Introduction
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is one of the best if not the most powerful tools that SEO specialists use in order to rank their sites First. This is achieved through ensuring that their sites has increased google visibility.
What do I mean by increased Google visibility this is simply appearing on the first page everytime a search intent is fed into google search and you are routing for that Keyword.
And the best thing is you even don’t need to pay a dime it’s all organic traffic now isn’t that not amazing? Whether you’re new to SEO or refining strategies this comprehensive SEO checklist will help you optimize your website for better rankings, increased traffic and most of all makes you appear first in google ranking.
In this comprehensive SEO checklist we will cover all aspects that revolve around how to succeed in SEO including: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, Technical SEO, Keyword Research, local SEO, content strategy, Analytics and Tracking and how to avoid SEO Pitfalls.
This tips works for all industries whether it is ecommerce, service-based industries, product-based and also blogs just to mention a few I guess what am trying to say it is workable on any website you can think of Just ask me how.
Before we dig in let us first recap on what really is SEO.
Getting Acquinted with SEO Basics
What Is SEO, and Why Is It Important?
What: Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is one of the best if not the most powerful tools that SEO specialists use in order to rank their sites First. This is achieved through ensuring that their sites has increased google visibility.
Why: It helps businesses attract organic traffic, boost brand awareness, and generate leads without relying solely on paid ads.
Difference Between On-Page, Off-Page, and Technical SEO
- On-Page SEO: Focuses on optimizing website content and structure.
- Off-Page SEO: Involves building external authority through backlinks.
- Technical SEO: Ensures your site performs well for search engine crawlers.
Key Ranking Factors in SEO
Search engines prioritize:
- Relevant keywords
- Quality content
- Website speed
- Mobile usability
- Backlinks
How To Get The Most Out of This SEO Checklist
We have been following this exact steps since we started operations and decade later am still confident that this works now as it did then. This has helped us rank our clients sites on the first page, when initially they were pretty much non-existence.
Setting Clear SEO Goals
Before diving into optimization, write down what you aim to achieve. This can be either boosting traffic, improving conversion rates, or expanding visibility in new markets, having a road map guide your efforts and help track success.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience is foundational to SEO. Use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and surveys to understand their preferences, search behaviors, and pain points. Tailor your content to meet their needs.
Competitor Analysis: Learning from the Best
Analyze top-performing competitors in your niche by use of free tools available to spy on your Competitors. Tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs can help you identify their strategies, successful keywords, backlink sources, and content formats. Learning from competitors can help you spot gaps that you can tap and improve on in order to be best than them.
Getting Started with SEO Checklist
Getting a domain and building your presence does not guarantee you any online success through SEO.
In the next section, we provide a detailed SEO checklist to optimize your website. Follow this step by step and see how it improves your rankings.
Let’s start with the basics:
1.Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
In order to start using Google Search Console all you need is go to your web browser search Google Search Console click on the first link that appears and press the start now button. The best thing about Google Search Console is that you can use your existing Google Analytics, Google Ads, or Gmail account to set up a Google Search Console account.
To get started go to the login page and create a Google Search Console account. Verify your domain so that Google can verify that you own your website.
If you’re looking for a free way to monitor your site’s performance and traffic, improve your website listing performance, and troubleshoot errors, Google Search Console should be at the top of your SEO checklist.
Sound good? Then we recommend setting up an account.
Even though Google is the most sought after platform that doesn’t mean that there are no other platforms which you can also optimize for better rankings.
Bing Webmaster Tool is that such one platform. Just like Google Search Console in Bing Webmaster you can also signup by taking advantage of an existing or new Microsoft Account, you can als use Google or Facebook Accounts. It works the same as GSC but on Bing site
it’s a great tool for optimizing your site for Bing and improving your overall SEO health by singling out duplicate content issues and checking loading speed.
Sound good? Then we recommend setting up an account.
2.Set up Google Analytics
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is another tool that is used to track site activities, from site traffics, conversions to giving access to reports for analysis. You can also link Google Search Console and GA4 which will help you to have a wide overview of analytics through raw data obtained from both.
Set up a Google Analytics account, add a web property, then add a stream by pasting the Google Tag ID into your website hosted on a CMS like Shopify or WordPress. This can be done either automatically or manually. After which follow the instruction stepwise as is till you are done.
3.Set Up Google Tag Manager
GTM makes it easy to deploy the code needed to set up the other tools in this checklist to your site, without having to learn coding or contact a developer.
How to set up:
- Go to a web browser and search for tagmanager.
- Sign in to your Google account.
- Click the Account tab.
- Select Create Account.
- Follow the instructions going forward as given.
- Click Create and accept the Terms of Use
Installing the GTM code on your website:
You can install the code manually, use a plugin for your Content Management System (CMS), or ask your website developer to install it.
If your site already has a Google Analytics snippet, you should remove it to avoid recording each pageview twice.
NOTE: The code needs to be triggered after being installed on your site basically on the header and body section of each page.
Sound good? Then we recommend setting up an account.
4.Are You On WordPress? Install SEO Plugins
Plugins can make your SEO efforts easier. For instance, Rankmath is a popular WordPress plugin.
Plugins like Rankmath provide SEO features like metadata and copywriting tips. Alternatively, you can use alternatives like Yoast. These tools act as a checklist of SEO basics and help you maximize your online visibility.
5.Creating and Submitting Your Sitemap
A sitemap is used to inform Google and other search engines on the hierarchical structure of your website. For WordPress, installed SEO plug-ins(Rankmath, Yoast) helps in the creation of sitemap for your site.
Afterwards you should proceed by submission of the sitemap to Google search console and Bing webmaster for crawling.
Sitemap makes it less difficult for crawlers to index your pages and become aware of any modifications you’ve got made because the final time the search engines like google like google and yahoo crawled your site.
6.Create a Robots.txt File
Adding a Robots.txt file helps in informing search engines on which pages and files they should pay attention and which to ignore in terms of crawling.
You can view your current robots.txt file by entering your homepage URL and adding “/robots.txt” to the end.
For example, Fusioncodz robots.txt file is located at “https:
//fusioncodz.com/robots.txt”.
7.Ensure That Google Can Index Your Website
For a website to appear in search results, it needs to be indexed by search engines. The easiest way to check if your website is indexed is to do a site search in Google (e.g. site:
If nothing shows up, your site isn’t indexed. Please note that for new sites, indexing can take up to a week or so after submitting your sitemap.
Also if your site is indexed you will see the number of pages that have been indexed.
Keyword Research
Keyword Research is the building block of SEO. These are words that people type into search engines to find something. You should include keywords in all areas of your website, such as page names, headings, site text, image captions, page descriptions, and URLs, in a natural way.
1.Understanding Searcher Intent
Searcher Intent to put it plainly is basically to understand the purpose behind a searchers query in search engines.
If you need to offer solutions to searchers questions, you want to start through understanding what the searcher was looking to achieve.
It helps SEO specialists determine what users are looking for when they type a specific phrase into a search engine.
Types of Searcher Intent
- Informational Intent
Users are looking for knowledge or answers to a specific question. (e.g. ‘What is best SEO checklist for 2024 in Kenya?’
Ideal Content: Blog posts, guides, tutorials, or FAQs.
- Navigational Intent
Users want to find a specific website. (e.g. “Fusioncodz website”)
Ideal Content: Branded pages, homepage, or app links.
- Transactional Intent
In this a user is ready to make an action like purchasing or subscribing to a service. (e.g. “Affordable web design services in Nairobi”)
Ideal Content: Product pages, pricing pages, or service landing pages.
- Commercial Investigation
A searcher decides to do his/her research before arriving on a decision for a particular product or service. (e.g. “Best SEO checklist for 2025 in Kenya”)
Ideal Content: Comparison articles, reviews, testimonials, or case studies.
Understanding Keyword Difficulty
Once you’ve found keywords that are relevant to your business, the next step is to determine if you can compete for that traffic.
Not all keywords are equally easy (or difficult) to rank for.
Most keyword research tools include a metric that tells you how to gauge how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword.
Higher difficulty means you’ll have to put in more effort to rank for that keyword.
That means you’ll have to write better content than your competitors, build more links, fix technical issues, and everything else on this checklist.
How to Find the Right Keywords
It is without a doubt that there are some great paid tools out there, but you can also access some great keyword research tools for free.
Some of the tools we use in Fusioncodz includes: SEMRush, Ahrefs Keyword Generator, and Answer The Public.
If you happen to have a Google Ads account, you can also use the “Discover new Keywords” feature in Google Keyword Planner to generate ideas and check competitiveness.
Some of Google’s search engine features can also help. You can use the auto-suggest feature or “People also search for” to kick off your keyword research.
Long-Tail vs. Short-Tail Keywords
- Long-tail keywords (e.g., “best SEO checklist for 2024”) are more specific and less competitive.
- Short-tail keywords (e.g., “SEO checklist”) have high competition but broader reach.
On-Page SEO
As a new site getting your site up there require patience and effort. This should not come as a surprise since you are going against already established and authoritative sites and brands. However following below tips will make sure that your site is set up for success.
1.Include Your Keyword in Your URL
Google starts by first seeing your website URL before it even begins to crawl the content on the page. By making use of keyword in your URL, you tell Google what type of information your page will provide searchers. keyword-rich URL can improve your organic CTR.
Including keywords in your URL sends signals to Google about what your page is about.
Given that you’re creating a page about best tennis shoes, a good example would be:
www.tennisshop.com/best-tennis-shoes.
Similarly a bad example on the same would look like www.YourWebsite.com/post/2456-11, because it doesn’t tell us (or the search engines) what the page is about.
Protip: SEO friendly URL should be between 50 and 60 characters but it is even better to shoot for 3-5 words as above. Use lower case letters and hyphens instead of underscores.
2.Add Your Keyword to Your Title Tag
Title tags remains one of the most important elements of on-page SEO as it informs search engines and users what your page is all about.
One of the most important thing to do is to ensure that your keyword appears in your title tag. However it should not also come as a surprise that where you position your keyword is of essence. Specifically, you want to put your keyword at the front of your title tag whenever possible.
If you use WordPress, you can easily edit your page titles with the your most preffered SEO plugin.
Protip: In general, you should include your keyword near the beginning of the sentence, and keep the entire title under 52 characters.
3.Optimize Your Title for Organic CTR
It goes without saying that the more searchers prioritize your page over other competitive site, gives Google an insight that indeed your page content better serves to answer peoples questions. Then what really is CTR: Lets say 100 people search for a certain term and for those 100 people 20 of them click your content then your CTR will be 20%(the percentage of people who click on your page divided by everyone who sees it).
Best practices to increase CTR:
- Make us of brackets in your title tag(e.g. 10 Amazing recipes[Guide]).
- Where possible numbers should be your friend when crafting titles(e.g.25 SEO Checklist for 2024).
A good idea when crafting your title is to look at what ranks out there this can mostly be from your competitors.
Some best practices when crafting titles include:
- Use an active voice
- Write in the second person
- power words
- Use numbers, brackets, or parentheses
- Include the date (month or year)
4.Use your keyword within the first 150 words
The thing about including your keywords in the first 150 words of your content is that it does not only inform search engines of what your content is about, but also informs readers on what to expect.
5.Add Your Keyword to Your Meta Description
Crafting a meta description embedded with your targeted keyword helps increase you CTR since it gives searches a glimpse of what to expect when they engage with your content. Also Google highlights the keyword the user searched if it’s included in the meta description.
What it is:For those with no idea of what a meta description is, it is simply a brief description located below a title on search result as indicated above.
Your meta description is a brief page description that can appear under your title in search results.
Tips for best meta descriptions:
- Keyword should be included naturally.
- Describe what user are to expect from your content.
- Keep it short.
- Make use of words such as discover, learn or explore.
6.Image Optimization
The larger your images files are the longer time it takes for your site to load which inturn compromises the overall user experience of the site. Optimized images increase organic visibility by providing context to the visual elements and content of image results.
In order for Google to understand what your image is all about when saving it ensure that you use a descriptive name of what the image is really about. Also make sure when uploading your images they have a descriptive alt tag.
If you are on a WordPress website one of the free image optimization tools you can use is Shortpixel which allows optimization of upto 100 images per month on a free version.
7.Keyword Placement and Density
When it comes to keyword intergratiom make sure it appears naturally on the content and not forced. For a rule of thumb it is best to ensure you aim for about 1-2% keyword density, ensuring they appear in the title, headers, and the first 100 words of your content.
8.Use External Links
When drafting your content make sure you make a shoutout to credible sources, this makes Google algorithm understand that your content is credible and well researched. This can be incorporated when quoting a statistic or explaining briefly what you site may not have enough information of you can send them to a credible site that has talked about the particular topic exhaustively.
9.Internal Links
When writing content for your site its good practice to always make sure you link to at least 2-5 pages in your site. This practice does not only improve other pages in terms of traffic and SEO but also tells search engines and users that the page we’re linking to is about on-page SEO.
10.Add Target Keywords to Your Body Content
The thing about your body content is that if you don’t make mention of your target keyword is that this makes Google think your page is not relevant.
As a good rule of thumbs make sure your body content contains at least 3 keywords.
11.Use Synonyms
In this day and age Search engines have become better at understanding human, This implies you’ll be able utilize more common dialect and still stay relevant to the target watchwords you’re attempting to rank for.
Content Strategy
High-quality content establishes authority and drives organic traffic. A good rule of thumb is to write for your audience first, and optimize for search engines second.
1.Divide Your Content into Sections
Big blocks of information is undesirable and displeasing to the eyes in order to combat this you should make sure you use chunks in your content crafting.
Why: chunking your content helps to decrease the overall bounce rates of your content for it makes it much easier for a person to find what they are looking for.
2.Use Multimedia
Multimedia elements like images, videos, infographics, and audio can significantly enhance the quality and engagement of your content while improving its SEO performance. This helps readers to be hooked on your content unlike reading chunk of blocks which increases bounce rates.
Technical SEO Checklist
Just from the name itself you can deduce that Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that a website meets all of the required technical requirements that can help it rank better among the search engines. When done right, technical SEO can boost your visibility in search results.
Most people have this misconception that technical SEO is all about crawling and indexing, but I’d like to differ.
Rather is all about below and this is but to just name a few:
- Javascript
- Robots meta tags
- XML sitemaps
- Site architecture
- URL structure
- Structured data
- Duplicate content
- Canonical tags
- 404 pages
- 301 redirects
1.Identify Crawling and Indexing Errors
Crawling error means that Google and its bot and algorithms are having difficult time in locating your pages for quite a number of issues.
This is a big problem because if google cant detect your pages that means its going to be quite a hard time for you to rank in search engines.
This can be solved by using Google search console to locate indexing error and try to resolve it.
A crawl error means that Google and its search engine bots are having trouble viewing a page on your site.
2.How Google Views Your Pages
If Google cant view your site pages for some reasons that only means it will not rank. In order to find out which pages on your site are indexed you can simply login into your GSC scroll and select the inspect URL option.
The enter a specific URL for a specific page you want to see whether it has been indexed and click enter.
When you do, you’ll see your page from Google’s point of view:
If you see problems like indexing not allowed, you have some problems to resolve.
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Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile-Friendly
This is by far the most important thing to do since in current times people are more on their mobile phone than they are infront of a laptop or desktops.
What does this really entails:
- Be sure to capitalize on design practices that are rather responsive.
- Make use of brief paragraphs and sentences this enhances readability.
- Avoid destructive popups since they make an impression that a site is suspicious.
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Fix Broken Links
Broken links on a site are usually not good for user experience and overally for your SEO too. You could identify broken links in your site by making use of free tools like DrLinkCheck.com, the tool helps in helping you locate issues with your links.
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Secure Your Site with HTTPS
HTTPS to simply put it protects the communication between your browser and server from being intercepted and tampered with by attackers, unlike the vulnerable HTTP.
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Check Your Site’s Loading Speed
This Google has made it much easier for you to be able to check for your site speed and what to fix inorder to improve, To check your site’s loading speed, head over to PageSpeed Insights.
This Google tool helps you to freely scan and be able to know your sites Core vitals.
[image of running your site on page insight]
7.Use Schema Markup
Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand the content in your site. Consequently can help you land rich snippets in search engine result pages.
Link Building Checklist
High-quality backlinks signal authority to search engines. Focus on obtaining links from credible and relevant websites. Link building is Key have long been used in Google’s ranking systems as a way of understanding website quality and as a measure of authority.
But to be honest this is by far most probably quite a difficult task, but it is a must in order for you to rank high.
How to find backlinks:
1.Contribute to Media Outlets
Media outlets (from daily papers to blogs) are continuously trying to find sources for stories they’re distributing.
If you are a subject matter expert, you’ll be a source for those stories. And in return, you’ll be able get a interface to your site.
There are different stages, like Connectively (formerly HARO) and Offer assistance a B2B Essayist, that point to associate journalists with sources.
But you’ll moreover run looks like “#journorequest” at the side your specialty on social media to discover potential openings.
2.Create Linkable Assets for Journalists
Comparatively getting to be a source for a journalist’s article, you’ll be able too make substance straightforwardly for writers. Or for them to ideally choose up in their claim stories.
Usually frequently called advanced PR, and one strategy is to make linkable resources (or connect trap).
These are pieces of substance that are super simple to interface to. Either since they reveal interesting information, contain unique experiences and reports, or are something else engaging.
And they’re great ways to induce backlinks.
3.Reverse Engineer Your Competitors’ Backlinks
Why reevaluate the wheel after you can duplicate your competitor’s connect sources?
To do this, you’ll require a connect investigation device.
Like Semrush’s Backlink Analytics.
You essentially ought to:
- Snatch your competitor’s URL
- Pop it into the device
- Get as numerous of their links as you’ll be able
Local SEO
Optimizing Google My Business
Claim and optimize your Google My Business profile. Add accurate information, photos, and customer reviews.
Local Directory Listings
List your business in local directories to improve visibility in specific regions.
NAP Consistency
Ensure your Name, Address, and Phone number are consistent across all platforms.
Avoiding SEO Pitfalls
Avoid black hat practices like keyword stuffing, duplicate content, and spammy backlinks. Stay updated on Google algorithm changes.
SEO Trends for 2024
Emerging trends like AI integration, Core Web Vitals, and voice search are reshaping SEO. Emphasize E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in your content strategy.
Bottom Line
This SEO checklist serves as your roadmap to success in 2025 and beyond. By focusing on keyword research, high-quality content, and technical optimization, your website will rank higher and attract more visitors.
FAQs
- What is the most critical part of an SEO checklist?
Keyword research, high-quality content, and technical SEO are the most vital aspects.
- How often should I update my SEO strategy?
Review and update your strategy every few months to stay competitive.
- Why is local SEO important?
Local SEO helps businesses attract customers within their region, improving visibility and foot traffic.
- What tools are essential for SEO?
Popular tools include Google Analytics, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console.
- How does mobile optimization affect rankings?
A mobile-friendly site improves user experience and boosts rankings since Google uses mobile-first indexing.
- How can I avoid SEO mistakes?
Avoid black hat techniques, focus on quality over quantity, and stay updated on algorithm changes.