive updates. Now built more powerful websites and attractive blog posts with easy access.

Features:

  • Provides optimized keywords
  • Helps you to adjust the meta description and title
  • Makes readability check 
  • Detects duplicate content in your page or post
  • Comes with the best resources and support
  • Updates the plugin every two weeks
  • The premium plan comes with a redirect manager, free support, content insights, and an ad-free interface on the backend

The SEO Framework

SEO plugin: SEO checklist

If you want a fast, clean, and lightweight SEO plugin for WordPress, then The SEO Framework is the best option. It is another popular SEO plugin after Yoast SEO. Here, you will find more functionalities and features that help you to create a powerful website.  Now get flexible design and targeting keywords for your site only with The SEO Framework.

Features:

  • Comes with several premium extensions
  • Provides a user-friendly way to check performance on Google
  • No need to implement any additional plugin
  • Mainly focuses on the subject to encourage more natural writing

SEOPress

SEO plugin: SEO checklist

Likewise, SEOPress is a free SEO plugin for WordPress. It is a simple, fast, and powerful SEO plugin. The plugin helps you to manage all of your titles and meta descriptions for posts/pages/post types/terms. Now make your site SEO Optimized and get more searched keywords.

Features:

  • Easy to use
  • Allows you to add Google Analytics tracking to your site in seconds
  • Install wizard to quickly set up your site
  • Content analysis with unlimited keywords
  • Image XML Sitemaps to improve search indexing for Google Images
  • Build your custom HTML Sitemap

SEO Squirrly

SEO plugin: SEO checklist

Lastly, SEO Squirrly is a user-friendly plugin used for SEO Optimized websites. It is mostly for beginners who have no idea about SEO. The plugin offers a complete SEO suite without any complicated elements. Here, you can generate SEO recommendations in a different way. Features:

  • Easier to use
  • Beginner-friendly features
  • ZERO-Clicks installation
  • Includes a creator tool 
  • Google Analytics FULL integrations
  • Managing robots.txt
  • Fix problems related to SEO that no other plugin or software can fix.

Conclusion

Finally, we did the overall SEO checklist. All of the above SEO strategies are useful and anyone can easily get an SEO-optimized website. Whether you are an expert or a layman, just go through these checklists and create an SEO-optimized website.

We have also mentioned some SEO plugins, just get any one of those and start building your website. Manage your titles, and metadata and find powerful keywords. We are pretty sure you are going to build a powerful SEO website with a top SEO rank. 

Hopefully, you get this article is helpful to you. If you are getting any issues, feel free to send us your queries. You can send your question through our comment section. We will get back to you as soon as possible. 

Also, check our collection of popular WordPress SEO plugins and SEO guides for beginners.

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