Doing your own SEO is a very daunting task. However, no matter what kind of website you’re running, you need to take care of optimisation if you wish to appear among the top results in the Google search engine. This is especially important for e-commerce stores, as many of them rely on organic search to drive traffic.
Although the SEO process needs to be modified over time, and we have to consider periodic changes to Google’s algorithm, some things always stay the same. This is why having a checklist is so important. It can serve as a starting point for all the optimisation and, thus, marketing processes.
Before we go through this list, I would like to briefly touch on SEO and all the potential benefits of having an optimized site.
What is SEO, and why is it so important?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and it is one of the main ways of promoting an online brand. The term “optimisation” mainly refers to Google optimisation, but we can also use it to describe the SEO of Bing, Yahoo! and even YouTube.
When talking about Google optimisation, in particular, we use the term to refer to numerous processes meant to improve your website, making it more search engine-friendly. This includes content optimisation, link building, making the site faster and mobile-friendly, and more technical, off-page and on-page SEO best practices.
The foundations of SEO are built on finding the right keywords and building your content around them. Often, SEO experts analyze other successful websites and build their strategies according to them. Although there are numerous rules you need to follow when choosing keywords, here are a few basic ones:
- Make sure that a specific keyword has a big enough volume but low competition. That way, there is greater potential to gain lots of traffic.
- Your keywords need to be relevant to the subject topic. Ranking for keywords that are not related to your website or pages will bring in visitors that you cannot convert and turn into customers. This can also have a bad impact on your SEO in the long run.
- Be cautious of broad synonymous keywords. This can lead to keyword cannibalization n cases where you have a number of pages that are on similar topics.
Of course, SEO is much more than just keyword research. There are numerous rules you need to consider, some of which are applied from the get-go. In fact, the optimisation process starts even before you register a domain or build a website. So ideally, you should consult an expert before starting your online entrepreneurial journey.
Setting up the basics
Before we can go through the technical SEO checklist, it is important to set up the basic tools. Technical SEO is heavily reliant on keyword and analytic software. Some of them are free, while others require a monthly subscription.
Install Google Analytics (GA4)
Google Analytics is a basic, free tool that allows you to analyze the performance of your site in relation to the user and their engagement. It provides a plethora of information about your visitors, as well as other technical data. No matter what kind of business you have, you need this tool. It is made by Google, so the data is very accurate. In fact, other companies utilise Google’s tools to create their own software.
Setting up a website
Another thing that requires your attention is the basic website setup. You can do this in Google Search Console. This tool gives you lots of data about how your website performs in Google’s eyes. This is not to be ignored. Google algorithms, on which all SEO is based around, have evolved to be very sophisticated.
Google Search Console will pick up any errors or issues found while crawling your website and highlight them to you. These errors negatively affect your users’ experience on your website, making Google Search Console high valuable for maintaining the effectiveness of your website.
Google Search Console can provide valuable insights regarding the visibility of your pages, as well as their rankings for specific keywords. You can use it for international targeting, sitemap and new page submissions, and other technical processes.
Crawl your website
If your site has already existed for a while, but you have never optimised it before, it is very important to crawl the pages. Some of the pages might not have even been detected by the search engine.
Site crawls are especially important for websites with lots of content. It allows you to scale things and reveal major issues that you couldn’t have noticed with other processes. It also helps your pages get seen on search engine result pages.
Every new web page or newly optimised page should be submitted to be crawled. This too can all be done within Google Search Console.
Now that we have these basic things covered, it is time to proceed with the checklist.
The Technical SEO Checklist
1. Get an SSL certificate and change your website to HTTPS
In the last few years, Google has placed a lot of emphasis on HTTPS. This is a very important feature that would increase the security of a site. Start by installing an SSL certificate, which should increase the defence against outside threats. These certificates are paid, but luckily, there are numerous places where you can buy cheap SSL.
The certificate works by protecting all the information that goes from the server to the website. Having the certificate will not necessarily improve your rankings. Nowadays, everyone has one, so Google cannot give you an advantage in that regard. However, not having an SSL certificate will stifle your optimisation efforts.
After that, make sure to migrate everything from HTTP to HTTPS. Like with an SSL certificate, having an HTTPS will not significantly increase your rankings; instead, it will prevent your site from being viewed as less secure than others.
2. Check the website for crawl errors
Google won’t be able to rank your pages within its search results if it doesn’t know they exist. Crawlers or robots are responsible for this action. They go around the web analysing all the available pages. In most cases, it will take a few days for bots to detect your new content. Sometimes, it might take even more.
If you encounter any issues with indexing or crawling, your pages won’t even be shown. So, as one of the primary focuses of SEO, you need to ensure that every page is properly indexed and that it shows in search engines.
The best way to do this is by checking Google Search Console regularly. Place emphasis on crawling errors. Besides indexing your pages, this can also cause issues with the overall functionality. Depending on how often you publish content, you can do this more or less frequently.
3. Analyse the site for broken links
Links are important for both user experience and SEO, so you should find those that are not working properly. Links can have a major impact on your overall site performance, in a negative or a positive way. If a link is “broken,” this means you cannot use it to reach another page (whether it’s on your site or an external site).
Some people refer to them as “dead” links. Generally speaking, it is easy to spot a non-working link. All you need to do is click on it, and an error message will pop up. The problem is when you have a large website with lots of links, making it hard to track them all. Among others, the issue might appear when an external site removes the page you were linking to.
Here are some of the reasons why you might experience broken links:
- 400 Bad Request – The server cannot identify or recognise a specific page.
- 404 Page Not Found – The page you’re linking to no longer exists.
- Bad URL – The issue occurs when forming a particular URL. For example, this might occur due to missing slashes, braces, or an improper protocol.
- Bad Host – Basically, there is no server with that particular name.
- Bad Code – HTTP is not responding to your requests.
- Timeout – The page took too long to respond, so the error is classified as a “timeout.”
- Empty – The content doesn’t respond to your requests.
- Reset – This error is rare, and it occurs when you lose the connection to a specific host. It usually happens due to configuration issues.
In the last few years, Google has placed a lot of emphasis on user engagement. Ideally, your visitors should stay on the website for as long as possible, going from page to page by using the available links. If the links are broken, their overall time spent on the website will be shortened, which will send a negative signal to Google.
Like everything else on the list, your pages can lose positions due to broken links. However, some savvy SEO experts utilize other people’s broken links for their own link-building practices.
4. Make sure that your pages load quickly
As mentioned, Google tries its best to accommodate its users. They invest a lot of time and effort in making everything optimal for them. This is why loading speed is so important.
Every once in a while, you should analyse your website’s loading speed. Generally speaking, it shouldn’t take more than 2 seconds for a web page to open. Anything longer than that and people will close the connection without checking what’s on the page. This sends a strong signal to Google that they’re dissatisfied with what you’re offering.
You need to make sure that the website is as quick as possible. Every tenth of the second counts and can make users more responsive. The best way to increase the speed is by removing heavy multimedia elements such as high-resolution images or chunky unnecessary code.
5. Optimize title and H1 tags
Titles and H1 tags within the articles are crucial for your optimisation. The title is definitely the most important element of an article, and it’s relevant for both Google’s algorithm and user experience.
We rely on tags to break up the page and create paragraphs. The most important of them all is the H1 tag.
Although many people neglect the H1 tag, it can be every bit as important as the title. Here are some of the best practices that will help you create awesome tags:
- The tag needs to be visible to all the users.
- The H1 should be almost the same or the same as other page titles.
- You should have just one H1.
- H1 tag gives you some freedom; it doesn’t have to be the same as the other headings.
- Although the H1 tag is the most important one, you shouldn’t neglect the other headings (H2, H3 and H4).
6. Check the site for mobile-friendliness
Like site speed, mobile-friendliness is something that Google has placed a lot of emphasis on in the last few years. It is important for eCommerce sites but also for all other types of websites.
You can significantly improve your rankings and also improve the conversion rates by fixing this minor error.
Simply put, sites that are optimized for mobile devices will have priority within Google’s search engine results pages.
7. Perform a thorough content analysis and modifications
Content should be the focal point of any website. People come to your pages to either read articles or buy products. In both cases, your visitors need information. They will have questions that you will need to answer. Fulfilling their needs for information is a core value that should shape your entire website.
The chance that you will encounter content issues increases as your website gets larger and larger. Things such as cannibalisation and duplicate content are common issues. This makes it harder for Google’s crawlers to understand which of your pages is the suitable destination for particular users.
Make sure to go through all your pages one by one. If some of them are not yielding any results after a few months, you should make the necessary alternations.
You should look for opportunities to combine similar pages. In most cases, you can do a great job by simply improving the content and adding a few more focused keywords or relevant information to important parts of the page.
Make sure to update your content, especially when there is new information regarding the topic.
Conclusion
Although there are different ways to promote an online brand, SEO is a fundamental and natural method. The process is especially great because it gives you long-term results. Unlike paid ads, where you constantly have to pump money to get results, optimisation at one point becomes autonomous.
Anyway, as long as you’re following this checklist, you shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the top spots in the Google search engine.
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