Search engine optimization (SEO) enables a startup to get more visibility in search engines which helps to get more website traffic and in turn generate leads. As a result, people searching for products/services similar to those of the startup will find them, and more people will stick around to use its products/services.
We are here to help with an SEO checklist for your website to stay on top of the search engines.
Table of Contents
Let’s take a look at the SEO checklist for startups
Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are one of the basic components of SEO. To drive traffic to your website, you should list keywords that will help people find your website.
Begin your keyword research by creating two lists: one with topic ideas and one with possible keywords. Then, use a free keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner to determine how many people search for each keyword.
To create search-friendly content, focus on using words with a healthy search volume but aren’t too competitive. The 10,000–100,000 monthly search range is a good strategy to follow. Once you’ve identified these terms, add them to your URLs, title tags, and meta tags.
The nature of your audience’s queries will change over time, so you’ll want to monitor the success of keywords and keep up to date with their needs. The same applies as your business grows and changes. It would be best if you revised your keyword strategy regularly.
Setting Up Google Analytics
If you want to see your SEO efforts blossom, you need to monitor them. Set up a Google Analytics and Google Search Console account right away to determine what content is working for your target audience and which keywords you should be focusing on in your content strategy.
In addition, you should sign up for an SEO analytics tool that integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console to ensure your SEO efforts are maximized.
Content Marketing Strategy
Google includes content as a ranking factor in its search algorithm. To be successful, you must have new and unique content. Google uses fresh content as an indicator of authority and relevance. The more often you post new material, the more people will find your site.
Google also boosts content with high value, which is content that answers customer queries with in-depth blog posts. To find out what questions are being asked in your niche, use a tool like an Answer the Public to help you develop ideas for new content.
To attract new visitors and customers, focus on writing useful content naturally embedded with your chosen keywords. By doing so, you increase your search engine ranking and conversion rate. Also, adding the main keyword wherever necessary will bring positive results.
XML Sitemap creation
Web site owners can help search engines understand their sites’ structure by creating an XML sitemap. It, in turn, can help search engines find and index any pages the webmasters wish to be discovered.
Robots.txt File Creation
A robots.txt file is a text document containing instructions for search engine crawlers. Its purpose is to prevent certain parts of a website from being indexed by search engines.
Perform a Site Speed Test
Fast load times are essential for usability. If your website takes too long to load, site visitors will leave.
A high bounce rate is one of several factors that Google may use to determine a website’s SERP ranking. Run your site through a site speed checker tool, such as the free one provided by Google to troubleshoot slow-loading pages.
Reasons Why Your Site Loads Slowly
Optimize Website for Mobile Devices
We have found that users spend a lot of time browsing websites on their mobile devices. Do not forget to optimize your website for mobile devices
It’s important to check your website’s mobile usability. Use Google’s mobile-friendly test to determine how attractive your website appears on a mobile device. If your site looks messy, it’s time to make a few changes.
Reduce Video size
Please limit the number of videos on your website. If you must have videos, they should be hosted by a third-party service like YouTube.
Your website’s performance may improve if you enable compression on your server.
Low-quality hosting is one of the most common causes of a slow website. To avoid this problem, make sure that you use professional web hosting.
Link building
Once you know the keywords your website should target and have covered technical SEO factors, start the link-building process to create backlinks. Backlinks are references to your website or its content from another website. Why do backlinks matter? More backlinks mean more “link juice,” which gives your site a boost in search engine rankings.
In addition to this, you will expose the startup to a new potential clientele if an authoritative website in your niche links out to you.
When you’re seeking to garner links, it’s important to target only those coming from a high-quality website. These are links coming from an internet portal that is well-known and that targets a similar niche market as your own. An SEO tool with an inbound link tracker will enable you to monitor the links you are garnering to avoid poor-quality, spammy links that could harm your standing in the SERPs.
Include Meta description
If you already have a website but haven’t written meta descriptions for every page, you will need to look at the descriptions and decide whether to use Google’s automated snippet or write your own.
To avoid duplicate publishing content in all your meta descriptions, you must carefully examine each one.
When writing a meta description from scratch, ensure that it is not more than 160 characters and includes your main keyword. A meta description is what search engines display underneath a title when people search for your topic. The meta description should make it clear and compelling to website visitors what your page is all about so they will click through to your page. Include a CTA to encourage more clicks.
Image Optimization
Optimized image file names are a good idea. Use a keyword or two in the file names of all your images to ensure that Google can find them. Also, make it a point that the image size is not big or else should reduce it for faster loading of the website.
Include External Link
In addition to finding links from external websites, you must link to relevant sites from your site. Be sure to choose only those sites relevant to the page/content and make sure your anchor text contains the relevant keywords for each page.
No Content Duplication
Duplicate content can harm your website’s search engine optimization by diminishing the quality of your site’s indexing and harming your site’s reputation.
Trying to eliminate duplicate content can be challenging because it is all over the place—from blog posts to URLs. Using a Siteliner, Small SEO Tools or DupliChecker can help you do this job quickly and efficiently.
Check for Bad redirects
302 redirect tells search engines to redirect a page temporarily, usually for a time-specific promotion or site maintenance. To maintain page rank and search engine value, you need to replace 302 redirects with 301 redirects.
Check for Broken Links and Crawl Problems
Checking for broken links, errors, and crawl problems is important for smaller websites. But for larger sites, it’s even more vital to do this because these problems can confuse Google’s spiders and prevent them from finding your pages or making them indexable.
Conclusion
The following list provides the most important points to remember when optimizing your startup website for search engine optimization. Monitor all your efforts and make any necessary adjustments to improve your online presence.
For more information do contact Ahbiv Digital Agency; We are here to help.
