Click Here To Download The Checklist >> 7 Step SEO Checklist
This 7 step checklist is designed to be a simple, easy to follow checklist to make sure that your site has the main SEO factors covered. It is not a comprehensive or advanced guide but can be applied easily to any page on your website to get results. This checklist should be followed for each page and blog post, also on blog posts you might want to add a few keyword categories and tags.
– Primary SEO Keyword Identified
Before you start any SEO, you need to decide what keyword you want that page to appear in the search engines for. There are a variety of tools to gather data on this, but the simplest one is Google.
Think about what your customers will type into Google to try and find a business like yours. Type that into Google and see what suggestions come up. A handy tip is to look at the ads, are there lots of ads for this keyword? Then it is probably worth ranking for if people are paying to be there.
Ultimately, if you just go with what you think people will type, you will be right most of the time. But if you want to make sure your efforts will get you maximum results, contact your SEO specialist to get a detailed keyword research report.
– Page URL
This can have a huge effect on your SEO results, however it is possible to get great results without it. Ideally your keyword will be in your website domain name (www.keyword.com.au) however it is far more important that your domain is your brand name and looks nice and easy to remember. So you want to make sure all your sub-pages have their primary keyword in the URL, WordPress permalinks make this easy. You want it to look something like this;
– Page Title
Page Title is the single most important on-page SEO factor, if you don’t do anything else, at least get this right.
Page Title is the name you give the page or post when you create it in WordPress, it may also be affected by your themes settings or SEO plug-ins. Make sure you have your primary keyword and some related words, but do not stuff it. It must still make sense and be readable.
– Article Headings
It also helps if the article heading and sub-headings have the primary keyword, or related keyword in them. However it is far more important that the page makes sense, is easy to read and provides value to the reader. Getting the keyword in is just a bonus and it doesn’t make or break you SEO results.
– Content
On the internet, content is king. The internet is about information and the search engines want to show people the best and most relevant content. You want your pages content to be relevant to the keyword, variations on the keyword and other similar keywords. Your content should also be original and unique. You should have you primary keyword in here once but not too much more than that. Focus on providing the best content and SEO becomes easy. For bonus points, you can add a few images or a video to support your text.
– Meta Data
Meta Data is telling the search engines directly what you want appear for and what you want your listing to look like in Google. This can be controlled by your WordPress theme or an SEO plug-in. Firstly there is your SEO title and description, these should both have your primary keyword in them, but also they are what people see in the search engine when deciding what site to visit. So they must be designed to entice the searcher to click on your site by appearing to hold the answers to their search.
Finally there are Meta keywords, these no longer hold much SEO value, however they do tell the search engines what your page is about. It doesn’t hurt to add 2-5 variations of your primary keyword into the meta keywords, but it will not make or break your SEO results.
– Links
A whole book could be written on this topic alone. In a sentence; you want links from many different quality websites on pages of quality, relevant content that link to your page with the clickable text being your primary keyword.
A great source of links is social media and social bookmarking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon and Reddit. These are high quality sites, though often the content is low quality and you might not get a keyword link. However you do get people visiting your site, Google will find you faster and you might find your link is shared… creating more links for free! And the trends of the internet show that social media is growing in importance.
But if you are serious about SEO, get a specialist to build links for you. Give us a call on 1300 344 430.
