Step-by-Step SEO Checklist to Boost New Website Visibility

Many people think that launching their business website is a very big achievement. However, it can still only be considered as the first step from where the actual struggle begins.  Without making sure it is visible across the market; your new website is of no use and seems like a shop without a sign board. 

It is no doubt that components like SEO-friendly content, demanded products and outstanding services are the primary reasons behind your website.  Nevertheless, the inability to reach the top pages of search engines means that you have missed out on potential customers and higher traffic.  Here, the importance of SEO search engine optimisation is highlighted among the readers.  It is the staircase for websites to rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing.  

This way, potential users who are actively searching for the products and services that you offer can find your platform. The right SEO strategy helps to strengthen your online presence and makes it simpler for popular search engines to crawl, index, and promote your content to the target audiences. 

According to a report from Ahrefs, approximately 91% of all web pages receive zero traffic from Google.  However, having a sturdy SEO foundation can keep you from the list of such staggering statistics. No matter if you are looking to launch a blog platform, an e-commerce website, or an online business venture, this detailed SEO checklist will guide you through all of the necessary steps that you must take to enhance the visibility of your website.

Comprehensive SEO Checklist

Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

Building web pages majorly depends on the content you create. However, before this step comes our detailed research about your target audiences. This is why experts prioritise keyword research related to your business niche. It is the process that helps to identify ideal terms and phrases used by people who are actively looking for the products and services that you offer.

By making use of appropriate keywords, you can make sure that your web content aligns perfectly with the needs of your audiences. It is also a great way to improve your search engine page results. Avoiding this step can negatively impact your web content by making it invisible to potential customers.

• Try to use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest to search for potential terms with low competition and high volume.
• Try implementing long tail keywords like affordable SEO services for UK businesses as they are highly particular and account for more than 70% of all web searches.
• Look around for the keywords your competitors are using and their strategies and look for the gaps you can benefit from.

Get ready to start your keyword hunt today and enhance your online visibility.
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Choose a Search-Friendly Domain Name

Always consider your domain name as your online identity. It is undoubtedly the first thing that search engines and users learn about your website. Experts recommend having a simple, relevant, and user-friendly domain name as it can help to enhance your brand recognition.  According to a report by Backlinko, domain names that contain relevant keywords rank slightly higher than the ones without them.

Also, it is a great step for your SEO strategy as a strong domain name must contain the primary keyword. Your domain name may not be able to directly impact your search rankings, but it can strongly affect your marketing strategy. For this reason, making the right choice is necessary for the success of your venture. 

• Always select a domain with a relevant name, short spelling, and simple pronunciation.
• Try your best to include a primary keyword while making sure it fits naturally.
• Avoid using numbers or words that are difficult to pronounce or any kind of symbols that make the domain name unreadable.

Set Up Google Search Console & Google Analytics

Experts recommend different tools that you can use to measure and monitor your website's performance. Notably, the Google Search Console and Google Analytics are the two most recommended tools in this case. By using these platforms, website owners can easily track visitors, analyse user interaction with their websites, and rectify errors that may negatively impact SEO.

Without such tools, it is difficult to analyse how your website is performing. Not being able to track the impact of SEO on your platform makes it highly difficult to work on its improvement. You can follow a few steps & sign up for these tools.

• Log into your Google account and visit the Google search console.
• By using methods like DNS or HTML file upload, quickly add your website's link to verify ownership of your platform.
• Link your website with Google Analytics to start receiving detailed reports about your website performance in real-time.

Submit Your XML Sitemap

Having a site map serves as a blueprint of your website through which search engines can easily crawl and index your web pages. It is like a guide for Google and other popular search engines to understand what your website is about and how have you structured it.

Websites without a site map make it difficult for search engines to index their new pages. In case your website has limited internal links, a site map can fill the gaps and help Google crawl your platform. For those who are unaware, here's how you can generate a site map for your website.

• Look for plugins like Yoast SEO for WordPress website owners who can use Rank Math and generate a site map for your website.
• Log into your Google search console account and visit the site map section.
• Copy and paste your site maps URL and click on submit.

Reports prove that the submission of a site map can improve the crawling speed of websites by up to 6 times than neutral crawling.

Optimise Your Robots.txt File

The robots.txt file is responsible for handling how search engines access the different parts of your website. Website owners must pay attention to its configuration as any mishandling can accidentally block necessary web pages from being indexed.  

As a result, your SEO strategy can be negatively impacted and hence affect your search engine ranking.  According to a 2024 report by Google developers, a poorly configured robots.txt file can lead to different types of indexing issues.

• Make sure to permit the indexing of web content that you are looking to highlight in search results.
• Do not allow any kind of access to sensitive areas of your website like admin pages or database.
• Analyse your file using the Google search console make sure you have not blocked any critical pages.

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

When talking about websites in today's market, mobile-first indexing is the primary rule to compete. It is because now Google basically uses the mobile version of your website to rank and index your business. In case you do not own a website that is mobile-friendly, there are higher chances of bounce rates.

In today’s modern era, a large portion of your target audience are mobile users. Because most people are on their smartphones now, mobile optimised websites bring in higher number of views.  This can also be proven by a 2023 report from Statista, which states that more than 63% of all Google searches happen on mobile devices.

Improve Page Load Speed

Page speed optimisation is one of the most important factors for enhancing a website's online visibility.  This is because Google considers page loading time as an utmost factor for ranking.  Reports have far proven that most users expect fast results from websites while slow-loading websites can annoy visitors.

According to a past report, a one-second delay in website loading speed can cut down page views by 11% and reduce customer satisfaction by approximately 15%. To keep away from higher bounce rates and increase conversions, improving page load speed is necessary. Experts recommend a few steps that you can take to boost the speed of an online platform.

• Compress pictures using tools like ImageOptim or TinyPNG.  
• Implement a content delivery network and enable browser caching.
• Change the format of your JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files by minimising them.
• Be very specific about choosing your hosting provider as the right one makes a difference.

Install an SSL Certificate (HTTPS)

Security is considered one of the critical factors for website ranking. This is because most popular search engines pay attention to secure websites. Moreover, such platforms have higher chances of gaining customer trust quickly. Having an SSL certificate conference room service that the data being transferred between them and the website is encrypted.

If you do not have HTTPS in your URL, Google will immediately flag your platform as not secure. It scares visitors away and leads to maximum bounce rates. You can easily install an SSL certificate on your website to keep away from such issues.

• A maximum of hosting providers in the market provides free SSL certificates by offering the let's encrypt option.
• Start redirecting all your HTTP to HTTPS addresses by virtue of an SEO plugin or .htaccess file. 

Get ready to switch to HTTPS now as it is secure and free. 
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Create SEO-Friendly URLs

The structure of your URLs can directly impact your SEO strategy. Therefore, website owners must try to create clean and descriptive URLs to make sure search engines can easily understand what a web page is about. 

Also, a user-friendly URL helps visitors and adds to the number of click-through rates when appearing in search results. Experts recommend creating shorter URLs as they have greater chances of ranking higher on Google and other search engines. 

On the other hand, a cluttered URL is considered an extremely bad move for a website. Having random characters or numbers always gives an insecure image and negatively impacts your platform’s credibility.

• Replace hyphens with underscores if you are looking to separate words in a URL.
• Try your best to keep your URLs short, user-friendly, and relatable.
• Skip the use of random numbers or special characters.
• Place the target keyword naturally in your URL.

Focus on On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of optimising HTML elements and the content to load your website. It is one of the finest ways to improve the visibility of all your web pages. Professionals implement this strategy to make their content relevant, structured, and readable while keeping target audiences and search engines in mind.

By applying on-page SEO the right way, you can easily rank for your target keywords. It also helps to provide users with a greater experience. A few highlights of this process are discussed further.

• Include the target keyword within the first few words of your content along with the H1 tag, meta description, and page title.
• Use semantic keywords and naturally play relatable phrases all over your web content.
• Structure your web content by using headers, bullets, numbering, and CTAs where possible.
• Include internal links to other relatable web pages throughout your website.
• Add alt text to images on your website as it helps search engines understand your visuals.

Create High-Quality, Value-Driven Content

Every SEO strategy strongly depends on the web content that is being used. Google and other popular search engines value content that is beneficial for the website, meets clients' needs and is free of copywriting. Having SEO-optimised content is the best way to earn high-quality backlinks, strong customer engagement, and massive social shares. 

Website owners must understand that having lots of visuals is not value-driven content. You must focus on quality and make sure they relate to your business niche.

• Try to create comprehensive content after going through detailed research to easily answer audience questions.
• Format your content properly using a clear structure and conversational tone to keep readers engaged.
• Update all posts who are you new details and the latest information as it helps to align content with the market trends.
• Enhance the user experience by including different types of media like images, videos, infographics, and more. 
• Pay attention to FAQ as it is one of the most important tips to help appear in featured snippets.
• Try to create long-form content of about 2000 words to rank higher on popular search engines.

Optimise Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Always remember that the title tags and meta descriptions are the two most important pieces of content for our website. It is because these appear in search engine page results and determine whether visitors click your link or not.  

Even though you may not consider them as direct ranking factors, these two can majorly impact click-through rates and hence increase or decrease the page rankings.  By optimising the titles and descriptions of your business platform as per SEO, chances are that Google understands the context of your website.

• Always at the primary in the description and title of your content.
• Limit the word count for title tags to up to 60 characters and meta descriptions to up to 160 characters.
• Create your meta content, titles, and descriptions in a clear and compelling tone.
• Boost the number of clicks by using action keywords like learn, improve, and discover.

Build Internal Linking Structures

Internal linking is an SEO strategy through which you connect two different web pages of your website with each other. It is a practice to help search engines crawl your website more effectively while evenly distributing the link juice all over your web pages. Doing so also helps users to easily visit relatable pages of your website for helpful content.

According to reports, internal links are considered the primary content in Google’s crawl strategy. Once you successfully internal link your web pages, the side navigation and SEO of your website improve rapidly. It is also a great way to boost user experience.  Experts suggest a few steps to perform internal linking.

• Include a minimum of 3 or a maximum of 5 internal lengths in your blog posts or web pages.
• Keep your anchor text relatively and descriptive to help audiences reach the right page.
• Add a link to important landing pages through your blog posts or the home page.
• Do not add 2 links to the same page from a single content.

Build High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are the links that you direct from resourceful web pages to your website for support and authority. Google and other popular search engines consider them as votes of confidence. These help to prove that your web content is trustworthy and valuable.

The number of quality backlinks on your website directly impacts the authority and credibility of your platform. Having higher authority helps to improve the search engine ranking of a website. However, professionals must understand that all backlinks are not helpful. By applying links from relevant or unauthoritative platforms, there can be highly negative results.

• Try to create guest blogs on high authority and recognised industry websites for stronger links.
• Connect with journalists and bloggers who offer valuable insights and informative content.
• Provide interviews from experts, helpful case studies, and compelling testimonials.
• Include backlinks from local listings and relevant directories for better authority.
• Perform broken link building as it is a great way to replace the dead links in your content with better ones.

Monitor SEO Progress & Rankings

Last but not least, understand that SEO is not a one-time strategy. It is necessary for website owners to track the performance of their platforms regularly. Doing so helps to understand what is working and we are improvement is needed.

Monitoring regularly is also a helpful strategy to identify technical errors or ranking drops in your website. By tracking your website, you can easily find areas that require optimisation.

• Try to monitor your keyword rankings through export-recommended tools.
• Track all the organic traffic trends in the market.
• Check for the click-through rates, bounce rates, and duration of website visits.
• Look for all the crawl errors and indexing issues.

 Are you ready to monitor and track your website regularly?  Let our experts do it for you.
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Final Thoughts

Whenever you have started building a new website, always prioritise its SEO foundation. There is no doubt that an SEO strategy is time-consuming, but the results and progress it brings are already known. By focusing on the comprehensive checklist discussed above, you get a start you receive in the right way.

Follow each step from keyword research regular tracking and everything in between.  Do not wait anymore to take your action today. Stick to the checklist and watch your website rankings info higher than your expectations!