Basics

1. Set up Google Analytics

This is a no-brainer, right? Setting up Google Analytics is one of the first thing you should do
once you launch a new website. It's important to track your traffic, because traffic is basically
actual people visiting your website from different online sources: organic, direct, social, etc.

The way you set up Google Analytics in WordPress is by dropping the GA code inside the head
of the site and you usually do it via a WordPress plugin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaIaYxQnvoA

2. Set Up Google Search Console

Google Search Console is like your official SEO dashboard from Google. It tracks a series of
SEO metrics and offers you a series of tools that you could use to make decisions which will
improve your search rankings.

Some of the things you could do inside the Google Search Console is finding any index
coverage issues for Google search, submitting your site's sitemap to Google for a better
indexing, checking website speed reports or mobile usability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l6733dDx9Q

3. Install an SEO Solution for your website

One of the main reasons I love to work with WordPress is because it is an out-of-the-box
SEO-oriented content management system. Plus, you can extend its core functionality by using
plugins.

The most popular WordPress plugin for SEO is​ ​Yoast SEO​, with more than 5 million active
installations, at the writing of this piece of content. Quite impressive, I would say! The runner-up,
a tool which was recently launched is​ ​RankMath​.
The idea is simple: you want to have full control and an easy way to optimize a page for SEO.
More on this later on.

3B - Set up keyword rank tracking

You can't improve what you don't measure.

So when it comes to SEO, you need to know what you're going after. Fixing a few things here
and there is not enough in the long run. You need a strategy. Every page needs to target one
keyword and you need to keep track of the rankings of your most important pages, if not all.

There are many tools which can help you out track keyword rankings.

● Serprobot​ - freemium
● What's my Serp​ - freemium
● Serpwatcher
● Ahrefs
● Seranking

4. Check for About, Contact, Privacy Policy and TOS page

This one is simple but sometimes overlooked. Make sure you have what I like to call "trust
pages" on your website. And these are the About, Contact, Privacy Policy and Terms of Service
page.

Why are they important? Google measures sites from a trust perspective as well. Any legit
business should and does have such pages live so it's important that you have them too.

User Experience
5. Check for Pretty Permalinks
So what are pretty permalinks? Like the name implies, any URL should emphasize the page
that it's all about. Here's an experiment. Can you identify which URL is the pretty one?
https://theseochecklist.com/?aspx=456032304

https://theseochecklist.com/welcome-to-the-club/

You got it!

Why is this important? From a UX, pretty permalinks can show what a page is all about, even
before checking out the page. SEO-wise, URLs are a very important ranking factor so having
this right is crucial for your SEO efforts.

With WordPress this is simple to achieve. Go to Settings->Permalinks and set on Post Name.
Save. That's it!

6. Check the site is mobile friendly

60% of visitors use a mobile device to see your website. Long gone are the days when not
having a responsive website was a normal thing. Therefore, you have to make sure that your
website is mobile friendly.

There are tools which can help you out test your site like the Google Mobile Friendly Test
https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

You could also resize the window of your browser to see how the site behaves on different
mobile breakpoints.

Also, you can open the Chrome console(F12) and toggle the device toolbar to test how the site
looks like on different mobile devices.

7. Check the site loads fast

Speed is an SEO ranking factor. Let's say there are 2 identical pages on 2 different websites.
Google will favor in search results the one which loads faster. A no-brainer, right?

Okay, fast, fast, but how fast? Here are a few fun facts, draw by Trinity.One based on their data:

● Only 15% of Websites Operate at an Acceptable Page Speed

● 37% of Visitors Bounce When Your Site Takes Five Seconds to Load
● A One-Second Delay Results in a 7% Drop in Conversions
● Three of the Top Four SEO UX Signals are Page Speed Dependent
Say what?

So what is the sweet spot then? Well, it depends, but as a rule of thumb, every page should
ideally load under 3 seconds.

Tools you could measure the speed of a website:

● https://gtmetrix.com/
● https://www.webpagetest.org/
● https://tools.pingdom.com/

8. Keep URLs short

The URL should be short and concise.

Ideally, you want to condense the essence of your content into roughly three to five words and
try to use a max of 60 characters, as Matt Cutts describes it in​ ​an interview for Stephan
Spencer​:

If you can make your title four- or five-words long – and it is pretty natural. If you
have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it
gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically
will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.

Matt Cutts - former head of search quality at Google

Neil Patel has​ ​a great article​ on the subject too so go and check it out.

9. Check and Optimize your 404 page

Let's do a simple test. Head over to your site and then type in URL "thisismy404page". You
should trigger the 404 page. How does it look like?

Every page should be valuable for the user, especially for those triggering a 404 page on your
website. Why? Because if people can't find what they're looking for, they'll just go back to the
search results, creating a "pogostick" effect and increasing your overall bounce rate.

How do you handle all that?

Simple. Create an experience!

With WordPress, you could easily do that by using this plugin

https://wordpress.org/plugins/404page/ - what it does is it allows you to use any page as your
404 page. So what I like to do is to create a new page, make it look great(page builders can
come here to your help) and set it as the 404 page.

Should you take the shortcut and just 301 redirect the 404 results to the homepage? My answer
would be no. A 404 means something's not there for a reason and this could be your chance to
turn some lost users into prospects by providing them a nice experience where they would
expect the least: on your 404 page.

10. Make it easy to share your content

One of the most underlooked marketing strategies is having real people sharing your content on
their personal social profiles. In terms of old-school sales strategies, this could be translated into
word of mouth and referrals.

How do you do that? Well, by making it easy for people to share your content.

A few things to take into consideration here:

● have a social sharing solution on your website. Very likely the theme you're using
already provides such a solution at the template level. You could further enhance this
experience by adding a custom sharing solution. For WordPress, there are tons of
plugins which can do that but the one I recommend is​ ​Social Snap​ for its features and
performance-friendly. If you want to check out a list rated by performance, here's one put
together by​ ​WpRocket​.
● make it easy for social networks to grab your data. Technically speaking, make sure that
the og tags are set up properly. Tools like Yoast or Rank Math do this automatically and
you can even manually customize the tags, on a page-by-page basis.

11. Claim your brand on multiple social networks

Let's do another experiment. Type in Google search the name of your brand. The 1st page of
results usually fall into these 3 categories:

● links to my website or social networks

● only a few links to my website and social networks
 ● I can't find any mentions to my website, but links to other people's brands

The idea behind this checkbox is simple: secure the entire 1st page of search results for your
brand name. And the way to do this is by claiming your brand's online properties. These include:

● Your website homepage

● Your website other pages
● Facebook Page
● Google My Business
● Instagram
● YouTube
● Pinterest
● Other important niche-specific directory listings

From an user experience point of view, having all these in place will likely increase the trust
factor among people searching for your business and thus, increase the chance of working with
these people.

12. Use Heatmaps to see what users actually see

Heatmaps are a great way to see what users actually see on your website and how they interact
with it. This could help you in many ways by understanding:

● how deep users scroll

● where users click
● what users interact with on the page
● how the website looks like, through the users eyes

Knowing all these, it's easier to improve the overall experience of users on the website. Some of
the heatmap tools that I recommend are:

● https://www.hotjar.com/
● https://www.plerdy.com/
● https://www.crazyegg.com/

Content
One of the top 3 ranking factors among links and RankBrain(the way Google sorts through
search results and displays the right ones).

13. Have an SEO content strategy in place

"Content is King!"

This is the SEO mantra you should guide yourself by, day in and day out. Google relies on
content to rank sites and your job is to provide this content. So having a content strategy in
place is a must have. Because as you already know, consistency is key, no matter what you do.

But you can't just create any type of content and hope that it's going to rank. You need to
publish content that stands out and can potentially earn some links along the way. And that's
why you need a strategy around it.

Here's how you could do this:

● group content around topics and themes

● layer content around different phases of your buyer personas(awareness, middle of the
funnel, ready to buy)
● focus on keywords that are easy to rank and which have traffic
● maintain your old content by revisiting it and keeping it up to date

14. Do keyword research

Every SEO content strategy should have keyword research at the core. You need to know what
people are searching for and provide that content.

You need to make sure the keywords you're writing for are:

● relevant for your business

● tackle customers during a certain buyer-journey phase
● have enough traffic to make your efforts worth while

So, how do you do that?

Well, there are a couple of tools which can help you figure this out:

● Ubersuggest - https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
● Ahrefs - https://ahrefs.com/(paid)
 ● SurferSEO Chrome extension https://surferseo.com/keyword-surfer-extension/

Tips and Tricks :

● Group long-tail keywords by main topic/keyword. While doing the keyword research,
you'll find many similar long-tail keywords covering the same main topic. Group them all
and write a long-form piece of content, tackling each keyword inside it. This way you
avoid content cannibalization issues.
● Go for low-competition keywords if you're just starting out or you know your website is
not yet an authority.
● Find which keywords your competition is ranking for and steal them by writing 10x better
content.

15. Create 10x content

The term "10x content" was firstly introduced by Moz a few years ago and refers to "content that
is 10 times better than the best result that can currently be found in the search results for a
given keyword phrase or topic."

The reason why we use Google search is because we want to find the solution to a problem
we're currently facing. But sometimes the first page of results is populated with short articles
which doesn't help too much.

Imagine reading a piece of content that takes a problem from all angles and solves it in ways
you've never thought about. And the level of details is just insane. You then go ahead and
bookmark it and share it on your social networks, or even link to it from your blog. This is the
effect that a 10x piece of content can have and this is why you need to write such content.

Here are a couple of​ ​10x content examples​ put together by the Moz team for your inspiration.

16. Create long-form content

Although word count is not a ranking factor, here's why long-form content matters:

● long-form content generates more backlinks than short posts therefore,

● longer copy positions better in search results
● which means long-form content brings in the traffic

I admit, this is a causal chain, but this is how things work.

How long should the content be? Statistically speaking, the median is around 800-1500 words
per article.

However, the main goal of the content is to solve a certain problem, no matter if it can do it in
700 or 3000 words. So the easier the content is to consume and understand, the better. And
you might seal a "zero" spot in search results, in the form of a search snippet!

17. Avoid content cannibalization

Content cannibalization = derogatory strategy of targeting the same keyword across several
web pages.

Example:

https://domain.com/new-york-wedding-venues

https://domain.com/new-york-wedding-reception-venues

Both links refer to the same main keyword.

Truth is, both pages probably lack in quality, so instead of ranking higher for the keyword, you'll
not rank at all(well, at least in the first 10 positions). Sure, searcher intent plays a vital role too,
but

How to identify content cannibalization

You could do this easily with Ahrefs. They put​ ​a video​ explaining how to do it. Basically, you
export the keywords your site is ranking for, rearrange them alphabetically and identify URLs
ranking for the same keyword.

How to avoid content cannibalization

● group long-tail keywords in topics and write long-form content covering all the keywords,
instead of writing unique pages for each one of them
● avoid falling into the "searcher intent" trap by targeting the same main keywords twice,
for each searcher intent nuance.

18. E-A-T to the rescue

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness.

The way Google ranks a website is directly correlated to E-A-T. Which means, you, as the
image of the website and brand, need to make sure that the work you're doing on the website
reflects your expertise and authority in the field/niche and that overall, people see you and your
website as trustworthy.

For example, let's take 2 websites:

A - a general, magazine style blog which has articles across different niches: health, food, DIY,
kids, etc.

B - a single person's blog, which happens to be let's say a nurse who works with children and
which speaks about child nursing only.

If both websites will publish an almost identical article, assuming that the websites are also
identical in terms of link and on-page profile, then the article published on the nurse blog will
outrank the one published in the magazine, for the fact that the content of the nurse blog is
stronger correlated to E-A-T than the other one. Makes sense?

Another one, if you're a photographer and suddenly decide to write on your photography
website about your hobby of knitting socks, that might not be the best idea, right?

So, it's important to write content around the fields you're an expert in, considered an authority
and the way you're doing it, triggers the trustworthiness factor, from both content and user
experience point of views.

19. Create Content Hubs

Content hubs should be part of anyone serious about having a solid site structure.

People call them in many ways: pillar pages, topic clusters, content hubs and if you noticed,
Yoast SEO plugin asks you to mark pages as "cornerstone content", so that it can help you
design the hub.

So the content hub strategy is an internal linking strategy that involves linking several pages of
related content (sometimes referred to as “spoke” pages) back to a central hub page.

There are many ways in which to build content hubs. These can be your own current blog
categories or unique pages built from scratch.
If you're searching for inspiration,​ ​here​ is more on the subject. Also, check out​ ​this exhaustive
list​ of content hubs put together by MIG.

20. "Feed" the hubs with supporting content

Hub pages usually cover a specific topic, a keyword with a big search volume and a medium to
hard ranking difficulty. Such a page is hard to rank on its own so it needs help.

Your job is to create supporting content, to feed the hub page.

Very likely you already have these hub pages on the website, in the form of categories. So what
you need to do is to write blog posts to populate the categories.

21. Update content on a regular basis

Content marketing is an ongoing process. It's crucial to publish content but it's also very
important to revise the old content and making sure that it's still relevant by updating it.

You might think that such a task is unproductive but you're so wrong. Studies shown that
updated old content can perform much better than new content. You could even double the
traffic of an old page by updating it properly.

Here are a few ideas you could use when updating old content:

● maintain the information accurate

● fix any broken links and add new links to relevant references
● fix grammar mistakes
● add media to the post, as more images or video embeds

The best part is once you're done, updating a post will change the published/updated date to
today, so it will show up in results with the new date(if your theme allows it) and therefore, it will
look as a freshly published piece of content in search results.

22. Add content to your categories

This is also a no-brainer but yet, such an underlooked tactic. As I previously mentioned, your
blog categories act as content hubs. The problem with them is that they automatically show
content from your blog posts. This could create cannibalization issues, as the same content
appears multiple times across the site.

So in order to fix this issue, and to help these pages actually stand a chance to rank, they need
unique content.

So the way you do this in WordPress is by heading over to each category and adding a unique
description. This is the basic thing you could do.

Performance
23. Use a Performant Web Host
Hosting your website on the right platform is important because it can impact a series of SEO
factors such as pagespeed, bounce rate and the overall UX experience.

In the previous years, the hype was all about going with the big players, such as Bluehost or
GoDaddy, but it's hard for such big companies to deliver a service which can fit so many niches.

Nowadays, we can speak about boutique web hosts, which dedicate to specific niches with
specific needs and a-la-carte webhosting providers, which offer you the server and the platform
to build your site. Honestly, at this moment, such services are the ones you should host your
sites with: they're novelty, the technology is up-to-date and because they're serving specific
niches, the support is top-notch.

My recommendations are:

● Cloudways: your managed cloud hosting platform and the one I use for my latest
projects.
● SiteGround: your classic shared webhosting provider which puts accent on up-t0-date
technology and WordPress-friendly service. Siteground is the one I personally use for
my biggest project, DeliciousThemes.
● Kinsta - Managed WordPress hosting for enterprise

24. Check that the server is located close to your service

area
If you're a local business, here's a trick which could help making your site faster.

Let's say I offer my services in the San Francisco area. I would sign up with​ ​Cloudways​, pick a
DigitalOcean or Vultr server, pick the location of the server in San Francisco and boom! When
someone accesses the website, it will load super fast, because the site doesn't have to wait for
a long back and forth DNS change before showing the content.

This strategy works great for local businesses, but what if you're serving people nationally or
across the globe? This is what CDNs are for.

25. Use a CDN

CDN stands for content delivery network. According to Yoast, a CDN is "a network of servers in
different geographic locations working together to get content to load faster by serving it from a
location near the visitor."

So if you're serving customers globally, a CDN should be on your to-do list.

But a CDN does more than just hosting your static files on servers across the globe. Here's how
a CDN could help you:

● delivering static content to users faster

● save you bandwidth
● supporting you scale resources in case you go viral!
● adding a new layer of security

CDNs I recommend:

● BunnyCDN
● CloudFlare
● KeyCDN
● StackPath

26. Check for GZIP Compression

Gzip is a method of compressing files (making them smaller) for faster network transfers. It is
also a file format. Compression allows your web server to provide smaller file sizes which load
faster for your website users. Enabling gzip compression is a standard practice, however, there
are still hosts which don't offer such a feature by default. So it's good to check if you have this
enabled.

To test for GZIP compression, head over to one of these two apps:

● https://www.giftofspeed.com/gzip-test/
● https://varvy.com/tools/gzip/

If you find that you don't have GZIP compression, then reach out to your webhosting provider
and ask them to do it for you. Alternatively, it's time to switch to a proper webhost.

27. Check for HTTP/2

HTTP is the network protocol through which all the network information between the user and
your site/server is negotiated. It's the channel which makes it possible to load websites.

HTTP/2 is a major revision of HTTP/1 and the biggest difference is in performance. After all,
we're talking about a 18 years difference between the two! HTTP/2 can send multiple requests
for data in parallel over a single TCP connection. This is the most advanced feature of the
HTTP/2 protocol because it allows you to download web files via ASync mode from one server.

Here's a cool test made by Google to better understand the difference between HTTP/1 and
HTTP/2. Click on the links and see the difference. A huge one, I would say! That's why you
need to ensure that your server runs on HTTP/2.

HTTP/2 testing tools:

● https://http2.pro/
● https://tools.keycdn.com/http2-test

If you find that your website doesn't support HTTP/2, reach out to your webhosting provider. If
they can't enable this feature for you, then it's time to switch hosts.

HTTP/3 is a work in progress and it's scheduled to be launched later this year so keep an eye
on this checkbox.

28. Use a caching solution

Caching is the process in which ​the server stores in memory the website data as static​, in
order to be served faster. There are multiple types of caching available and I'll name a few here:

● server-side cache
● database cache
● object cache
● page cache
● CDN cache

Each one of these store the data on different levels.

Now, having a caching solution in place should be standard, for any website. Luckily for us,
there are many solutions for enabling caching, especially for WordPress.

Many webhosting providers came up with their own caching solutions built around their current
infrastructure. I would mention here SG Optimizer by Siteground or Breeze by Cloudways.
These are all free to use especially when hosting websites with these providers.

Among the premium plugins available, I recommend:

● Wp Rocket
● Swift Performance

These are not just caching plugins but some of them, website optimization powerhouses, doing
more than just caching: image optimization, CSS&JS files optimization, database optimization
and more.

Caching makes it faster for a page to be served​, therefore, increasing the page loading
speed, therefore, adding up to a great user experience.

29. Minify JS/CSS files

Minifying Javascript and CSS files will make the page smaller in size, thus making the page
faster to load.

The way you do this is via one of the caching plugins mentioned above.

I would mention here the​ ​Autoptimize WordPress plugin​ as well. The plugin doesn't deal with
caching, but with image and files optimization.
30. Resize large images at upload
The biggest size footprint of a website is represented by rich-media items, mainly images. If
you're running an image-heavy website, the discrepancy between images and the rest of the
resources would be even higher.

Many times I stumbled upon sites showcasing huge images, taken straight out of the camera
and being served to users. A 7MB image being served in front of a user which visits the website
from a 3G carrier really has an impact, don't you think?

The best way to avoid such situations would be to automatically resize the accidentally
uploaded large images onto the website. With WordPress, there are many plugins which does
that or offer the feature, among others. They are:

● Shortpixel Image Optimizer

● Resize Image After Upload​ by Shortpixel
● Imsanity
● Swift Performance Pro

31. Compress and Optimize images

I can't keep on hammering away enough at this! As I mentioned above, images are the biggest
factor which influence the size of a page so optimizing them properly is like the 80/20 of any
website optimization.

So how do you do that? Well, with WordPress, there are plenty of image optimization plugins
available, some of them as part of general optimization plugins, others as individual solutions.

● Shortpixel Image Optimizer

● Imagify​, part of the Wp Rocket family
● SmushIt
● Flying Images
● Imsanity

What should you look after?

Personally, I prefer to use a "glossy" approach because it's right in the middle: not too
aggressive(lossy - best performance, at the cost of image quality) and not too soft(lossless -
best image quality, low performance), the best of both worlds.
32. Lazy Load Images & Iframes(YouTube embeds, etc)
Lazy loading images(and iframes) means "loading images on websites asynchronously — that
is, after the above-the-fold content is fully loaded, or even conditionally, only when they appear
in the browser's viewport. This means that if users don't scroll all the way down, images placed
at the bottom of the page won't even be loaded." - Sitepoint

This is a very cool technique which can speed up a site big times!

How do you do this? Well, by using a WordPress plugin, obviously :)

The options are quite extensive here, from individual solutions to features as part of
performance optimization plugins:

● Autoptimize​ (images & iframes)

● SmushIt​ - (images only)
● Flying Images​(images only)
● WpRocket (images & iframes)
● Swift Performance Pro (images & iframes)

33. Update technology

It's important to​ keep everything under the hood up to date​, so that you can benefit from the
latest features in terms of security and performance.

With WordPress, make sure to update ​WordPress core, plugins and themes.

This not only improves performance but also enforces the security of your website. Trust me, ​a
hacked website is a nightmare​, because not only you lose control over the site, but your
rankings will tank as fast as being manually penalized by Google.

Speaking about webhosts, keep in mind that the server your site is running on needs to also be
top-notch. This means it needs to be a modern server running the latest versions of PHP,
MySQL, Apache or Nginx, etc. You usually get one of these by using a cloud webhosting
platform such as​ ​CloudWays​ or a dedicated one such as​ ​Kinsta​.
34. Optimize database
This point is specific to WordPress users.

With WordPress, all the content(posts, pages, comments, etc) is stored in the database. With
time, the database tables start to collect junk information which start to slow down processes
within the database. So it's important to optimize the database from time to time, to make sure it
runs smoothly.

Here are a couple of plugins which can help you out with this:

● Wp Optimize
● Optimize Database after Cleaning Revisions
● Breeze
● Wp Rocket
● Swift Performance

On-Page SEO
The on-page SEO section is all about the things you need to check when optimizing a page.

35. Check that the content matches the search intent of

the target keyword
Check that the content matches the search intent of the target keyword of your article.

This is crucial because if your page doesn't satisfy user intent, it's not going to rank.

There are 3 types of search intent:

● informational(ex: "how to knit socks")

● transactional(ex: "hand-made socks amazon")
● commercial(ex: "mailchimp review")
● navigational(ex: "starbucks near me")

So my advice for you would be that before writing any piece of content for a keyword you've
been researching, check the search results to see what Google shows for that keyword and
match your content with the same user intent.
36. Have the target keyword in URL, Title and Heading
Research shows that articles which have the target keyword in URL, title and heading rank
higher than the ones which don't satisfy this trio.

Let's take for example "mailchimp review" as the main keyword we're going after.

The anatomy of an optimized trio would be something like:

● Title: "Mailchimp Review. Still the Best Email Service Provider in 2020?"
● URL: "https://domain.com/mailchimp-review/"
● Heading inside the article copy: "Prerequisites of our Mailchimp review"

37. Make use of one H1 on each page

A no-brainer, right? Yet, many people accidentally end up with 2 H1s on the same page.

Why is this important? Well, Heading 1 can help search engines understand what the page is all
about.

As a good practice, match the H1 with the Meta Title set for the page.

38. Set an enticing, yet SEO-oriented meta title

SEO-wise, the title of a page is part of your SERP real-estate, together with the meta
description.

An SEO-optimized title will ​trigger multiple ranking factors​ such as user intent, click-though
rate(CTR) and keyword match so it's important to set it right.

When optimizing a title for SEO, keep in mind these aspects:

● make it match the intent of the focus keyword

● make it enticing to increase click-through rate
● keep it ​under the maximum character limit​ - this varies by search type, but as a good
practice, use the focus keyword in the first half of the title
39. Write a compelling meta description
Meta description is not a direct ranking factor, but it affects other ranking factors such as
click-through rate, so a well-written meta description can make all the difference.

Just as with titles, the same criteria applies for meta description as well:

● make it match the intent of the focus keyword/article

● make it enticing to increase click-through rate - you can use a little bit of clickbait as well.
● keep it under the maximum character limit
● use the focus keyword as part of the description

40. Use Headings for content hierarchy

Google loves neat page structures and headings are the best way to structurize the content of a
page.

As a rule of thumb, use Heading1(H1) for the main title, which defines the page and H2, H3 and
so on for the subtitles, etc.

41. Write for people, not for search engines

Long gone are the days when keyword stuffing and phrases which don't make any sense
because of weird keyword associations were the defining factors for ranking a page.

Nowadays, search engines as Google rely on complex algorithms to understand what a page is
all about and rank it appropriately.

At the core of a search engine stays the end-user experience, so the greater the experience a
user has on your site, the better.

So it's important to write content for people and not search engines.

42. Format and style the content properly

I mentioned above the importance of headings inside a page.

Formatting and styling a page properly is important to ensure a great user experience.

Use formatting tags such as bold, italic, lists, blockquotes, etc to enhance the user experience
and enjoy the benefits of higher rankings.

43. Focus keyword in 1st paragraph

Studies shown that pages having the focus keyword in the first paragraph rank higher than
pages which don't.

So try to keep your focus keyword, or at least, variations of it, in the 1st paragraph of your copy.

44. Link to other relevant pages

Internal linking(see Content Hubs checkpoint) can make the difference between a healthy
website and a website struggling for organic traffic.

As a rule of thumb, always link to other internal and relevant pages when writing a new piece of
content.

45. Link out to relevant, authoritative websites

Studies shown that pages which link to external sites rank higher in search results than the ones
which don't.

So always link to other articles or websites which are related to your content. This helps
maintaining a good user experience as people could reach out to these websites and find out
more about the problem they're trying to solve.

You could set a series of anchor parameters as well:

● rel nofollow(always nofollow if the link is an affiliate)

● target _blank for opening the link in a new window
You don't want to be the dead end of the internet, do you? :)

So keep the end user in mind link to other websites!

46. Never link to a page/website with the same anchor the

current page is targeting
Sounds hilarious, right? But it happens all the time.

Let's take the focus keyword "san diego wedding photographer" and assume that this is the
keyword I go for my homepage. By accident, I add inside the copy a link to my About page, with
the same anchor text, "san diego wedding photographer". What this does is to send signals that
the page that I want to rank for the keyword is actually the About page.

What I would do instead is link from the About to the Homepage with the anchor text "san diego
wedding photographer" because this way I signal Google that my homepage is the one I want to
rank for the keyword.

So try to avoid doing this, for any page.

It's hard to identify this issue, especially for blog posts, because the anchor texts are sometimes
not exact match with the focus keyword, but variations of it. So you end up linking to a similar
article from another website and you're basically giving that page a boost in search results for
the keyword you're writing for.

47. Name your images properly

2020 and Google still doesn't have a way to identify what an image is all about, by analyzing the
picture. So it has to rely on image names and tags designed specifically for identifying them.

For this reason, it's important to name your images accordingly.

The best example I could give are stock photo sites. If you go to Depositphotos for example and
hover an image, you'll see the description of it. This is how images should be named.

Ex: "stock-photo-delicious-fresh-meat-cheeseburgers-wooden.jpg"
48. Set images alt text
For the same above reason, it's important to set images alt text, so that search engines could
understand what images are all about.

Be descriptive, like you would have to publish the images on stock photo sites.

A word of caution, though. Setting similar alt tags to the images could over-optimize a page,
because the alt tags add up to the keyword density. So set unique alt tags and be descriptive.

49. Check for social markup

When you share a page on social networks, these automatically fetch the content of the page
and show up information such as URL, title, description and image.

These are called og(opengraph) tags and are set by your SEO plugin.

You should check what information is going to be displayed when someone shares your content
on social networks and tweak it to match your content.

50. Increase dwell time

Dwell Time is the amount of time that a Google searcher spends on a page from the search
results before returning back to the SERPs. This is considered by many a ranking factor.

There are many tricks on how to improve this aspect:

● match user intent

● write great content
● go straight to the point of the article in the 1st paragraph
● add a video embed(an YouTube video)
● add an audio embed(podcast embeds work great)

51. Strike for the Featured Snippet

The Featured Snippets are a format which is supposed to provide users with a concise, direct
answer to their questions – right there on the search results page, without the users having to
click through to a specific result.

You're stumbling upon them every day, and I would say more and more because the main goal
of Google is to provide a great experience by offering instant answers to specific questions. This
also means that the chances of someone landing on your page are getting smaller. So it's
important to steal the featured snippet, whenever possible.

Here are a few tips which can help you out achieve this:

● Featured snippet URLs often feature <ol> and <table> so format your content
appropriately
● Make sure one article answers many similar questions
● Make sure to use images in your posts and name them accordingly
● Make sure the article ranks on 1st page of Google

Here​ is a great article by Ahrefs which could help you out steal more featured snippets.

52. Don’t over-optimize

Search engine over optimization is the bad practice of creating too many SEO adjustments to
the point that these adjustments can cause rankings to drop.

This is a practice which dates from many years ago, when the only way to rank was to
overoptimize, by repeating the same keywords over and over again.

Here's where over-optimization occurs:

● with content: stuffing the same keywords variation up to the point where it is too much,
even from a user experience point of view
● with anchors: using the same anchor text, which matches the target URL(ex: Check out
my new SEO checklist ebook where URL is https://domain.com/seo-checklist-ebook/)
● stuffing keywords in the footer or sidebar
● having a high dofollow/nofollow external backlinks ratio - we know that dofollow links are
the ones which move the needle but a natural website gets both types of links to play it
safe.
Technical
53. Switch to https
Search engines are obsessed with user experience and security. One of the hyped changes of
2019 was the Chrome browser notifications of marking non-https websites as non-secure. So if
your site doesn't run on https, then it will be flagged as being non-secure.

Here's how the algorithm works: if 2 websites are identical, it will favor the one running on https
in search results.

A big mistake I see all the time is people migrating websites to https but forgetting to do a 301
redirect from the http to https version. So they end up with basically 2 sites: one loading on http
and the second one loading on https. This is a big issue because Google sees this as 2 different
websites.

54. Check for one single www version

In the same spirit as above, make it clear what URL version your website follows.

Personally, I prefer this one:

https://domain.com - without www

But the one with www works too:

https://www.domain.com

Also, be consistent with the preferred www version when doing link building and across your
social networks. For example, if your site loads without www, then it would be weird to use
https://www.domain.com across your social networks. Just do it without the www.

55. Fix mixed content

Google announced that any mixed content errors will be blocked, in future versions of Chrome
browser. What does this mean?
Well, it means that your website might suffer visual changes, due to the mixed content not being
loaded by the browser anymore.

What mixed content means?

Mixed content refers to a mix of secure and non-secure resources found on a webpage. When a
secure webpage attempts to use resources (images, CSS, etc.) that are not secure, it results in
“mixed content”.

For example, your site runs on https, but somehow it loads a CSS file on http(non-secure). This
creates a mixed content error.

This issue usually appears when using an old theme or outdated plugins for the site. So ensure
that the theme and plugins are all up to date and from trusted sources.

56. Create a Sitemap & Add it to Google Search

Console(GSC)
According to Google, a sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos,
and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google
read this file to more intelligently crawl your site.

In other words, with a sitemap, you tell search engines how the structure of your site looks like
and what pages they should crawl.

If you're using the Yoast or RankMath SEO plugins, then the sitemap is automatically
generated. Here's an example https://deliciousthemes.com/sitemap_index.xml

Once you have it live, then submit it to Google Search Console. This way, the crawling spiders
will go over it and crawl your website faster and better.

57. Create a robots.txt file

Robots.txt, also known as the robots exclusion protocol is a file which contains instructions for
crawling spiders. It tells what pages to crawl and what pages NOT to crawl.
Every Googlebot has a crawling budget(the number of URLs Googlebot can and wants to crawl)
so it's important to educate the spider to crawl the most important pages and ignore the ones
which don't matter(attachment pages, sometimes tags, etc).

Here's an example of a robots.txt file https://deliciousthemes.com/robots.txt

Now, let's do a test:

Try to access a your robots.txt file by going to https://yourwebsite.com/robots.txt

If it returns the file, great, you have a robots.txt in place. Otherwise, create one and drop it in the
root of your website, via ftp.

Here's what you can do with the robots.txt file:

● sculpt crawling budget by removing unnecessary pages from the crawl

● stop spiders from accessing "private" pages and showing them in search results. We can
talk here about membership or thank you pages that you don't want to see.

NeilPatel has​ ​a great article​ on the subject, so go check it out!

58. Check that URLs have redirects to / or the canonical

is set to /
A weird thing I usually notice in Google Analytics is the presence of the same URL, with and
without the trailing slash.

So I have 2 URLs like so:

● https://site.com/the-seo-checklist/
● https://site.com/the-seo-checklist - without the trailing slash

This basically mean that Google sees that you have 2 different pages, for the same URL.

You want to avoid this and have consistent URLs across the website.

Firstly, check out that the canonical URL is set to / - at this point, if the canonical has the / then
you're fine.

But if you want to solve this for good, you can do a 301 redirect from the URL without a slash to
the one with /
59. Check and fix broken links
If you've been blogging or running a website for more than 2 or 3 years, then very likely, you
have a bunch of broken links inside the content.

A broken link is a link which usually returns a 404 error.

Yeah, but how do I identify them? Well, there are crawling tools which can help you out with
that. And here I would suggest​ ​Sitebulb​(my favorite) and​ ​Screaming Frog SEO Spider​(free up to
500 urls).

There is also​ ​a WordPress plugin​ which does that but it will cause some performance issues
because of the way it searches for the links(requires many resources so if you don't have a solid
webhost, it might cause the server go down).

Here are 5 ways​ on how to check for broken links, showcased by Kinsta.

60. Check and fix redirect chains

A redirect chain is a two or more redirects happening at the same time.

Ex of a redirect chain: Page A -> Page B -> Page C -> Page D.

To fix these, you need to simply redirect Page A to Page D via a 301 redirect and break the
chain.

Why is this important?

● it improves crawling
● it improves page loading times
● it improves link equity, meaning that the Page D gets more link power, thus ranking
higher.

How do you do it?

You need to use a crawling tool. And here I would suggest​ ​Sitebulb​(my favorite) and​ ​Screaming
Frog SEO Spider​(free up to 500 urls).
61. Fix missing and duplicate meta titles and descriptions
As I already mentioned, the meta title and description show up in search results. The way they
look and sound like makes the difference between ranking or not.

But from time to time, by accident or because of the CMS your website is built on, you end up
with either missing or duplicate meta titles and descriptions.

How do you find this? Again, you could do it with a crawling tool, such as SiteBulb or Screaming
Frog.

But here's​ ​a good tutorial​ on how to avoid all these.

62. Use redirects properly

There are multiple redirect types which you could use for specific cases. But the most important
ones related to SEO are:

● 301 redirect​ - permanent redirect or in other words, the page has a new address, at the
new URL
● 302 redirect​ - temporary redirect
● 410 redirect​ - gone, the page doesn't exist anymore, so search engines shouldn't be
bothered indexing it anymore

Here are a few examples of cases and what redirect works best for them:

● when consolidating page A with the content of page B, ​301 redirect B to A

● when you create a new page with some up to date information, but you have a page B
tackling the same subject, 301 redirect B to A
● when you want to transfer the link power from page A to B, ​301 redirect A to B
● when you delete a page and want to mark it as "gone" from the internet, use 410 redirect
- as a matter of fact, this is the purpose of the ​410 directive​.

How do you make these redirects? Well, you could do it manually, via the .htaccess file or with
WordPress, by using a plugin. And here I would mention:

● Redirection
● Simple 301 Redirects
 ● RankMath

63. Check for index coverage issues

To check for index coverage issues, you just have to go to your Google Search Console
property and analyze the Coverage tab, under Index section.

What should you look for?

The tools reports issues such as:

● drop in total indexed pages without corresponding errors which could mean that you
might be blocking access to certain pages, via robots.txt or by noindex-ing them
● error spikes
● missing pages
● server errors
● 404 errors

With so much information, you could then take educated decisions regarding the SEO health of
the site.

64. Check for manual penalties

Getting a manual penalty from Google is a serious problem. Here's how the process works: you
do some shady SEO-stuff for the website, some red flags are triggered, Google catches you,
then a real person manually verifies the site against the red flags and if you're caught, you get a
manual penalty and.

What does it mean? Well, it means that the site is gone from search results, until you fix the
issues and resubmit the site again for reconsideration.

The chance of receiving a manual penalty is very low but if you notice that the organic traffic
suddenly dropped significantly, Google Search Console is the first place to check.

65. Keep pages at maximum 3 clicks from reach

Google assumes any content buried deep on your site is less important so it's crucial to keep
the most important pages at reach.

This helps googlebots crawl your website more efficiently and increase the chances of having all
the important pages indexed.

Studies have shown that the optimal crawl depth for a website shouldn't exceed 3 levels.

Here's what you could do to increase the accessibility to your pages:

● utilize internal linking

● include the most important URLs as high up in a site’s architecture as possible.
● use breadcrumbs to allow users and search engines navigate pages

66. Use "noindex" and "nofollow" tags properly

Google gives us a series of tags that we could use to educate it regarding what pages we want
to be indexed, followed or not accessible. These tags are:

● Noindex: tells search engines not to include your pags in search results.
● Disallow: tells them not to crawl your pages
● Nofollow: tells them not to follow the links on your page.

When do you use them?

Well, we usually use them when we want to optimize the crawling budget. Imagine you have
1000 pages on the site, but 800 are actually generated by tags. You just set the tags as
noindex(because it's a good practice) and now the site gets more efficiently crawled.

How do you use them? Well, with WordPress and any decent CMS, your SEO solution(Yoast,
RankMath, etc) gives you options for such a task.

67. Disable Irrelevant Pages from Being Indexed

The ranking strength of a website is the average ranking strength of its pages. With that in mind,
every page should go through a vetting process. Just ask yourself, "is this page going to rank for
the keyword that it's targeting?"
With every CMS, there comes a series of automatically generated pages which from an SEO
point of view, shouldn't be indexed(sometimes, and by case). With WordPress, they usually are:

● tags
● attachments
● custom post types pages
● custom post types categories
● custom post types tags
● author pages

How do you disable these? With WordPress, you could use Yoast SEO or Rank Math to do it.

Off Page SEO

68. Have a solid link building strategy in place

One of the most important ranking factor which exists since the beginning of the search engines
is links pointing to your site. But the way you gain these links are also very important.

The holy grail of a link building strategy is creating great content which earns links on its own.
Makes sense, right? Who doesn't want to have websites linking back to the site every time a
new post goes live? If things were that easy...anyways...here are a series of suggestions on
how to build links. Keep in mind that it's crucial to keep your link profile natural and links built at
the right velocity.

How to ethically build links to your site:

● when you are getting started with a site, start with the foundational links
● create great content which could earn links on itself
● create great content and then reach out to industry related sites for a quick link
● reach out to people you've been collaborating offline in the past and ask for a link or a
way to get featured on their site
● repurpose the content of your site

Keep in mind that link building is an ongoing process. You can't just build some links in a month
and then forget about it. You have to be consistent and the results will come.

69. Build foundational links

When you start a new website, the first thing you do is creating social profiles for it. Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. These are considered as being part of the foundational links.

Just like a home being built on a solid foundation, think about foundational links as the
supporting framework for your organic growth. These links are:

● social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Vimeo, YouTube, etc.

● high-authority directories: Yelp, BBB, YellowPages, Expertise, etc.
● niche-specific directories: TheKnot, WeddingWire, FearlessPhotographers, etc.

Keep in mind that foundational links usually work as business citations, so if you're a local
business, it's important to be consistent with your business name, address and phone
number(NAP). Find out more in the Local SEO section.

70. Interlink Social Networks

Usually, when completing your profile, social networks allow you to add links to your other social
properties. This is a good practice, because search engines spiders can reach your website
more often and easier.

Not only that, but if you do this, the authority of your social pages will go up and therefore, when
searching for your brand name, the first results page will be a mix of your website and your
social properties - what this does is to increase the trust of your brand. And that's another
milestone checked in a buyer's journey.

71. Guest post on niche-related blogs

An oldie, but so goodie. Guest posting has been and still is one of the most effective ways to
build authority and trust of any brand and increase rankings of any website.

Guest posting is not a one-time, set and forget task but it should be seen as a long-term
strategy, if you really want to reap the most of its efficiency.

Still, there are a series of aspects you need to take into consideration when reaching out for a
guest post:

● do some research first - make sure the blogs you want to guest post on are strongly
related to your niche and are targeting your ideal customers.
 ● connect with the site owner prior to asking for a guest post - don't rely on a cool guest
post pitch template you found online. Site owners are so fed up with guest post
applications every single day and you don't want to fall into the same "neighbourhood".
Connect with them on social media first, exchange some messages and build a bit of
rapport. Afterwards, you could ask for a guest post.
● pick a winning topic to write about - check out the website to see which content did great
and propose some similar titles.
● make sure to format the content correctly, by adding images and links to both your site
and other useful resources on other sites.
● include your bio - this is important, because you could add another link back to your
homepage and also links to 1-2 social profiles.

72. Ask partners you've worked with for a link

Depending on your niche, this could work more or less. Still, if you've been part of an event as a
vendor or if you usually collaborate with other professionals when delivering your services, then
this is a great opportunity for you to seal some more links.

Example:

● you're a wedding photographer and for every wedding that you take, there are also a
dozen of other people involved in making the day memorable for the bride and groom:
florist, cake, hair & makeup, DJ, wedding planner, stationary, etc.
● check out their websites and see how they're showcasing their work
● reach out and send them a couple of the shots with their work and ask them to add them
to their portfolio and link back to you or let you do a guest post, or have them do an
article with the pictures and link back to the site.

73. Turn brand mentions into links

A brand mention is the name of your business in plain text, an unlinked mention of your brand.
The goal here is to turn these mentions into links.

There are many tools which you could use to find these link opportunities:

● Ahrefs - they also have​ ​an amazing guide​ on how to do this

● Brand24
● BrandMentions
There's a catch though. If you're just getting started or don't have a big online footprint, then
you'll probably have a hard time finding brand mentions. But if you're well established and just
want to pick a low hanging fruit, then this one's for you.

74. Use Social Signals to boost your page rankings

According to​ ​Bigcommerce​, "social signals refer to a webpage's collective shares, likes and
overall social media visibility as perceived by search engines. These activities contribute to a
page's organic search ranking and are seen as another form of citation, similar to backlinks."

In other words, social signals act as backlinks and Google sees them as a ranking factor which
means they have a direct impact on your rankings.

So every time you post a page, make sure to post it and eventually give it a boost by promoting
it on social media. In the next section, I'll show you how you can automate the process.

75. Schedule social posting

Promoting your content on social media is time consuming and many times, it involves hiring a
virtual assistant.

I mentioned previously why it's important to post on social media. Social signals play a
significant role in the economy of your rankings.

But there are also tools that can automate the process for you:

● Missinglettr​ - it takes your blog posts and transforms them into social media campaigns
drip fed for an entire year
● Buffer​ - create and schedule and publish content for social media
● Coschedule​ - a full suite of tools for automating marketing
● NelioContent​ - WordPress plugin - editorial calendar and social automation tool

Local SEO
If you’re a business offering your services locally, then you are fully eligible to use local SEO to
your advantage. The question is not whether you should or not, but you must do this if you want
to get closer to your local ideal clients.

The goal is to show up in front of the people when searching for a product or service you might
be offering.

There are many channels for promoting yourself locally, but still, the most obvious one is
Google.

76. Claim your Google My Business Listing

The way you show up in local search results is by leveraging the Google My Business feature
offered by Google, by claiming your Google My Business listing.

Why is it important to do so? Because local search queries have sometimes a totally different
user intent and usually, they don’t make sense at all for being targeted via the
national/global/general SEO approach.

Ex: nail care manicurist near me - how could you target such a term? You can’t so you have to
claim a spot in the local search results and fight to get it in the top 3 or what people call “The
3-Map Pack”. Why? Because Google displays, at this moment, only the top 3 results on the first
page.

How to claim your GMB Listing

If you’re an established business, very likely you already claimed your listing. Otherwise, you
just have to follow the Google wizard for setting it up. Here’s a great​ ​tutorial​ explaining how to
do it.

Once you applied for a listing, it’s time to get it verified, either via phone, SMS or mail. Once it’s
verified, you’re good to go!

77. Claim Yelp Listing

Google is indeed the biggest player in the local space, but depending on your niche, it’s
important to get listed on as many trusted local directories as possible. One of these is Yelp.
Claiming an Yelp listing requires 3 steps

● Sign up for an account

● Create your listing
● Get your listing verified - Yelp will call the phone number you provided in the listing, so if
you run a brick and mortar business and gave the location phone number, then you
need to be there to answer the phone and get the listing verified.

78. Claim your Bing Places for Business Listing

More or less, Bing is the biggest Google competitor in the space. Owned by Microsoft, Bing is
used as the default search engine for Microsoft related products and millions of people use it as
their preferred search engine. So getting listed on Bing should be a natural thing to do too.

The process is the same as with Google:

● Claim your listing

● Complete your listing profile
● Get your listing verified

79. Optimize Listings

Now here’s where things get fun. It is not enough to just claim your local business listings, it’s
crucial to have them optimized the right way, so that you can show up in the map pack. After all,
this is your main goal.

Here’s how Google determines local rankings. There are 3 factors which Google guides when
deciding what results to display:

● Relevance - according to Google, relevance refers to how well a local listing matches
what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can
help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant
searches.
● Distance - Just like it sounds–how far is each potential search result from the location
term used in a search? If a user doesn't specify a location in their search, Google will
calculate distance based on what’s known about their location.
● Prominence - Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Prominence is also
based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links,
articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search
 ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business's local
ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to
local search optimization.

In the next section, I’ll give you a series of tips on how to properly optimize your Google My
Business profile. Algorithmically speaking, the ranking factors might vary from search engine to
another, the tips should give your listings a boost no matter the channel. These tips are just the
basics of an optimized listing, others more advanced being presented in the next sections.

How to optimize a Google My Business location

● Have a complete and accurate business information profile. This includes your business
name, address, phone number, website, category, description, photos, working hours,
FAQs and so on. Leave no stone unturned!
● Choose the right category/categories for your business. If you don’t know what category
you’re in, search Google for the main service you’re offering and see what category the
top results are in.
● Upload high-quality, high-descriptive images. A study has shown that a business with
more pictures ranks higher in the map pack. So make sure to upload at least:
○ 3 interior pics
○ 3 exterior pics
○ Pictures of your work, products or services
○ Pictures of your staff(if any), ideally taken when serving customers
● Google allows you to add a 750-character description to your listing so make sure you
use them all and include in it keywords related to your business.
● Set a Q&A section. Content is king, right? So the more content you have on your listing,
the merrier. Not to mention that an FAQs section will answer your prospects questions
so it’s a great way to let them know what you’re all about and handle a few objections
way before they reach out.
● Claim your listing short URL. You could see it as the link to your listing. You now have an
easy way to share your listing across the internet or with your customers.

These are the basics of any listing optimization. If you follow these suggestions, you'll probably
be above 80% of the businesses with GMBs set up.

80. Get on general relevant directories

General web directories are still good for generating the foundational links any business need in
order to thrive on Google search. The only advice here would be to pick them wisely and don’t
go nuts trying to get listed on every single one on the internet.

But a link is a link, right? Well, not quite, at least not with general directories. You have to switch
your mindset from getting listed on a directory for the link but to viewing it as a source of traffic
and trust. So when vetting for a web directory, ask yourself these questions:

● Is this a reputable website?

● Is my target audience likely to search for business on the website?

If the website meet the above criteria, then you can list your business there. Otherwise, don't do
it because in the long run, it could cause you more harm and good.

81. Get on niche-specific directories

When it comes to citations, niche-specific directories are more powerful than the general web
directories. And sometimes, depending on the niche, this type of site can mean more than just a
link back to your website. Here’s why you should get listed on these:

● They are more relevant to your business

● They are targeting your ideal customers
● Your target prospects are constantly visiting these websites
● Your competitors are very likely listed on the sites already
● You can promote yourself on the sites in a form or another and get in front of your ideal
audience
● They could act as mini search engines catered to a specific niche.

82. Reach out for reviews

Google also takes reviews into consideration when ranking a listing. You can see reviews as
links. The more positive reviews you have, the more trusted your business will be and thus, the
more traffic and customers will drive.

So if your listing lacks reviews, it’s time to get some.

Here’s​ ​a great article​ explaining how to do this.

83. Reply to reviews
Google encourages its users to reply to the reviews they get on their local listings. If Google
says it’s good to do so, then you need to do so.

Not only you please the algorithm, but this shows that you care about your customers too.

Also, the more content you drop into the listing, the more chances you have to cover an even
larger spectrum of keywords related to your business, increasing the relevance of your listing.

84. Publish Google Posts

Google posts is a neat, yet so underlooked feature of GMB that allows you to get more in front
of your ideal audience.

85. Add site-wide NAP details

NAP stands for Name - Address - Phone Number and Google sees it as your “signature” for
identifying your local business. A good practice is to add your NAP details on every page of your
site(site-wide), usually in the footer.

86. Have consistent NAP details across the site

As I mentioned earlier, NAP is like your signature. It needs to be unique and it needs to be
consistent.

Therefore, a good practice is to keep it consistent meaning that you have to ensure that the
Name, Address and Phone number are formatted the same across your website.

So don’t use abbreviations on certain pages and then the full name somewhere else. Keep it
consistent.
87. Have consistent NAP details on listings & social
networks
Having a consistent NAP signature on the website is easy and you get that why. However,
trying to keep it consistent on directories and social networks is a bit more complicated,
because for I don’t know what reasons, people try to mix things up when going social.

You either forget to add in your full address, or your phone number or simply use a short version
of your business name. Don’t do that as this is one of the factors that’s causing the biggest
issue with local listings optimization.

On the flip side, maintaining consistent NAP details across your site, directories and other online
places will put you in the 10% of the people who have an optimized listing for local. That simple!

88. Have a content strategy targeting local topics

Some of the top SEO ranking factors are relevance and authority. The way you can check these
is by having a content strategy around the products and services you’re offering, but also
around the location.

For example, let’s say you’re a wedding photographer in New York. A few topic ideas would be
to talk about tips and tricks regarding the wedding ceremony but also about wedding venue
locations in New York and your service areas.

This helps with authority, because the more you write about a specific topic, the more authority
you’ll gain in the space and search engines will rank you higher in search results. And because
of that, you also get ranked higher in the map pack. Makes sense? Good! Time to brainstorm
some content ideas and build some killer content!

89. Claim brand mentions from local sites

If you’ve been serving customers locally for a few years already, I’m pretty sure you also got
mentioned a few times here and there. These are gold, because you could reach out to the
respective site owners and ask them to turn the brand mention into a link.

Another strategy would be to identify your competitors brand mentions and reach out to the local
publications for getting featured on the site or let you write for the site.
Getting links from local sites are part of your local citations package and what local citations do
is to create relevancy around your brand and add up to your authority in the space.

90. Add local business markup to your homepage

So what is Schema?

Schema markup, also known as structured data or structured markup data is the language of
search engines. The goal of schema was to create and provide support for a common group of
tags that could be used by the search engines to better understand and display data.

To translate your content into schema markup, you have to firstly ask yourself “what this page is
all about?” Once you have an answer, then you can pick the right schema type for the
respective page.

Why should you care?

According to Google, schema markup can help you:

● help Google better understand what your website is all about

● Rank higher in search results
● Gain more site traffic because of the better formatted content on search results(snippets,
sitelinks, etc)