If you have a website, then of course you want the contents of the website to always appear on search engines. If your website rarely or never appears in search engines, then you need to do better SEO optimization.
SEO optimization is one of the most important things that must be done if you want to make website content or articles always appear in search engines. Because if you want your website to always appear in search engines, then the content or article must rank well in search engines like Google and Bing.
In order for a website to rank well in search engines, you must do SEO optimization. If you do SEO optimization correctly, it will be able to increase your website’s ranking in search engines. To do SEO optimization so that website ranking can increase, there are several SEO checklists that must be done. The SEO checklist is a list of steps that must be taken to improve your website’s SEO.
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SEO Checklist to Improve Website SEO
Doing SEO optimization is not easy, because it takes knowledge and experience to do it. However, you don’t need to worry because here are some steps that must be taken to improve the SEO score so that the website’s ranking in search engines can increase.
1. Make sure the website is responsive and mobile friendly
In today’s digital era, more and more people are accessing the internet via mobile devices. Even for some large websites, traffic from Smartphone devices is greater than from Desktop devices.
Therefore, it is very important to make the website look neat and attractive when accessed using a Smartphone device. In other words, you have to create a website that is responsive and mobile-friendly.
Search engines like Google and Bing certainly want to recommend websites that can make visitors comfortable, one of the factors is that the website must be responsive and mobile-friendly. If your website is responsive and mobile-friendly, then search engines will recommend your website more so that it can increase its ranking.
So, if your website is currently not responsive, then you can change the website theme or template and use a theme or plugin that has a responsive appearance.
2. Increase Website Speed
Website speed is very important in increasing your website ranking in search engines. A website that can be accessed quickly will make visitors feel comfortable because they don’t have to wait long.
From a search engine standpoint, it will also prioritize visitor experience, so a faster website has the potential to get a better ranking on search engines. Therefore, check your website loading time again and try to make it faster.
So that your website can be faster, make sure you use good and fast hosting too, a light theme, and don’t use too many unnecessary plugins.
If the website page has images, make sure that the size of the images is not too large. Using images that are too large will potentially make the website slower.
In addition, using a cache plugin can also increase website speed quite significantly. You can use cache plugins like WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, Litespeed Cache, and so on.
To check website speed, you can use tools like GTmetrix, Google Page Speed, and others. You can also measure the loading time of your website yourself when accessed via a Desktop or Smartphone device.
3. Pay attention to Website Security
Security is of course an important thing that must be considered, not only to prevent your website from being messed with by bad people but also to increase website ranking in search engines. One of the website security factors that must be considered is the matter of SSL or ensuring your website uses HTTPS.
Search engines like Google and Bing certainly value visitors so they don’t want to present unprotected websites. That is why it is very rare or even never to find a website that does not use HTTPS to rank well in search engines.
So, make sure your website uses HTTPS so that it is safer and can rank better in search engines. If your website doesn’t use HTTPS yet, then you can install a free SSL or use a paid or premium SSL certificate.
Premium SSL comes with lots of features like easy renewal, low cost, multiple validity options, etc. You can buy various types of SSL in premium SSL categories such as single domain, Wildcard SSL Certificate, multi-domain SSL, etc.
4. Define Strategic Keywords
Keywords are one of the important factors to determine whether a website page will rank well in search engines or not. Keywords are words or phrases used by search engine users to find the information they need.
Therefore, determining the right keywords is very important in increasing the visibility of your website in search engines. There are at least two benchmarks that must be considered in determining keywords, namely, search volume and SEO competition.
If you can, you should find keywords that have high search volume and low SEO competition. There are several tools you can use to determine strategic keywords such as Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, and others.
5. Optimize Your Content for Relevant Keywords
After you have succeeded in determining strategic keywords, then you can start writing content based on these keywords. In writing content, optimize it with the keywords that have been determined, also make sure the content is of high quality and remains relevant to these keywords.
Relevant and quality content is a very important factor in SEO. In addition, make sure the content you write is easy to read and has a good structure.
6. Optimize Title Tag and Meta Description
Title tags and meta descriptions are one of the most important elements in SEO. Therefore, to improve the SEO of your website pages, make sure to always set and optimize the title tags and meta descriptions.
Title tags and meta descriptions must also be relevant to the content of the page and must contain predefined keywords. The title tag must contain less than 60 characters, while the meta description must contain less than 160 characters.
If your website doesn’t have a form to set title tags and meta descriptions, then please install an SEO plugin like Yoast, RankMath, and others.
7. Optimize Images on Website Pages
Website pages that have images certainly have more value than pages that contain only text. However, the images on the website page must also be optimized so that they can help increase the website’s ranking in search engines.
To optimize images on website pages, you must set the Alt text and write a short description of the image, making sure to insert the specified keywords. If you have more than one image, use a variety of Alt text as well.
8. Improve the Quality of Website Backlinks
The factors that determine a website’s ranking in search engines are not only from your website but there are also external factors such as backlinks. Backlinks are links that point to your website from other websites.
The quality of backlinks is very important in SEO and is quite influential in determining a website’s ranking in search engines. Make sure your website backlinks come from websites that have high authority and are relevant to your website content.
Don’t be too focused on getting as many backlinks as possible, without paying attention to the quality and relevance of these backlinks to your content. Because a lot of backlinks but of poor quality will not help increase a website’s ranking, it can actually drop it.
9. Connect the Website to GSC and Bing Webmaster
GSC (Google Search Console) and Bing Webmaster are platforms for introducing your website to Google and Bing. In other words, the platform will make it easier for search engines to find out the content of your website and display it in search results.
If you want to display your website page in Google search, then please connect your website to Google Search Console. Meanwhile, to display your website page in Bing search, please connect your website to Bing Webmaster.
10. Create an XML Sitemap on GSC and Bing Webmaster
After you connect your website to GSC (Google Search Console) and Bing Webmaster, an important step that must also be taken is to create an XML Sitemap. An XML sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website.
Creating an XML sitemap is very important in SEO so that all of your website content can be listed on search engines. If you use an SEO plugin, then the plugin already has an XML Sitemap feature so you don’t need to create it manually.
After creating an XML sitemap, you must submit the XML sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster to ensure that Google and Bing can index all the pages on your website.
11. Monitor and Measure Website Performance Regularly
Doing SEO optimization is indeed not a one-time job, but it is ongoing. If you have implemented all the necessary SEO techniques, you still have to monitor and measure the performance of your website.
Monitoring and measuring the performance of your website on a regular basis is very important to ensure that your SEO strategy is working properly. You can use tools like Google Analytics or SEMrush to see the number of visitors, traffic sources, keywords used, and more.
By regularly monitoring your website’s performance, you can improve your SEO strategy if the previous optimizations didn’t work. However, please note that SEO optimization takes months to see results. So, don’t jump to conclusions that your SEO strategy isn’t working.
Closing
This is an explanation of the SEO checklist for beginners in order to increase website ranking in search engines. By following the SEO Checklist mentioned above, you can increase your website’s ranking in search engines and increase your website’s visibility among internet users.
However, keep in mind that SEO is a long-term process and you will not see significant changes overnight. Stay consistent and dedicated to your SEO strategy, and the results will come with time.
