Complete SEO Checklist for 2024

Our SEO checklist ensures you won't miss a single step in your SEO strategy.
seo checklist

Here’s an updated SEO checklist to keep your website optimised and competitive. This post will bring you through essential tasks such as setting up Google Search Console, using SEO plugins, understanding keywords and purpose, testing site speed, and optimising pictures.

Table of Contents

1. Set Up Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) provides data about how Google views your website and allows you to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. GSC gives you the queries that bring users to your site, shows you issues that you need to fix, and checks that Google can access your content. Regularly checking GSC helps you monitor your website’s SEO performance and lets you know where to act to improve your website.

How to set up GSC

  • Add your property: go to Google Search Console and sign in with your Google account. Add your website as a property.
  • Verify your site: choose a verification method such as HTML file upload, HTML tag, Google Analytics, or DNS record to prove you own the site.
  • Submit your sitemap: a sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site. In GSC, navigate to “Sitemaps” under the “Index” section and submit your sitemap URL.

 

What to Monitor

  • Search performance: check the performance report to see your site’s clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position in Google Search.
  • Coverage report: this report shows the indexing status of your site and identifies any issues with your pages.
  • Enhancements: review enhancements such as Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, and other improvements suggested by GSC.

2. SEO Plugins

SEO plugins help optimize the content and structure of your site. They ease the process of adhering to best practices in SEO, thereby helping anyone who uses CMSs like WordPress. Such plugins come with functionalities like meta tag management, XML sitemaps, content analysis, and a lot more that make improving the SEO of your website easy, even with little or no technical knowledge. Hence, they are very essential in making your website fully search-engine-optimized.

  • Yoast SEO: offers features like XML sitemaps, meta descriptions, title tags, and readability analysis.
  • Rank Math: known for its user-friendly interface and detailed SEO analysis, including keyword ranking and optimization tips.

 

Key Features

  • Meta Tags optimization: use plugins to easily add meta titles and descriptions to your posts and pages.
  • XML sitemaps: automatically generate and update your sitemap.
  • Content analysis: receive real-time feedback on your content’s SEO and readability.

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3. Keywords and Intent

Understanding the queries your target audience uses and the intent behind their searches is essential for developing relevant content that ranks high in search engines. Keyword research enables you to identify the terms your potential clients are searching for, and understanding their intent ensures that your content matches their requirements. By tailoring your content to search intent, you may boost user happiness, drive more focused traffic, and improve your chances of ranking higher in search results.

  • Keyword research: use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to find relevant keywords with high search volume and low competition.
  • Analyze search intent: determine whether the intent is informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial. Tailor your content to match the intent.
  • Content optimisation: naturally incorporate primary and secondary keywords into your titles, headers, and body text. Avoid keyword stuffing.

Types of Search Intent:

  • Informational: users are looking for information (e.g., “how to bake a cake”).
  • Navigational: users are trying to find a specific site or page (e.g., “Facebook login”).
  • Transactional: users are ready to make a purchase (e.g., “buy iPhone 13”).
  • Commercial Investigation: users are comparing products or services (e.g., “best SEO tools 2024”).

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4. Site Speed and How to Check It

Site speed influences the user experience and is an important ranking factor for Google. Slow loading times might result in increased bounce rates and fewer conversions. Fast-loading webpages improve the user experience, keeping users engaged and more likely to convert. Furthermore, Google’s algorithms favour speedier sites, thus site performance optimisation is critical for optimising your search engine ranks.

How to Check Site Speed

  • Google PageSpeed Insights: enter your URL to receive a detailed analysis of your site’s speed on both desktop and mobile optimization.
  • GTmetrix: provides insights into your site’s performance and offers recommendations for improvements.
  • Pingdom: another tool that measures your site’s load time and identifies bottlenecks.

Tips to Improve Site Speed

  • Optimize images: compress images using tools like TinyPNG or ShortPixel without compromising quality.
  • Enable caching: use caching plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache to reduce server load and speed up your site.
  • Minimize HTTP requests: reduce the number of elements on your page, such as scripts and CSS files, to decrease load times.
  • Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): distribute your site’s content across various servers worldwide to ensure faster delivery to users.

5. Image Optimisation

Images increase user engagement, but they can also slow down your website if not optimised. Proper image optimisation helps both load times and SEO performance. By optimising pictures, you ensure that they load quickly without sacrificing quality, which is critical for providing a positive user experience and meeting search engine ranking requirements. Furthermore, optimised photos might increase your website’s accessibility and overall speed.

  • Choose the right format: use JPEGs for photographs, PNGs for images with transparent backgrounds, and SVGs for logos and icons.
  • Compress images: reduce file size using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim to ensure faster loading without losing quality.
  • Use descriptive file names: rename image files with descriptive, keyword-rich names before uploading them to your site (e.g., “chocolate-cake-recipe.jpg” instead of “IMG1234.jpg”).
  • Add Alt Text: provide descriptive alt text for each image to improve accessibility and help search engines understand the content of the images.

Additional Tips

  • Lazy loading: implement lazy loading to ensure images load only when they are about to be viewed.
  • Responsive images: use the srcset attribute to serve different images based on the user’s device and screen size.

Remember that SEO is an ongoing process that demands constant attention and customisation. To keep ahead of the competition, follow market trends, analyse your site’s performance, and make data-driven decisions. Implementing the steps we highlighted in this checklist will help you reach your SEO objectives and keep your website as a valued tool in your digital marketing plan, and don’t hesitate to ask our SEO experts for guidance and insights when needed!

Learn more here: SEO Guide for Beginngers

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