Internet Marketing Clinic Episode 111: Ultimate SEO Checklist pt1

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Todays's podcast covers a bunch of different SEO topics as we work on our ultimate end of the year checklist for 2020. (I know it's a few months away but it's coming fast!)
Google Webmaster Tools

We talk about webmaster tools and why every site should have it set up. The easy way to do this is by using Sitekit from Google.
We reviewed how and why you should add a sitemap to your website
What are some of the more problematic errors you can see and how do you fix them
What are core web vitals
See detailed Webmaster Tools Class

 
Bing Webmaster Tools

Remember to add Bing to your arsenal now because it's almost a 1/3 of all web searches. You can set this up here: Bing Webmaster Tools

 
Set up Google Analytics and StatCounter.com

It's an important function and all websites need to have solid statistics. We recommend adding both because it's sometimes good to see all the traffic not just what google is omitting.

 
Rank Math vs. Yoast

Yoast has been around many years but Rank Math is starting to turn heads. A lot of them. I like the rank math interface better than Yoast. It also does a better job of assembling the interlinking of pages and I think its much easier to understand for beginners but has the flexibility for experts. It also adds schema by default so if you forget it remembers. Overall I think Rank Math is the better route, but i fully expect Yoast to not concede and up its game.

 
Make a Keyword Checklist

Keywords matter. Long-tail keywords matter.  We talk about how to select them and some of the best practices for them

 
Create a question that people want the answer to

Talked about some online forums that help us as well as sites like Ask the Public

 
Create SEO Friendly URLs

Why does this matter and how should you go about doing that. Why it's bad to make things too wordy. The shorter the better but keeps it keyword rich but don't overdo it and stuff

How do you position your keywords in the Title tag?

So the position of the keyword is very important based on what your objective of the page is
Consider adding delimiters to the title tag like the year of the word best that help mirror more what searchers do. This will help you land better in the search results.

 
Use your keywords in H1, H2 or H3 tags

But don't overdo it.

1 H1 at most

 
Optimize Images

We often rank #1 on our terms so I am often reluctant to do this, however, its a good practice and it does help land you in image search. If you have a product specifically that would be searched for by image, we talk about how to optimize images in both alt text file name and really size still does matter. The smaller the better.

 
Learn the art of Synonyms and LSI keyword

Google is big on signals and there are words it expects to see on a page and others it doesn't learn what those words are and how to effectively use them. They are not in place of keywords but rather in support of them

 
 External links

Although I'm not a huge believer in linking outward, I will say that at times there are reasons to do it. For example, I did one above. Or on our home page, I linked to our sponsor partners. It makes sense.

Part 2 will  be posted at the end of August as we continue down our ultimate SEO Checklist