Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Basics Checklist,
A Quick Reference Guide

In today’s digital landscape, having a strong online presence is crucial for businesses of all sizes. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a pivotal role in ensuring that your website is visible to your target audience, driving organic traffic, and ultimately, increasing your domain authority, and bottom line. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a small business owner, understanding and implementing SEO best practices can seem daunting. However, with the right strategies and tools, you can significantly enhance your website’s performance and visibility.

This SEO Basics Checklist is designed to guide you through the essential steps needed to optimize your website effectively. From expanding content, to conducting keyword research, to technical SEO, to ensuring ADA compliance, this checklist covers all critical aspects of SEO. By following these guidelines, you’ll be well-equipped to create a robust SEO strategy that not only improves your search engine rankings but also delivers a better user experience for your visitors.

Utilize this quick reference guide as you begin to optimize your website for search queries related to your industry.

— SEO Basics Checklist —

Expand your website’s cornerstone content to a 3,000 word minimum, ~7-9 pages
Optimize individual web page content structure and hierarchy (H1, H2, H3, etc.)
Begin tracking your website’s performance utilizing Google Analytics and Google Search Console at minimum — consider utilizing a 3rd party SaaS SEO performance tracking software i.e. Moz, Semrush etc.
Conduct comprehensive keyword research — industry specific and location (if appropriate)
Integrate on-page keyword integration best practices
- URLs — permalinks
- Metadata — page titles and descriptions
- Heading elements
- Content
- Anchor text — internal/external links
- Image alternative text (alt text)
Consider adding a blog — at minimum this would be added to once per quarter, more ideally once per month, aligning with your SEO content strategy
Add your copyright information below footer — © Your Legal Company Entity – all rights reserved (use JavaScript to auto generate year)
Technical SEO
- Extensive review of all website security that is in place i.e. timeouts, firewall(s), IP lockout etc.
- Extensive back-end review of hosting environment i.e. PHP version, resource limits, .htaccess etc.
- Review site-crawl errors if utilizing 3rd party SaaS performance tracking
Ensure website is mobile friendly
Ensure website is ADA compliant