Conducting an SEO audit is key for any business. With Google changing its search algorithm frequently, it is essential that your website complies with its requirements. This is where the SEO checklist comes in handy.

The Off-page SEO Checklist

Webmaster tools

Integration with webmaster tools is a must once your website is about to get launched. It is imperative that you connect with google search console and the bing webmaster tools. Webmaster tools give you a snapshot of the overall health of your website. They help getting traffic to your by being listed in the search results. They also help you understand what leads people to your website that can help you understand what to focus on to increase your traffic.

Evaluate your backlinks

This will tell you how many unique domains are linking back to you and if they can be trusted. In case you are using a link broker to build your backlinks, think again. This is going to detrimental to the health of your website in the longer run and downgrade its “domain authority“. Domain authority is dominated by three key influencers – quality incoming links, social signals and brand mentions.

Eliminate bad backlinks

Bad links are links that do not comply with quality guidelines of search engines. These may be low quality, bought links or spammy links. Links are supposed to be a “vote” for your website so be wise in selecting your link partners. Identify & disavow the bad links through the Google search console.

Build quality links

Quality link comes from a website of authority. For example, a quality link from a niche or a relevant website with a high pagerank (PR) is likely to benefit you more than and newly launched website. This is what is looked at as an editorial endorsement of your content by SEs.

Relevance of anchor text

Link building requires linking back to your website from a quality source with the right kind of “anchor text“. The anchor text needs to vary and not be repetitive. For example, we may take build a backlink to our website using the company name “Interactive World“. However, what works better is “Website Development Company“. You do, however, need to take care that anchor texts are used contextually for different pages on your website.

Deep linking

Deep linking means that your link building exercise links to other pages on your website contextually and not just the homepage. Deep linking just your homepage definitely increases your bounce rate since your visitors do not get to see something new. Deep linking also increases your website authority because the internal pages start contributing to the authority that the homepage already enjoys.

Link mentions

Link mentions depend upon how are you distributing your content throughout the web and how is being absorbed by your readers. Link mentions can come through myriad sources including press releases, the blogosphere, community website like forums, social bookmarking websites or even a website that runs classifieds. You can obtain more mentions via business directory listings and also by questions answered on Q&A websites like Quora. More natural link mentions you have for your website, the better it is for the health of your website.

Social signals

Social media is the buzzword today. All content that you post on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or even Instagram are recognised by SEs. If your business publishes video, it’s a great idea to run a YouTube channel and gather social mentions from there too. More interaction on such social media vehicles elevates not just your website’s score but also drives traffic to your website.

Off page SEO is more complicated than on page SEO hence needs more attention. Care needs to be taken to work with these factors organically and not get onto the link building bandwagon and generate a massive amount of links unscientifically. Link housekeeping needs to be done regularly so that bad links do not affect the health of the website in the longer term. This SEO checklist works well as a starter pack for your SEO efforts. If you have more to discuss, contact us for more information. If you have a question or a remark, simply drop a comment below and I’ll connect with you.

In today’s article, I’ll detail a 9 point checklist with major on-page search engine optimization factors that are instrumental in making your on-page SEO strategy a success. My next article will cover the SEO audit factors for off-page parameters relevant for that winning SEO strategy.

Here is the 9 point SEO audit checklist:

1. Are you using title tags?

A title tag tells your visitors as well as the search engines what the page is all about. You must have a unique title for every page or blog post. If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results. Your page title needs to be contextual and you should always avoid choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page.

2. Is your description meta tag optimized?

A well-written meta description should inform both search engines and users with a summary of what your page is about. A better-worded meta description always helps generate more clicks from your Google rankings. It goes for title tags, meta tags also need to be unique and relevant to your page’s content.

3. How good is your URL structure?

Simple to understand URLs convey content information in a user-friendly manner. URLs are displayed in the search results by SEs. Descriptive categories and filenames for your products/ documents on your website help you keep your site better organized. It also leads to better crawling of your products/ documents by search engines. Try and use relevant & contextual words (keywords) in your URLs.

4. Is your site structure & navigation friendly?

Your website should be easy to navigate and user friendly. It helps people to find relevant information easily. Always plan out your navigation starting from your homepage. Ensure more convenience for users by using ‘breadcrumbs’. Ensure you have a separate page for the product/ service you want to rank for.

5. Are you using sitemaps?

One should always create two sitemaps – one for the user (HTML) and second for SEs (XML). Sitemaps are a great way of indexing information on any website especially if it carries a lot of content. It makes the process of finding relevant information easier for both users and search engines.

6. Do you create fresh, unique content?

Fresh and unique content should always be a priority. Avoid writing sloppy content or embedding text in images for textual content. This makes it difficult for users to copy and save it for future reference. It also makes it unreadable for search engines. Remember new content not only brings back your regular readers but also bring in new visitors. Write for your users and not search engines. Search engines automatically follow websites with fresh, rich content. If your business exists online, consider writing your blog.

7. Are you optimizing your images?

Use the “alt” tag to provide image-specific information. This component of SEO audit comes in handy when the image is not displayed for some reason or the user is accessing your page from a screen reader or a browser that doesn’t support images. Your image file name should also have the same image-specific information.

8. Are you using heading tags appropriately?

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc.) are visual cues to your website visitors. They suggest the importance of that part of the text. This helps them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes should be used in order to create a hierarchical structure for your content. This makes it easier for users to navigate through your document.

9. Is your website is responsive?

The world has gone mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis for accessing and searching via the internet. Responsive websites deliver a consistent, professional, and enjoyable user experience across devices with different screen resolutions. This encompasses all devices including desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Google gives a lot of priority to websites that are responsive.

We, at Interactive World routinely conduct an SEO audit before taking on any SEO project. This audit is a key indicator of the factors holding your website back from achieving the organic search rankings it is capable of. Our SEO audit looks at your website holistically viz. different ranking factors, from your website’s loading speed to crawl errors, on-page optimisation and technical elements that you may not be aware of. Talk to us today for a free initial report.

So how is this done? I’ll try to keep it simple with our 5 point practice at Interactive World.

1. Quality “content” is the key: Take this article for example. The purpose of this article is to provide concise information to visitors on how white hat SEO needs to be done. This means your content has to be qualitative, factual and relevant. “Is there a pertinent message that I am offering?” is the question you need to ask before hitting publish.
2. User experience – Put yourself into the user/ audience’s shoes. Create content that allows them to take away learning as compared to gibberish that a lot of online content contains today. A great user experience will lead to a lot of buzz for you in cyberspace.
3. Engagement – Is the content engaging for your audience? Does it add value by way of information? Does it stimulate thinking and drive an interaction? Will it elicit “social signals” from the readers of your article? Sharing it in social media is an easy way to find out. If people share your content, they have found it to be interesting, concise and engaging. Such social media marketing provides a signal to SEs about popularity of content thereby marking it upwards.
4. Go technical – Ensure that the page titles and relevant meta content is used appropriately in the webpage. The navigation structure is clearly laid out for a great user experience. XML sitemaps are present and working. Sitemaps ping SEs when you publish fresh content and provide crawlers with a map of links to crawl and index.
5. Check your servers – Poorly maintained servers with inadequate bandwidth make your websites sluggish. Google has indicated that sites with long loading times would be penalized. Load time is a factor today since a sluggish website will also make your visitors turn away.

In a nutshell, do not build websites or content targeted towards search engines. Practice white hat SEO to focus on the user of a website to succeed. These practices are legit and work for your benefit in the long run. Black hat on the other hand may give you a short term advantage but it won’t last long.