On-Site SEO Checklist for WordPress Blogs

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?

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