SEO Checklist 2018 | A Big and Small Business SEO Checklist

Reliablecounter Team

Whether you are a large organisation or a small business, if you are trying to get clients from the internet then you need to make sure your website stands at a good search engine ranking. And to do that, you will either need to take help from an expert SEO consultant as most of them have very affordable SEO packages or you can conduct an SEO website audit first. And then after the SEO analysis of your website, if you feel that you need the service of an SEO consultant, you can then opt for one of their affordable SEO plans. So to conduct an SEO website audit, you need to complete the big and small business SEO checklist 2018 as it is latest and according to the new policies. So let’s get started:

 

Prepare Your SEO Audit:

Firstly, you will need to understand what SEO is, we all know it is called Search Engine Optimisation, but what is it? To conduct an SEO website audit, you need to know the basic terminologies of SEO. You can learn all about basic terms and technical jargon of SEO HERE. After that, you will need to access your server and CMS (content management system). You will need to know the details of your service provider, and the CMS you are working with. It is usually WordPress as 58% of websites globally use WordPress as their CMS. But to be sure, simply contact the company that created your website.

Now you will need to allocate time for your SEO website audit. You will need only a few hours for SEO analysis of a small site, but bigger websites will take much longer. You can use some free SEO analysis tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Screaming Frog to check your SEO performance, issues, content and broken links.

 

Start the SEO Website Audit:

The first step you need to take is to install tracking and analytics tools like Google Analytics to improve your SEO by checking out the behaviour of your visitors and to manage your tags. If this seems a daunting task to you, you can always take help from an SEO specialist, most of them offer affordable SEO plans. Moving on, Check the loading speed of your website, it should not take more than 2 seconds to load; this is because up to 79 percent of the customers who are dissatisfied from the performance of a website say they are less likely to buy from that website again. You can use different tools like Pingdom to check your site’s speed. Also, you need to make sure your website has SSL certificate as it adds an extra layer of security in the transactions and the website is considered trustworthy by browsers and search engines.

Make sure to check online reviews about your business in search results. Any negative review can reduce your click-through rate. Remove or respond to all negative reviews and flag the suspicious negative reviews as your competitor may have posted them. Review your Google My Business account and update your business hours, contact information and location. Also, you need to make sure that your website is fully mobile responsive as it is imperative for SEO. This is because 80 percent of consumer shop from mobile phones and 70 percent of mobile searches lead to an action in an hour.

 

Audit Your Site Structure:

This is the technical side of SEO and it is recommended that you take help of an SEO expert for optimal results and the good thing is that many SEO experts provide affordable SEO packages. But, if you decide to do it on your own then you need to review the hierarchy of your pages as some pages may be hidden from search engines and users as well. So make sure that your website has a logical structure in its sitemap. Also, add an XML sitemap, usually search engines index websites automatically but in some cases, search engines can miss some pages. So if you add XML sitemap file to your website then search engines are likely to index your whole website.

 

Audit SEO Content and the Internal Links:

This is an easy part of your SEO website audit, it is called as On Page SEO, and you basically need to check for four main things:

  • Page Content: You need to make sure that your website has enough content, most services or product pages should have more than 500 to 800 words of content. Make sure that your content is broken up using H1, H2 and H3 headers, bullet points and attractive images. Structuring your content to increase readability helps search engines understand the content and that ultimately improves SEO. Make sure your content reads well and is not written in complex You can check its readability here. Also, ensure that your images have alt-text and descriptions to help Google understand the purpose of a particular image. Lastly, make sure your content is free from any kind of plagiarism as it has a very bad impact on SEO.
  • Keywords: In your On-Page SEO analysis, make sure your written content has targeted keywords, for instance, using the keyword “best affordable shoes” on a page that sells shoes. Use Google’s keyword planner to find out relevant keywords. Also, make sure that you include keywords evenly throughout the page (including headings) and not stuff them, use this tool to check keyword density of your text.
  • Metadata and Title Tags: Make sure your page has a unique Meta description as it improves click-through rate and also ensures that your title tags are short and contain the targeted keyword.
  • Internal Linking: Make sure your pages link to other pages of your website that are relevant to the page. But don’t put too many internal links as it decreases SEO ranking. Make sure your anchor text covers a target keyword. Use Linkio to get the best anchor text suggestions. Also, check for broken links by using tools like Screaming Frog and then set up your broken links with redirects.

Audit Backlinks:

This part of the SEO website audit is related to Off-Page SEO. Assess your website’s link profile and make sure most of the links are coming from well reputed and authoritative sources that are related to your business. Also, set up monitoring and alerts by setting up email alerts through Google Search Console, this will protect your business from low-quality backlinks. If you already have some spam or low-quality backlinks, identify them through services like SEMrush or Moz and remove them.

 

If Confused, Take Help from SEO consultant:

Performing the aforementioned things from this SEO analysis checklist will undoubtedly improve the ranking of your business but to see drastic results, you should opt for the professional services of an expert SEO consultant as most of the SEO experts have very affordable SEO packages, and you can get one of their affordable SEO plans according to your preference and need.