Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of any website that crafts it in a way that it ranks higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Here is an SEO checklist that will help you remember and verify all the tools and techniques to enhance your website’s visibility.

Keyword Placements

Keyword placement is the topmost part of SEO practices. It is the starting point of your SEO journey and should be done cautiously. You can use your keywords about 15 times in your content - and 2 to 3 times per 100 words on average. There are different keywords like long-tail keywords, specific keywords, target keywords, and so on - each with its different purpose and a role to play. Do in-depth research on how to use and where to place to maximize your results and boost your website rank. Always ensure that you are not stuffing your keywords and degrading the quality of your website content.

Tag Optimization

Make sure that all your tags are properly placed and are prominent for the search engines as well as for the users. In the long run, this will boost your rankings and drive traffic to your website.

• H1 Tag

The title of your page should be on point, that is it should be prominent, precise, and relevant to your content. You can even include your main keywords in the title tag for better visibility. To give the title, you should always use the HTML H1 (used as h1) tag. Remember that titles should always be within 20 to 70 characters.

• Meta Tags

The title, as well as meta description tags, plays an important role in search results. Search engines like Google, Bing, Firefox, etc use these tags for precise results and rankings. Ensure that the title and description tags are properly tagged, the title tags are as same as the H1 tag and the main keyword is present in the description tag too. The character length of meta tags should always range between 150 to 160 characters.

• Canonical Tag

The canonical tag represents the original copy of the web pages. The canonical tag or URL defines the source that the search engines should use. This prevents any kind of duplicate content from appearing on myriad URLs. 

• Alt Tag

You also need to optimize your images, videos, and other visual content for the search engines using alt tags. The alt tags usually contain the informative description of the visual content that is an alternative text for any image or video. You can even use target keywords in the alt tags to trigger more prominent search results. Remember that alt tags are usually within 140 characters.

• Social Sharing Tags

Social media meta tags are used to align the website content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Using metatags.io verifies that all your social tags are correctly tagged and placed.

Use Relevant, Brief & SEO Friendly URLs

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) generally ranges within 2000 characters, but it is advisable to keep it short and relevant to the contents by customizing it. SEO- friendly URLs justify that the target keywords of any given web page content should be in it. Internal links or URLs also make the navigation for visitors and search engines easier.

The clickable text in a hyperlink also known as anchor text- should be descriptive and should always represent the content of the page you link to.

• Always check and ensure that the URL of the website or blog post and the anchor text match.
• Redefine redirects to fuel the SEO train. You can use 301 and 308 redirects for legacy URLs - to ensure that search engines know that they are moved permanently. 303, 302, and 307 redirects are also used sometimes.

Responsive Layout

A mobile responsive website is always preferred by both search engines and the current segment of the audience. With the rapid use of mobile devices, mobile-accessible websites rank higher in the Google SERPs. You can surely check your website responsiveness, using any mobile-friendly test from Google. It will verify if the website has a mobile-friendly layout, or you may be penalized. A mobile-friendly website has played an important role in these two scenarios, which are utterly crucial for your website’s performance-

• Website Loading Time-

When your website loading time is faster, it has a direct impact on SEO analytics. If your website speed is faster - that means that it takes less than 3 seconds to load by Google in the year May 2020, the ranking algorithm of search engines increases. Google uses this as a parameter to measure your website’s performance and thus rank it accordingly. If it takes more than 3 seconds, your audience might be frustrated and leave the site, thus increasing your bounce rate and diminishing your search engine rankings. An optimized website should take less than 2 seconds to load, whereas Google aims at half a second to load.

• Core Web Vitals-

Improved website speed and mobile responsive website layout are interrelated with a website’s core vitals. It improves the website’s overall performance and thus improves the SEO rankings of any website. The web vitals track everything, and an optimized performance ensures the long-term success of that website.

Structured Data Using Schema

Structured data is important for search engine optimization as it makes it more accessible and understandable to the search engines to crawl. The proper organization of your web pages, contents, products, services, and features in a website is termed structured data. Tagging your website contents with structured data makes the search engine understand the context of the information clearly and accurately.

Schema markup is a technique to maintain structured data on your website. Schema markup helps in specifying certain types of information in your website that enriches your Google SERPs performance.

Conclusion-

Search Engine Optimization tools, techniques, and practices are an ever-changing loop. But this checklist is the basic flow on how to maintain a good website with higher search engine rankings and keep the audience engaged. But it is always advisable to take professional help and hire the best SEO experts in India for smart SEO strategies and improve website ranking on search engines.