Free SEO Check List 2024 – Here Are the Key Things to Know About Search Engine Optimization

Setup Search Console

You must need to connect website with Google Search Console to check website indexing, stats, sitemap status, user-friendliness issues, and more other things.

Setup Analytics

After adding webmaster or search console, you need to google analytics. This is a free tool to analyse website traffic, user journey, conversions and lot more.

Keywords Research

Before starting on-page SEO, you need to perform keywords’ research. You must know your primary and secondary keywords to work on. There are various keyword research tools available across the internet but very few are authentic like Google Trends and Google Adword’s Planner.

Creating Keywords Strategy

Creating keyword strategy is more important to everything. You must choose high search volume keywords with low competition. You can use SEMRUSH to find keywords gap to create strong Keywords Strategy.

Meta Content (Title & Description)

This is first factor google read for ranking on keywords. You must use this rationally since you will be having word count limit for adding words on title and descriptions. You can add 60 characters on meta title section and for meta description, you can use 155 to 160 characters.

Heading Tags’ Formation

This is again very crucial ranking factor so utilise this as per keywords priority. Add your main keywords in Heading tag 1 and use H2, H3, H4, H5 & H6 as per priority.

Adding Content on Web Pages

Content is core vital for every website. More user-friendly and helpful content you add the more you likely rank on keywords. Context must be in forms and formations.

Add Robots.txt

Robots.txt is file for google to know the URLs for indexing. In case you want to block any url to google crawler you need to disallow through robots.txt file. if you want default format so use this below one:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /license.txt
Disallow: /xmlrpc.php
Disallow: /wp-*.php
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /comments/
Disallow: */comments/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: */category/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: */tag/
Disallow: /author/
Disallow: */author/
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: */search/
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

If you are facing difficulty while Optimizing site you can hire SEO agency.

Add Sitemap .xml

Sitemap.xml is like a map for google. Google save this file for indexing all website pages and and navigate your website very easily. You can create xml sitemap from Free Sitemap Generator and upload on you public.html file.

Create internal links

You need to link all page internally with each other. There should be a linking pyramid. You need to link you categories with you home page of website and blogs from all pages content.

Speed Optimisation

You must need to improve website speed because google has already linked their google page insight tool with their google search console This means Google has given more importance to Speed optimization. If you’re working on WordPress so you can use WP Rocket and Web10 and if in case of shopify you can use Booster

Adding Blogs

Content is like blood in the human body. Website with niche related content are 10 times more like rank on search engine. You can also drive indirect traffic to your website very easily with Blogs.

Add Alt Tags

Google always read image names and rank on search engine. If you use Car image and add “ALT tag” as Car so you image will be likely to rank on google image search. This is also a relevancy signal for overall optimization.

URL Friendliness

Your website’s URLs must be human readable. Using characters and numbers are not SEO friendly. This is an opportunity for placing keywords so use it as a placeholder for SEO.

Do Contextual Backlinks

Backlinks from relevant pages are always more powerful than forum comments and ordinary back links. Create web 2.Os and upload article on High DA sites and of course this will help to increase website DA.

Use Edu and Gov Backlinks

Creating Back links from high DA education and government sites give very good authority to your domain but it is very difficult to find domains for linking with .edu and gov.

Use link cycle strategy

Increase PA of ALL Internal Pages

You need to maintain Page authority of all pages. Adding authority to fewer pages is not a good SEO practise. All pages with good DA will definitely help to increase overall DA & DR.