{"id":1361,"date":"2016-10-20T11:33:43","date_gmt":"2016-10-20T11:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/10\/20\/technical-seo-checklist-a-webmasters-guide-to-on-page-optimisation\/"},"modified":"2019-11-28T14:58:33","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T14:58:33","slug":"technical-seo-checklist-a-webmasters-guide-to-on-page-optimisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/10\/20\/technical-seo-checklist-a-webmasters-guide-to-on-page-optimisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Technical SEO checklist: a webmaster\u2019s guide to on-page optimisation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Presenting a guide to carrying out all the on-page checks that webmasters and SEOs need to carry out to ensure a website is optimised for search.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This checklist will bring together a lot of already published content from the site in one place, and there will be links to more detailed guides throughout.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s also worth reading our guides on <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/09\/13\/how-to-test-a-website-before-you-launch-a-28-point-checklist\/\">How to test a website before launch<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/01\/21\/seo-basics-22-essentials-you-need-for-optimizing-your-site\/\">SEO essentials for optimising your site<\/a> for further information.<\/p>\n<h2>Sign up to<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/01\/30\/inside-googles-new-search-console-whats-new-whats-the-same-and-whats-still-to-come\/\"> Google Search Console<\/a><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/09\/google-search-console-a-complete-overview\/\">Search Console<\/a> is where you can monitor your site\u2019s performance, identify issues and monitor <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/03\/12\/social-media-how-does-it-affect-seo\/\">backlinks<\/a>. This is also where Google will communicate with you should anything go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Here are the key things you should set-up and regularly check in<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/01\/30\/inside-googles-new-search-console-whats-new-whats-the-same-and-whats-still-to-come\/\"> Search Console:<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Set your preferred domain:<\/strong> whether your site shows up in search results with the www prefix or without it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>HTML improvements:<\/strong> this is where <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/04\/05\/google-search-console-guide\/\">Search Console<\/a> will recommend any improvements to your meta descriptions and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/optimize-instagram-account-search-engines\">title tags<\/a>, as well as informing you of any non-indexable content.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Links to your site:<\/strong>\u00a0here you can see the domains that link to your site and its content the most, as well as your most linked webpages.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Manual actions:<\/strong> Google will inform you if it has administered a manual action to your site or specific webpage.<\/li>\n<li><strong>International targeting:<\/strong> make sure you\u2019re targeting your preferred audience based on language and country.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Index status:<\/strong> this lets you know how many pages of your website are currently included in Google\u2019s index. You can quickly see any worrying trends, as well as any pages that have been blocked by robots or removed.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Crawl errors:<\/strong> this report shows all the errors that Google has found when crawling your site over the last 90 days.<\/li>\n<li><strong>robots.txt editor:<\/strong> this is where you can edit your <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/03\/12\/robots-txt-best-practice-guide-and-examples\/\">robots.txt<\/a> and check for errors. The bottom of the page reveals your errors and warnings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Sign up to Google Analytics<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/02\/03\/an-absolute-beginners-guide-to-setting-up-google-analytics-for-your-website\/\">Google Analytics<\/a> is a free service that tracks and reports website traffic. Providing insight into the demographics of site visitors, the performance of a specific campaign, and how long people are staying on your site.<\/p>\n<p>Make sure Google Analytics or the analytics package you\u2019re using, is set up and ready to go from day one so you can measure and analyse traffic to your site.<\/p>\n<h2>Site speed<\/h2>\n<p>Use <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/06\/03\/google-launches-tool-to-test-your-sites-mobile-friendliness-and-speed\/\">Google\u2019s own site speed test tool<\/a> to check how quickly your website loads and implement any changes it recommends.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-65444\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2016\/10\/SEW-test.png\" alt=\"sew-test\" width=\"615\" height=\"338\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Mobile friendliness<\/h2>\n<p>Is your website and its content equally optimised for any given screen size or device? Bear in mind that Google has stated that responsive design is its preferred method of mobile optimisation. Look through our thorough <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/17\/how-do-i-make-sure-my-site-is-mobile-friendly\/\">mobile-friendly checklist<\/a> to help fix any problems.<\/p>\n<h2>Title tags<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/16\/how-to-write-meta-title-tags-for-seo-with-good-and-bad-examples\/\">Title tags<\/a> should be 50-60 characters long, including spaces.<\/li>\n<li>Your most important keywords need to be first in your title tag, with your least important words coming last.<\/li>\n<li>If your company name is not part of the important keyword phrases, put it at the end of the title tag.<\/li>\n<li>Do not duplicate title tags, they must be written differently for every page.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t mass replicate your title tags it will negatively affect your search visibility.<\/li>\n<li>Title tags must accurately describe the content on the page.<\/li>\n<li>Do not \u2018keyword stuff\u2019 title tags.<\/li>\n<li>Make your headline (&lt;h1&gt; tag) different from the title tag.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Meta descriptions<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Make sure your most important keywords for the webpage show up in the <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/26\/how-to-write-meta-descriptions-for-seo-with-good-and-bad-examples\/\">meta description<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Write legible, readable copy.<\/li>\n<li>A meta description should be no longer than 135 \u2013 160 characters long. Any longer and <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2018\/05\/21\/no-need-for-google-12-alternative-search-engines-in-2018\/\">search engines<\/a> will chop the end off, so make sure any important keywords are nearer the front.<\/li>\n<li>Do not duplicate meta descriptions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Headlines<\/h2>\n<p>The headlines for your articles should be under 55 characters to ensure their complete visibility in SERPs. Make sure they\u2019re snappy, attractive and as descriptive as possible.<\/p>\n<h2>H1 \u2013 H6 tags<\/h2>\n<p>Make sure your headlines are tagged as H1, and any subheadings in your articles are tagged as H2, H3 etc. Makes sure they\u2019re used in a descending, logical order.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-63819\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2016\/09\/h2-and-h3-tags.png\" alt=\"h2 and h3 tags\" width=\"800\" height=\"228\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Images<\/h2>\n<p>Make sure your <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/02\/16\/how-to-optimize-images-for-seo\/\">images are all optimised for the web<\/a>. Ensuring they\u2019re not too large \u2013 and site-speed draining. As well as being properly labelled with titles and alt-text.<\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/07\/16\/delete-your-pages-and-rank-higher-in-search-index-bloat-and-technical-optimization-2019\/\">XML Sitemaps<\/a>\/HTML Sitemap<\/h2>\n<p>Make sure your website has an accurate site map in both XML and HTML format, to ensure thorough and complete indexing by Google.<\/p>\n<h2>Accelerated Mobile Pages<\/h2>\n<p>If you\u2019re using Google\u2019s AMP project to provide mobile searchers with faster loading web pages, you need to make sure these are rendering properly. You can check for this in the <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/09\/google-search-console-a-complete-overview\/#AcceleratedMobilePages\">Search Console AMP tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>Social media integration<\/h2>\n<p>Do the social media icons on the site go to the correct pages? Do you have the right buttons and social <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/02\/08\/17-top-plugins-extensions-seo\/\">plugins<\/a> installed for what you are trying to accomplish and what you want the user to be able to do? (For example, does it \u2018share a post\u2019 rather than \u2018Like\u2019 your page on Facebook.)<\/p>\n<h2>Secure Certificate<\/h2>\n<p>If your site is <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/10\/04\/tips-for-q4-ad-copy-and-messaging\/\">ecommerce<\/a>, or you\u2019re using encrypted pages to protect visitor privacy on a form or elsewhere, you\u2019ll need to check your certificate.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-62423\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2016\/07\/https-padlock.jpeg\" alt=\"https padlock\" width=\"318\" height=\"159\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Duplicate content<\/h2>\n<p>If you have <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/10\/03\/guide-to-google-ranking-signals-part-5-duplicate-content-and-syndication\/\">duplicate content<\/a> on your own site, set up a<a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/05\/20\/seven-reasons-why-your-rankings-dropped-and-how-to-fix-them\/\"> 301 redirect<\/a> so Google only indexes your preferred page.<\/p>\n<p>Ensure that Google is only indexing your preferred domain, i.e. either with the www prefix or without it: http:\/\/www.example.com or http:\/\/example.com. Google may treat the www and non-www versions of your domain as separate sites with separate pages, thus harming your visibility.<\/p>\n<p>If your republishing another site\u2019s content (with permission of course) ensure there\u2019s a rel=canonical tag on each page linking to the original source.<\/p>\n<h2>Google News<\/h2>\n<p>Double check your site is eligible for Google News, if not, try resubmitting once you\u2019ve carried out Google\u2019s suggestions.<\/p>\n<h2>Nofollow<\/h2>\n<p>Add rel=\u201cnofollow\u201d to any links that you don\u2019t want search engine crawlers to follow. For instance, sponsored content or commercially led articles with links out to vendors or service providers.<\/p>\n<h2>Check structured data<\/h2>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/09\/google-search-console-a-complete-overview\/#StructuredData\">Structured Data section<\/a> in Search Console contains information about all the structured data elements Google has located on your site, whether from <a href=\"https:\/\/sewprod.wpenginepowered.com\/2019\/07\/12\/how-to-get-featured-snippets-no-link-building\/\">Schema<\/a> markup or other microformats. Check for any errors. If you click on the individual \u2018Data Types\u2019 it will show you exactly which URLs contain that particular markup and when it was detected.<\/p>\n<h2>Error response codes<\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2016\/05\/19\/beginners-guide-to-server-response-codes\/\">Response codes<\/a>, such as 400, 403, 404, 500 and 503, should all be investigated thoroughly. If you see multiple 404 results from internal site links, fix the offending links immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Makes sure 301s being used for all redirects, and avoid any 302 or 307 redirects.<\/p>\n<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/09\/25\/topic-clusters-increase-seo-rankings\/\">Internal linking<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>Are you using <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/sew\/how-to\/2428041\/internal-linking-for-seo-examples-and-best-practices\">internal linking<\/a> in the most effective way? You should have a few relevant internal links per article (depending on length and type of content). Make sure the anchor text is descriptive of the linked page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Presenting a guide to carrying out all the on-page checks that webmasters and SEOs need to carry out to ensure a website is optimised for search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":1362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[319,89,216,483,22,534,110],"content_type":[27095],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo","tag-amp","tag-google-analytics","tag-https","tag-search-console","tag-seo","tag-seo-checklist","tag-site-speed","content_type-news"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"Christopher Ratcliff","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/ThinkstockPhotos-599911460-120x90.jpg","category":"SEO","timeago":"9y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}