SEO CHECKLIST
The following is our basic checklist to ensure optimum results in your search engine results page (SERPs).
google analytics
Why do we use Google Analytics?
We will run a full analysis of user experience of your website. Are your target audience interacting with your site, what do they like, what don’t they like? How is it performing on multiple devises? This will give us a better understanding of your websites demographics and stability.
search consoles
How do Google and Bing search consoles read your site? By adding your site maps to google and bing you are notifying the search engines that your site is live and ready for them to craw. The ‘meta data’ the search consoles receive from their crawl will send back detailed analysis of how your site is viewed. DeFrae Media will analyse the data and make improvements to your sites code and optimize the site for smoother crawls and better search rankings.
site speed
Google now state that over 50% of all searches come via mobile devices. Hitwise quote this at nearly 60%. Mobile users, and younger users are far more impatient and expect instant access. If your site is slow, this will affect your rankings. The faster the site, the better the experience.
We analyse site speed using a variety of tools of optimise speed and performance by optimising code, and compressing the site for a better user experience.
If users are ‘bouncing’ off your site, clicking on and clicking off with very short average time on the page, they are not getting the best user experience and Google and other search engines will penalise the site and it will affect rankings.
html & css validator
We check your code to ensure that it is running smoothly and there aren’t any errors within it.
If you are using a CMS (content management system) such as Wordpress, Squarespace, Shopify etc, then we look at your plugins and re-write code to ensure errors are minimalized.
If your website has errors, this can affect your rankings.
backlinks
Why are backlinks important in SEO? Backlinks help search engines understand the popularity of a website and its importance in search rankings. There are however good backlinks and bad ‘toxic’ backlinks. We check the site for any bad user experiences such as broken or ‘toxic’ links from undesirable websites or spam. The number of links isn’t as important, it’s the quality of those links.
Without backlink your website will not get a good position in SERP (search result); and will not get indexed quickly. Getting high authority backlink is not that much hard you thought, but getting proper & relevant backlinks from the relevant niche domain authority for SEO is a long process but it fundamentally important in driving increased traffic from quality sources.
fix broken links and redirects
Sites that link to content that is no longer on the web or redirects from old pages to a 404 page (page error) and can’t find the link that it’s supposed to, will affect your SERP score.
Any redirects within your old – new site list need to be working and linking to new content that has replaced old content.
claiming the business – maps, social media and blogs
Google local search is becoming more prevalent with local businesses appearing at the top of the SERPs page and in prominent positions for the prevalent industry keywords. Growing your business locally helps bring strong, more localised traffic from various well ranked sites.
Claiming your business on social media is also key to bringing in quality links. If you create great content then it will most likely be shared on social media, your links clicked and driving incremental traffic to your website.
keyword planning
What is Keyword planning? Regardless of the industry you are in or what keywords you think you need, Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner is a superb tool to use it to the right keywords for you to use within your text within your site. The tool also allows us to find the highest volume search keywords to focus headers and meta data on for our SEO campaigns.
content optimisation
Ensure content is written in conversational tone, is clear, free from spelling or grammatical errors and can be easily crawled by googles spiders. There was a time when keyword manipulation was rife but algorithms can black list sites who over use keywords or headers to try and trick search engines.
Add frequently asked questions (FAQs) to your site. This can help entries get into the Google answer box which places your question at the top of SERPs and RankBrain.
google RankBrain
Google says RankBrain is its third most important ranking factor. RankBrain is Googles algorithm from 2015 that answers search queries more effectively using content rather than websites meta data.
Previously Google would create a mathematical algorithm that would determine search rankings. That algorithm would be a constant until an update was made. However, with Rank Brain that algorithm is now learning and constantly changing.
As a result, your SEO campaign has to be more nimble and adaptable to changes in the search engine rankings landscape.
structured data & rich snippets
Create events, menus, product details and photos into the heart of your website code with structured SCHEMA data to ensure rich and relevant website content search engines will understand.
If we search for strawberry sauce we are delivered a recipe and some shopping ideas.
Add products to Google shopping and recipes, ideas, products pricing give Google and other search engines quality data to rank your site higher.
SEO timelines
There is no quick fix to ranking highly on Google. Those that promise Page 1 are just sending an idea. Page 1 for what search term is more the question?
SEO is not just troubleshooting, its trying to keep ahead of changes in algorithms. As algorithms update, SEO needs to change, its constantly evolving as artificial intelligence leads to more adept SERPs results.
Don’t trust anyone who guarantees number 1 spot on your most popular keywords. Often most SEO strategies won’t be able to give a definitive timeline.
Its like saying I can help you lose weight. How much and by when is up to a lot of factors outside of our control, but we will lose weight and you will be better.
We report constantly on our SEO by looking at tools such as Google Analytics, Search Consoles and our own SEO tools which look at how we are performing amongst our own competitive set.
DeFrae Media can help you raise the profile and performance of your website, but we need to work together to construct realistic goals, have open conversations, a complete understanding of your business goals and objectives and patience.
The only fast way to success is through Google Adwords and here we can build online campaigns to help drive more quality links to your site and help drive up your natural search.