SEO Checkpoints Best Practices Guide 2024

The SEO checkpoints best practices are crucial for your website's ranking on SERPs. Implementing this blog post SEO checklist wouldn't take so much time; however, it would lead you to achieve your SEO goals. 15 min SEO daily to make sure you are on the right track is your best option to get a higher rank. First, let's refresh our memory with the SEO meaning, then we can discuss the best practices of the SEO checkpoints in detail.   SEO is an acronym for (Search engine optimization), a set of activities we do to create good content and design the website. It also includes defining the business strategy and how to produce content to gain a better position in Google search results and attract more visitors to the site. The term SEO may broaden to include another definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to display it as a higher result for searches around a particular keyword. In this post, seobase will explain SEO checklist best practices in simplified detail to the most critical SEO checkpoints, daily SEO tracking, monthly SEO tasks and show you some ideal ways to achieve advanced results in search engines. 

How to Use This SEO Checklist?

We have divided the SEO checkpoints best practices into main points to facilitate their explanation. Therefore, we will separately focus on each SEO component in the following few lines. Here are the leading SEO components checkpoints:

• Basic SEO Checklist
• Technical SEO Checklist
• Keyword Research Checklist
• Content Checklist
• On-page SEO Checklist
• Link Building Checklist

To set a successful SEO strategy, you should focus on the above SEO checkpoints best practices and carefully apply them to your website. This SEO checklist best practices work for e-commerce stores, local businesses, and affiliate sites.

• Basic SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

Set up Google Search Console. 

Google offers free Google Search Console services to track your site's organic search performance. The importance of this tool is that it shows you the effectiveness of the detailed SEO plan, and it is a reliable service since the Google search engine provides it. You can find on GSC:

• The keywords you rank for,
• Your ranking positions,
• Your website errors.

In addition, you can submit your sitemaps successfully to get the best and most accurate results. 

Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. 

This step is similar to what is applied to Google, but this time to Bing. Setting up the Bing Webmaster Tools is essential for implementing a successful SEO plan.

Set up seobase online SEO Tools.

You can use seobase best online SEO tool to get the best results on search engines and improve your rankings. seobase provides webmasters with the most powerful SEO tools to facilitate the implantation of their SEO strategy and make it easier to achieve their SEO goals in the long term. Here are a few key SEO tools from seobase:

• Site Profiler Tool: to perform a useful site audit.
• Backlink Checker Tool: to audit your website backlinks.
• Keyword Explorer Tool: search and find the right keywords for your content. 
• Rank Tracker Tool: it keeps you up-to-date with your Google positions and ranking on other search engines. 
• SERP Checker Tool: a cloud-based tool that allows you to check your SERPs on Google and other search engines.  

Set up Google Analytics.

Also, Google offers an additional free service, Google Analytics, which is essential because it shows how many people visit your site, how they found it, and how they interact with it.  You can link Google Search Console with Google Analytics to see Search Console data in Analytics.

Install an SEO plugin.

You can skip this step if you’re using a different website platform like Shopify. This step is for WordPress users. If you are using WordPress, you should install an additional SEO plugin. These plugins help you organize your sitemaps and place the proper meta tags. Despite the importance of these tools, you do not need more than one tool only. Here are some tools you can choose from to install in WordPress: 

• Yoast SEO,
• Rank Math,
• The SEO Framework.

Create and submit a sitemap.

We've already mentioned that the GSC tool enables you to set your sitemaps to get accurate data. In addition, it is essential to fine-tune your Sitemaps because they are the link between search engines and the main content on your site. Sitemaps tell search engines where to find content on your website so that their spiders can easily crawl and index your pages. You can use the seobase Site Profiler tool to get a certain answer confirming that your website can be crawled and indexed. Usually, you can find your sitemap at one of these URLs:

• /sitemap.xml
• /sitemap_index.xml
• /sitemap

For more information about the crawl and index process, read How Google Search organizes information.

Create a robots.txt file.

Creating a robots.txt file is an essential step on your SEO checklist; if checks, you can improve your SEO performance. But what is a robots.txt file? Robots.txt is a text file; its job is to direct search engines to where they can crawl and where they are not allowed to.  A robots.txt file may be necessary if you do not want search engines to crawl a specific section of your website that does not have the required SEO factors, to not affect the SEO checklist of your website. You can check your robots.txt file; all you have to do is write your domain name and robots.txt like this; yourdomain.com/robots.txt.  If you see a text file, you already have a robots.txt file. If not, search Google for “robots.txt generator” to create one, or you can ask for help from a professional SEO company. Now, after performing all of the above steps, you just got the basic SEO checklist best practices done. Let’s move to the next level of your SEO strategy, the technical SEO checklist. 

• Technical SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

Implementing technical SEO checkpoints best practices helps you create reliable bases and ensure your site can be crawled and indexed. As a result, your website will rank higher than any other website in your industry on SERPs.  Here are the primary and most common technical SEO checkpoints best practices to follow.

Make sure your site is crawlable and indexable.

Google does not index any page or content its spiders have not crawled. So it is crucial to check that Google spiders have accessed your content constantly. You can do this through Google Search Console to search for any warnings or exceptions related to robots.txt files. Many webmasters confuse indexing and crawling, although they are two completely different processes. The crawled pages do not have to be indexed by Google. If you found a 'noindex' meta tag for bots or an x-robots tag on the page, indexing will not be possible. You can conduct a live test on GSC to find your indexing issues. If during live testing, indexing issues were detected with the URL, then you can request indexing from Google. Also, Google will inform you about noindexed URLs in the Coverage report. The good news is that you also can get this information using the seobase Site Profiler tool. The tool will give you a detailed report for your site audit, including this information. 

Make sure you’re using HTTPs.

It is important to use HTTPS as it is an exemplary security standard and will protect the data of your visitors. This is even more important if you require passwords or payment information, then using HTTPS is a must. If you don't use HTTPS, it's time to migrate now. First, ensure your site sits on HTTPS by checking your browser's URL bar. If you see a "padlock" sign on the left side of the URL, then you're using HTTPS. If you don't see this sign, you are not.

Check for duplicate versions of your site in Google’s Index.

You may face a severe SEO issue if you allow Google to index more than one version of your website.  For example, you see that these links listed below are all the same and will not make a big difference or cause a glitch, but it is entirely different from the point of view of search engines:

• https://www.domain.com
• https://domain.com
• http://www.domain.com
• https://domain.com

Don't let Google get distracted by all those links, and make sure only one format is indexed. It can lead to crawling, indexing, and security issues. All other versions should redirect 301 to your main domain, and you can check for duplicate versions of your site in Google's index by entering each variant into your browser bar. If you've set up redirects without issue, you're good. But if you still find that you can access many versions, you must redirect immediately.

Check your site speed.

Since 2010, PageSpeed has been an important ranking factor on search engines for desktop. Since 2018, it has been included as a vital ranking factor on search engines for mobile. If you think of it from the user's point of view, it is tedious and frustrating if you go to a site to search for the information you need and it takes you a lot of time to load; Google also adopts this point of view. Therefore, if you slow site speed, Google does not consider this site worthy of ranking on the first page because it does not improve the user experience. You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights. Also, you can use the seobase Site Profiler tool to give you deep insights about your PageSpeed and a whole site audit report to see how fast your web page loads. 

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

There is no doubt that we are in a speedy era; many searches are done through mobile. So having a mobile-friendly website is more important than ever; it is no longer optional. Check your site's mobile-friendliness by using Google's mobile-friendly testing tool. seobase Site Profiler tool gives you an excellent chance to check if your website is mobile-friendly.  

Install an image compression plugin.

One of the most underrated factors on the SEO checklist is images. Compressing images and reducing the size of image files improves page speed. As a result, it will enhance your chances of ranking high on search engines. For WordPress users, there are plenty of plugins available for that. For example, you can use one of the best free WordPress SEO tools, ShortPixel. It allows you to compress up to 100 images/month for free.  Furthermore,  you can use Tinypng to compress images in general and use them on other platforms.

Fix broken pages (Broken Internal and Outbound Links.)

Broken links do not provide the best user experience and break the transfer of the domain authority DA to your site. The best way to find broken links on your website is to conduct a backlink audit or audit your site thoroughly. You can use Site Profiler and Backlink Checker tools from seobase to get the best results.

Fix duplicate content issues.

If you’re targeting e-commerce SEO, probably you’ll find duplicated content issues; it is very common in e-commerce SEO because of the faceted navigation. Make sure you don’t have any duplicate content on your website.  You can fix this SEO issue by canonicalizing the affected URLs where necessary.

• Keyword Research SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

 This part of the seobase SEO checklist guide is primarily directed at SEO content writers. Applying the following SEO checkpoints to your content will boost your search engine rankings. Choosing the right keyword is your key to reaching the audience, but all your efforts will be in vain if your content is not SEO-equipped. Follow the next few tips to get your website at the top of the first search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Explore your primary keyword.

The right keywords allow you to reach your goal easily. However, using improper or consistent SEO keywords with your content may be reason enough to distract search engines. In addition, the main keyword will refer to different subjects; thus, the search engine will see that your site is not trustworthy enough to appear on the first page because it does not provide a good user experience.

How do you know the best keyword to focus on?

Do frequent keyword research to target the main keywords you can rank by on the SERPs, but you should also ensure that you target the best keyword each time you post new content. Also, you can find the right keywords using the seobase keyword explorer tool.

Assess search intent. 

If your page doesn't align with the search intent, your chances of ranking are tiny to none.

So how do you assess search intent?

After finding the primary keyword, look at the ranked pages on Google SERPs for your primary keyword. Check the URLs and titles of the top-ranking results, for example, if a user searches for "SEO checkpoints best practices." Given the researcher's intention, it is clear that he wants to know the primary points that must be applied to obtain the best SEO results. If the user searches for "SEO," it is likely that he wants to get an SEO service provider.

Assess your chances of ranking on Google to enhance your SEO checkpoints best practices.

Investigating the difficulty of the keywords you use helps you prioritize your chances of ranking on search engines. Use the seobse keyword explorer tool to find out the SEO difficulty of keywords. If you are a beginner, you can use low or medium-difficulty keywords to be able to compete. Also, check the results for the things that may suggest a hard keyword to crack, like high-quality backlinks and high topical relevance of the top-ranking sites, etc.

Research what people want to know.

Suppose a user searches for an “SEO Checklist.” You can see from analyzing search intent that people are looking for specific practical steps to implement. However, you should ask yourself a couple of vital questions;  What other questions do they have?  What other information fits your content to include? You can find the answer to your questions in Google’s “People Also Ask” box.  Also, you can use a content ideas generator to find new subjects to write about. Finally, using the keywords explorer tool gives you a good insight into your query.