Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about making your website rank higher in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. SEO can be divided into two general categories: on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-Site SEO is about your site’s content and your site’s code. Off-site SEO has to do with links to your site and other factors effecting your site’s reputation.
On-site SEO can be optimized by web developers and site owners. While there are some tricky issues on this list, there are also some ones that are easy to fix. This checklist is designed for WordPress websites, but most of these issues could be generalized for any website.
WordPress Home Page SEO
___ Home page contains text that can be indexed by Search Engines. Minimum of 500 words is suggested.
___ Home page contains keywords in the title, H1 tags, image alt tags, and text.
___ Home page contains links to the most important pages.
___ Home page has a description meta tag.
WordPress Posts SEO
___ Posts contain descriptive text with relevant keywords. Minimum of 500 words is suggested.
___ Posts contain images that have captions and alt tags.
___ Posts have customized titles and descriptions (in the meta tag) for the search engines
___ Post URLs contain keywords.
Sitewide WordPress SEO
___ Site uses canonical URLs when necessary to avoid duplicate content.
___ Site’s content is unique.
___ Advertisements are minimal and non-intrusive.
___ The most important content is near the top of the page.
___ Font color is readable (no invisible text, no light gray text)
___ The site is easy to navigate.
___ The site looks trustworthy and authoritative.
___ The site does not use “bad SEO” like keyword stuffing, sneaky redirects, or cloaking.
WordPress Mobile SEO
___ Site passes Google’s Mobile Friendly test
___ Site loads correctly on mobile phones.
WordPress Technical Issues that effect SEO
___ Site does not have broken links.
___ Site has an XML sitemap.
___ Site uses render-blocking JavaScript and CSS only when necessary.
___ Site uses caching to deliver pages faster.
___ Site uses long expiration dates on content that rarely changes.
___ Site uses structured data for Rich Snippets
___ Site is indexed by Google and Bing
Did I forget something?
What would you add to this list?