Checklists are a great way to stay organized in all aspects of life. They can even be utilized to help manage your website and SEO strategy.
Download this SEO checklist to use as a tool throughout the whole life span of a website as it is important to constantly optimize as new pages are added. Keep in mind, some steps will be more important than others at a given time. The first and most important step is keyword research, and it should always be the first thing you invest in during the initial stage of SEO. After you find the organic keywords you want to rank for, the second step is to take those keywords and use them in titles, meta descriptions, headings, and content of the website page. After these two crucial steps, you can invest in the others as the means become available.
Who should be involved
Completing this checklist goes beyond just the SEO team. Your marketing department can provide insights as to what possible keywords a user might search for. The content team and paid media team should be included because both departments play a vital role in SEO. A web developer is needed to implement the back coding of the website, such as title, meta descriptions, sitemaps, etc. And of course, the CEO/top level management of the company is important for final approval.
Why these SEO steps are important
Each step in this checklist is a different signal that explains to search engines what your site is about and how they can find the right user looking for content related to your website. The more of these steps you can complete, the better chance search engines will serve the best possible page and experience to your target market.
The big picture
The main goal of SEO is to rank first for every keyword you want to rank for (after doing your keyword research, of course). The higher you rank on search engine result pages, the higher your click-through rate will be, which can lead to a higher chance of a user converting (buying your product, signing up for your newsletter, etc.).
In the above graph, the X-axis represents the rank positions on search engine result pages, and the Y-axis represents the percentage of how likely a user is to click through to your website. For example, if you’re ranked #1 on Google for a particular keyword, the user is 18.2% likely to click through. If you’re ranked #10 for that keyword, the user is only 1.04% likely to click through. The difference is huge!