Are you planning to start your small SEO agency but don’t know how? Gladly, we are on the same page! We are here to provide an SEO checklist to let Google recognize your website in its ranks.
Whether you are planning to start your own SEO business or revamp your website, you will need SEO as your ace of cards in topping the search queries. Furthermore, SEO also optimizes your website’s content from ordinary to extraordinary. Now, grab your pen and start checking down this checklist!
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the enhancement process of your website to expand its visuals in Google search queries. This is to let Google understand your website’s content easily in order to recommend and put it on the first page of search queries.
SEO is also responsible for driving traffic to your website, improving rankings, and increasing the visibility of your website. Therefore, if you want to start a small SEO agency, you need to consider everything written in the checklist. Or, if you want to acquire any SEO services, make sure they have almost everything checked.
Guide for Small SEO Agency Starters
To start an efficient small SEO agency, here are the snippets of everything in the checklist:
- SEO Checklist: The Basics
- SEO Checklist: On-Page
- SEO Checklist: Technical
- SEO Checklist: Keywords
- SEO Checklist: Content
- SEO Checklist: Link Building
SEO Checklist: The Basics
Whether you want to start your small SEO agency or acquire SEO services, it is best to have the following basics checked.
- Google Search Console Set Up
The Google Search Console is a very powerful free tool dedicated to SEO. This tool lets you track and have all the vital insights of your site’s performance in Google search queries.
Furthermore, this tool includes features that allow you to view which keyword can bring you the most traffic, lets you fix website errors, present a sitemap that helps search engines to crawl through your website to recommend valuable content in search queries, obtain messages from the Google team, and a lot more. This first step is very crucial in taking the next steps.
- Bing Webmaster Tools Installment
Although it is not as famous as Google, Bing garnered up to one-third of all searches done in the world. And to add that, Bing has almost ninety features like a built-in keyword search tool that is worth optimizing for.
- Google Analytics Set Up
Google Analytics is the best free marketing tool that enables you to have a vision of your website’s data and insights on how people find and use your website. This tool has useful features that allow you to see how much your traffic is increasing, your site’s page views and average bounce rate, how much time was spent on your site, and what pages on your website give you traffic.
Moreover, you can connect your Google Analytics to the Google Search Console for optimum results.
- Yoast SEO Installment
If you’ve been using WordPress, then you should consider using Yoast, too. This combination makes it more efficient to optimize your website for search engines. Moreover, this improves your sitemaps, technical SEO stuff, and robots.txt.
SEO Checklist: On-Page
On-page SEO lets you optimize your website’s content. This includes optimizing your content, title tags, URLs, and internal links.
- Including Keywords in URL
URLs are what helps Google to fully comprehend what your website is all about. Therefore, if you want Google to crawl through your page, include your keywords in your URL— as simple as that. A keyword-rich URL improves your organic CTR or click-through rate.
- Make Your URL Short
With no further explanation, keeping your URL short and precise ranks best in Google search based on the recent analysis.
- Keywords in Headings
Include your keywords in most of the subheadings (H1, H2, H3, H4, so on).
- Optimize Images
Unlike us humans, Google can’t ‘see’ images. However, images can help you with your website ranking. Hence, to let Google understand your image, improve your file names and image alt tags.
SEO Checklist: Technical
The thing about technical SEOs is that they can either make you or break you. Nevertheless, fixing problems regarding technical SEOs is not hard if you follow this list.
- Crawl Errors Identification
If Google had trouble viewing your webpage, this is called ‘Crawl Error.’ You can check if there are Crawl Errors on your site by clicking ‘Coverage’ in the Google Search Console.
You can’t rank on Google’s search query if you have crawl errors on your website.
- Mobile-Friendly
One crucial aspect of Google rankings is its Mobile-First Index, which indicates that if your website is not optimized for being mobile-friendly, your site may not rank well.
- Link Your Site to HTTPS
One of the ranking signals of Google is HTTPS. Google looks after their user’s security, so if you haven’t got your site to HTTPS, you should consider getting one.
- Site’s Loading Speed
Your site’s loading speed can affect your Google ranking. Google also prioritizes their users’ satisfaction in using their search engine. Therefore, if you want to get Google to like you, get your site loaded insanely fast for both desktop and mobile users.
Additionally, along with these aspects of the SEO checklist are:
- SEO Checklist: Keywords
Keywords are known to be the foundation of SEO. This makes users find you easily. To optimize your website’s keywords, you should find long-tail keywords through Google Suggest’, find solid keywords, tap into online communities like Quora and Reddit, identify low competition keywords, and discover question keywords.
- SEO Checklist: Content
Content is the heart of a website. Therefore, you should create amazing content, break down your content into easy read chunks, use schema markup, focus on content formats, use multimedia, and make an in-depth cover about a topic.
- SEO Checklist: Link Building
One of Google’s top 3 ranking factors is backlinks. Constructing backlinks is not easy, but you can make powerful backlinks by guest posting and link roundups, reversing your competitor’s backlinks, being a podcast guest, and mentioning influencers in your blog posts.
Conclusion
Starting a small SEO agency is a very complex process. You need to know every concept of the business before getting into it. Even if you are running a company that deals with SEO for some time now, you still need to get into the lift of the SEO’s floor. Do consider this SEO checklist for 2022 and many more years to come in order to get your webpage on the rank or even at the first page of Google’s search query. Have your webpage optimized to rank high on search engines!