SEO Checklist

Want a complete SEO checklist for your business?. Don’t know where to start and are stuck in the SEO process? This checklist will guide you through your SEO process. Even if you don’t have a blog, there is no problem. The below mentioned SEO checklist would apply to affiliate sites, e-commerce stores, and other local businesses. 

Essential SEO checklist:

1. Yoast SEO:

     Suppose you have a WordPress site. The first thing you need to do for your site’s SEO is to install the Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast SEO plugin is mostly used to optimize the meta description, slug, and SEO title. This plugin comes in handy to optimize the main aspects of SEO. If you are not using WordPress, you can go to Google and search for the best SEO plugin for your CMS websites. 

1. Make a sitemap:

     The next important thing in your SEO checklist is the sitemap. This sitemap tells the search engine where the contents are located. The Google bots use the sitemap to crawl through the index of your site. If you want to create a new sitemap for your site, you can create one through Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO is mainly for WordPress users. If you use any other CMS software, please check with Google for a compatible SEO plugin. 

1. Robots.txt file:

     Google needs an accessible website to see the website’s information and content and rank them accordingly. And with the right kind of URL, you can make the website easily accessible to Google’s bots. Making your website easily identifiable and understandable to Google is a crucial factor to rank your website. 

     To make your website accessible to Google, you have to do the following steps, 

• The website should be created with a well-coded website builder. 
• You should also have a robot.txt file for the bots to access the website and instruct them to look for the information and where they cannot. 
• You should develop a sitemap that gives Google a list of contents on your page.  

  WordPress developers primarily use Yoast SEO to develop a sitemap. So making a secured and accessible site also plays a significant role in the site’s ranking factor.  

1. Google analytics:

     Google Analytics is an essential tool for SEO experts. It gives you data about the number of visitors to your page. It determines your page’s traffic and gives you an idea of where you should work for your page’s traffic. 

1. Google Search Console:

     Google has developed many tools for SEO. And the Google Search Console is also one of the essential tools developed by them. This tool will help you track your performance and rank the specific keywords used on your site. It will also give you some insights on the site improvements you need to make. 

Keyword research – Important checklist:

      Keyword research is a cycle of finding and deciding the most important keywords for a given site’s destinations. All in all, it’s finding not just the keywords you need to rank for yet, also the ones you should rank for (what individuals who need what you have to bring to the table look for). Appropriately done, keyword research likewise yields the subjects for which you should make content on your site.

1. Know your goal:

     Some of the primary goals are:

• Who is our intended interest group? Who purchases what we sell, and why? 
• What do we sell, and what is our special incentive in our commercial center? 
• We should know what are the central requirements or potential wants of individuals who become our clients? 
• What are their auxiliary, related necessities? 
• What is our objective purchasers’ need to know to feel optimistic about who they decide to purchase?

1. Analyze the given keywords:

     After setting your goals and prioritizing the keywords, you should analyze them. If you have a review site about drones, then you will have some set of keywords like “best drones,” “budget drones,” etc. You have to analyze those keywords and know their strength. We use two SEO tools, and we recommend you also use them while analyzing the keywords. Ahrefs and SEMrush are the most frequently used SEO tools for researching keywords. 

1. Research about your competitors:

      Analyzing the keywords used by the competitive site is an essential task in keyword research. By analyzing the competitive areas, you will get an idea about the keywords and content formation. There are two ways to explore your competitor sites. 

• The first way is by using Google search itself. If you search for “best drone for money,” you will get some websites in specific ranking order. Then you can visit the links and analyze the contents. Usually, take the first ten search results and analyze them. Ignore the paid Ad sites because you need organic search results for your site. 
• The next way is by using SEO tools like ahrefs and semrush. Free tools may give you limited access to your competitor’s keyword, but paid tools will be an excellent benefit for the long haul. Using these tools, you can get to know about the keywords your competitors rank for and the keywords they rank, but you don’t to improve your SEO analysis. 

1. Expanding keyword research:

      By following the steps mentioned above, you will have a set of keywords and their strength and statistics. You will have the base knowledge about your site and will know how to use them. But that alone will not help you to rank your site. You need to expand your keyword horizon and look beyond the competitors. Some of the tools like Answer the Public,

Keyword Explorer, Keywords Everywhere will help you in your keyword research. 

     As mentioned earlier, paid tools will give you a lot more clarity and depth analysis of the keyword. The more significant part of these tools works by scratching Google SERPs (and at times the locales that rank most elevated there) to find the hunt terms and questions searchers utilize most of the time for a given point or keyword. As the last advance, glance through your now-extended keyword rundown to select the elevated level points; at that point, bunch the excess keywords under these as indicated by importance. You can use the created list whenever you want to rank your website on top. 

Some of the free keyword research tools:

   The below list shows you the best keyword research tools of 2020.

1. Keyword Sheeter
2. Answer the Public
3. Keyword Surfer
4. Google Trends
5. Questiondb

How to use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer:

 Ahrefs is one of the most widely used paid research tools for keyword research. It gives you the best results in the keyword research field. Now let us know how a keyword research tool works. The below steps give you an idea of how the keyword research tool works. 

Working process:

• Keyword difficulty tells us about the problem of ranking that specific keyword. If you are a new site and the keyword you are researching has 40 and above keyword difficulty, it will be hard for you to rank for that keyword. That’s why for new site developers, long-tail keywords can be helpful as they have low keyword difficulty making them easier to organize. 
• While searching for the keyword, you should give the country name because keywords and their problems differ from country to country. After searching for the keyword, you will have the volume data. The volume data refers to the number of search volumes in the given area at a specific time frame. These data tell you the number of searches the keyword has. The global work speaks about the total number of inquiries from every country.
• Below you will have some keywords with similar terms. If you search for the best drones, you will get similar keywords like the best drone for money, best drone with camera, best beginner drone, and so on. These are some of the relatable keywords which can be used for your website’s ranking. 
• You will also get some questions for your keyword, which can be used for your site’s FAQ. If you search for “best drones,” you will get questions like “what is the best drone for money,” “what is the best drone with a camera,” etc. These questions will also help you in the ranking factor. 
• The main thing to note down is the DR (Domain rating). This determines your site’s strength and the capacity to rank them. You should also check the backlinks column. The number of backlinks will tell you how authoritative and authentic your site is. 

Meta description – Important SEO checklist:

     If you are a WordPress developer, you would have come across Yoast SEO. Now, most people in the SEO industry use the Yoast SEO plugin to analyze their meta description. How does Yoast SEO do that? Well, it checks on the two most important things. First is the length of your meta description. And secondly, the use of your focus keyphrase in your meta description. 

Domain authority- Important SEO checklist:

     Many people consider that domain rating is not an essential thing in Google ranking factor. But you might be wrong. Although it’s not a top priority, Google still checks your domain rating for your website’s ranking. But Google doesn’t solely rely on your domain rating. Various other factors affect your google ranking. Moreover, the domain rating and keyword ranking go hand in hand.