As we approach 2024, it’s essential to ensure that your website is optimized for search engines to drive traffic, visibility, and growth for your business or e-commerce store. In this comprehensive blog post, we’ll go through a checklist of 10.5 points that will help you identify new sources of traffic, address technical issues hindering your website’s visibility, and uncover creative and strategic opportunities for content optimization.
Objectives
By following this checklist, you can achieve three primary objectives:
- Audit your website to find more traffic and visibility opportunities.
- Identify and resolve technical issues preventing your website’s visibility and traffic.
- Analyze your website’s content to discover new creative and strategic options.
Accomplishing these three objectives through this checklist will ultimately increase your website’s traffic and visibility in 2024.
The 10.5-Point SEO Checklist
1. Domain Audit via Site Operator
Perform a Google search for your website’s domain name (e.g., site:example.com) to identify any pages that may not be indexed. This method can also uncover hidden subdomains or unwanted pages that might be diverting traffic. Ensure that you search for the naked domain (without the www or https:// prefix) to reveal any hidden subdomains.
2. Google Search Console (GSC) Audit
Google Search Console is a crucial tool for monitoring your website’s organic performance. Here are the key areas to check:
- Server Errors (500 errors): Identify pages with 500-type server errors.
- 403 Access Denied Errors: Check for pages with 403 access denied errors.
- Discovered, Crawled, and Currently Not Indexed: Analyze pages that are not being indexed.
- Manual Actions: Check if there are any manual actions against your website.
- Security Messages: Review any security messages for your website.
- Removal Requests: Ensure no removal requests have been accidentally placed on important pages.
3. Google Analytics Audit
Google Analytics provides valuable insights into your website’s traffic patterns and sources. Here’s what you should focus on:
- Missing Google Analytics Code: Identify pages where the Google Analytics code is missing, especially on custom-coded websites.
- Pages with 1 or 0 Organic Clicks: Determine how many pages are receiving little to no organic traffic.
- Index Bloat: Check for an index bloat, which occurs when many pages on your website are indexed but receive no traffic. If the ratio of total indexed pages to pages with 1 or 0 clicks is less than 1.5, you may have an index bloat issue.
4. Sitemap
While not mandatory for indexing, a sitemap can help you communicate to Google which pages you want to be indexed, ranked, and prioritized. Here’s what you should check:
- Sitemap Presence: Ensure that a sitemap is present on your website.
- Sitemap Submission: Verify that the sitemap has been submitted to Google Search Console.
- Sitemap Quality: Check if the sitemap contains low-value pages (e.g., terms and conditions, privacy policy) that don’t need to be indexed.
- Indexed Pages Inclusion: Ensure that all your indexed pages are included in the sitemap.
- Low-Traffic Page Removal: Remove pages with little to no traffic from your sitemap.
5. robots.txt
The robots.txt file instructs search engines which pages and folders can be crawled and provides the URL of your sitemap. Here’s what you should check:
- Disallowed Pages or Folders: Ensure that you haven’t accidentally disallowed important pages or folders, such as category pages.
- Sitemap URL: Verify that the URL of your sitemap is correctly entered in the robots.txt file.
- Simplicity: Keep your robots.txt file as simple as possible.
6. Navigation Audit
Your website’s navigation plays a crucial role in guiding users and search engines to your internal pages. Here are the key areas to focus on:
- Intuitive Navigation: Ensure that your website’s navigation is intuitive and logical, with categories and pages organized sensibly.
- Internal Linking: Check if your internal pages are appropriately linked to each other.
- Breadcrumbs: Implement breadcrumbs to improve navigation and user experience.
7. Backlink Audit
A backlink audit helps you identify and manage the quality of the links pointing to your website. Here are the areas to consider:
- www and non-www Division: Ensure that backlinks are not divided between the www and non-www versions of your URL.
- Spammy Websites: Identify and remove backlinks from spammy or low-quality websites.
- Top Page Backlinks: Verify that your most important and high-traffic pages are receiving the most backlinks.
- Internal Linking to Top Pages: Ensure that your top pages are also receiving the most internal links.
- Reputed Website Backlinks: Acquire backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites.
8. On-Page Audit
An on-page audit helps you optimize your website’s content for search engines and users. Here are the key areas to focus on:
- SEO-Friendly URLs: Ensure that your URLs are SEO-friendly, containing relevant keywords and minimal non-English text.
- Keyword Placement: Include your target keywords in the URL slug, page title, image alt text, and h1 and h2 tags in a natural and non-spammy way.
- Content Length: Ensure that your content is of an appropriate length, based on the topic and the competition for your target keywords.
- Internal Linking: Link to relevant internal pages within your content to improve navigation and authority.
9. Page Speed
Page speed is a crucial ranking factor and is now part of Google’s Helpful Content System. Slow page speeds can negatively impact your content’s perceived helpfulness, even if the content itself is high-quality. Use tools like GTmetrix and Google’s Page Speed Insights to monitor and improve your website’s performance.
10. Awesome Pages
Identify any “orphan pages” on your website that are not linked to from any other page or navigation. These pages are often overlooked and may have lower chances of being indexed, crawled, and ranked. Use tools like Screaming Frog to find and link these pages to important pages, such as category pages or the main menu.
10.5. 404 Pages
While 404 pages are not a major issue in themselves, mishandling them can create problems on your website. Here are the key points to consider:
- Link Existence: Check if the URLs reported as 404 in Google Search Console were ever intentionally created or linked to from your website.
- Link Corrections: If the 404 URLs are linked from your website, correct those links.
- Bulk Redirects: Avoid bulk redirecting 404 URLs to your homepage or other pages, as this can lead to more issues.
- 404 Status Code: Verify that your 404 page is returning the correct 404 status code using Google Developer Tools.
By addressing these 10.5 points, you can increase the value, traffic, visibility, and branding of your website, ensuring a successful 2024 for your business or e-commerce store.
