A digital marketer has to make the most of his/her time and resources. Because he/she has a limited amount of both of them. It is a well-known fact that it takes time for SEO to establish authority(especially in crowded markets). Therefore, you should be making most of your time. Here are some SEO activities and priorities that can help in achieving your goals faster.

One-Time SEO Tasks

A.) Setup, tracking, and Technical SEO

1.) Install Google Analytics and Search Console

Using Google Analytics, you can track and evaluate organic traffic, which is the primary metric for Organic SEO. At the same time, Google Console gives additional data such as clicks and impressions from Google search queries to your website. It also provides you options like submitting a sitemap.

2.) Track the keywords

To keep track of your SEO progress, you need ranking software like Moz or SEMrush. These software's can be used to upload keywords, monitor keywords, and keep tracking how they change with time.

3.) Submit XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap is like a directory for your website and makes it easy for search engines like Google to crawl the website. You should create and submit an XML sitemap quickly in Google Search Console.

4.) Make sure your website is indexable

Indexing gives an alert to search engines that a page is ready to be included in the search engine results. You should check which pages Google is indexing in Search Console. You should submit the Google search that begins with site: and followed by your site's URL. If you get the webpage in the search results, it means that your site is indexed; otherwise, it is not indexed.

5.) Install an SSL certificate

SSL certificates are used for adding a layer of security to your website through encryption. When you install a certificate, it changes your website from HTTP to HTTPS.

6.) Crawl your website

You can use SEO tools such as Moz, which can crawl your website and reveal metadata issues that could harm your SEO potential.

7.) Optimize Meta Tags

Search Engines use Meta Tags to read a web page's content and structure. To ensure this structure across your site and other service pages, make sure that you have included the respective target keywords in the following places:

1.) Page Title
2.) Meta Description
3.) H1(Title tag )
4.) At least one H2
5.) Image Alt Text
6.) URL

8.) Analyze Website Uptime and Page Speed

Speed and availability are two important factors that are critical for SEO of any website because they impact the user experience. You can use Google Page Speed Insights to check your speed score. Also, tools like Pingdom can reveal the website uptime and point to critical issues.

B.) Planning/SEO strategy

1.) Conducting Keyword Research

To know about the existing keyword rankings and new opportunities, you should use tools such as SEMrush or Moz. One should use keywords that are most closely related to your product or service and the pain points that your customers experience. You should put together your data into a spreadsheet that includes the search volume and the difficulty data. Also, one must conduct keyword research on an ongoing basis so as to keep yourself abreast with the new trends and opportunities.

2.) Define Achievable Keyword Targets

While it may seem lucrative to go after keywords that have the highest volume, going after highly competitive keywords is like a fresher applying for a high-ranking position.

When you start out, you need to make Google trust you; it should come to know that you hold some authority on the topic and that you are more credible than other websites, and therefore, you should be ranked above them.

3.) Create a Topic Strategy

Search engines have come to understand topic modeling, meaning it understands how words relate to each other. Therefore, in place of creating content for keywords individually, the entire page should represent a unique topic and should match the searcher's intent to avoid duplicacy.

When making your content strategy, you should think in terms of topics and sub-topics. A topic would reflect the primary keyword that you aim to rank for. Based on that topic, you should build subtopic pages that answer the questions to cover the full scope of the topic. Content tools like blueprints can help organize topics and sub-topics to provide you a clear roadmap for the success of SEO.

4.) Record your Organic Traffic Goals

You must be realistic about your organic traffic goals, and you must understand what it will take to reach them. For instance, if you are only able to create two new pieces of content every month in a majorly competitive industry, then it will naturally take time to reach your organic traffic goals.

 

Monthly SEO Checklist

1.) Update the topic strategy

You should constantly review your most critical topics and subtopics and should look for new content opportunities that could answer the question that your target audience might have.

2.) Measure Rankings and Featured Snippets

You also keep a watch on your monthly keyword rankings, both in cases of going up and coming down. It is also significant to note featured snippet opportunities and put them into your content optimization plan accordingly.

3.) Conduct a Competitor Analysis

A competitor audit is a healthy practice that lets you realize newer opportunities for improvement. Through this audit, you can come to know if your competitors have gained extra backlinks, created similar content or increased their Moz domain authority score.

4.) Monitor linking domains

One important indicator of your SEO performance is the number and quality of websites that link to you. While link building can seem like a tedious process, it is, in fact, a welcome move as it increases your authority in the eyes of the search engine.

Daily and Weekly SEO CheckList

1.) Optimize existing content

It is a smart choice to update the existing content rather than creating fresh content every single time. Search algorithms of search engines usually want to see users interacting with your content. Rather than creating a fresh batch of content every time, you must update and make improvements to the existing content. Also, optimizing content usually takes less time than creating new content. Also, you can generate traffic faster by diverting the traffic that you get to your website to someplace new.

2.) Create Context Rich Content

We know that creating content is a time-intensive process. But at the same time, it is a necessary process. For search engines to know that you are an authority on the topic, you must be ready to constantly create new content. As an expert on subject matter, you ought to be able to address the full scope of questions that a searcher might have related to the topic.

3.) Evaluate Quality of Content and remove non-ranking pages

If your website is older, there are good chances that it may have certain pages that are of no use anymore. The number of such pages could be dozens, even hundreds. You must not ignore these pages. Having a higher percentage of such pages can lead your website to not rank. You must keep a running list of webpages. The pages that are not creating traffic or ranking anywhere, they should be directed to a stronger page or their content optimized to serve the searchers better.

4.) Monitor Weekly Rankings

A change in organic rankings and traffic is a direct reflection of your domain authority and quality of content. If you have the appropriate tools in place, then you might want to check on these metrics once in a while.

5.) Review crawl reports and resolve the critical issues

You need to set up the weekly crawl reports so that you stay ahead of future crawler issues and can easily address the critical errors. Managing SEO is not an easy task. It takes a hell lot of effort to produce helpful content, monitor performance, and stay ahead of the constant algorithm changes.

Wrapping Up!

We at Advology Solution help companies define and execute the best practices for SEO. We also lay down the metrics and checklists for SEO-defined practices that allow our clients to gain big in terms of traffic and leads.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1. Does SEO need maintenance?

Ans. Yes, SEO does require maintenance. It can take you several hours of dedicated time per week (part time SEO) and needs your commitment for continuing this for as long as you want the results for. In the beginning, it can take several months before your SEO starts showing results on Google or other search engines.

Q2. What are the basic tasks of SEO?

Ans. The top ten tasks that you shouldn’t be ignoring are:

1.) Regular focus on structured data
2.) Monitoring backlinks
3.) Creating Skyscraper Content
4.) Optimizing the landing pages
5.) Using Infographics
6.) Creating more videos
7.) Creating your own keywords and phrases
8.) Linking and Improving- Taking advantage of high performing posts

Q3. What are the different kinds of SEO?

Ans. The various types of SEO are:

1.) Technical SEO
2.) On page SEO
3.) Off-page SEO
4.) Local SEO
5.) Mobile SEO
6.) E commerce SEO

Q4. In what way can I improve my page SEO?

Ans. It can be improved through following steps:

1.) Creating effective backlinks. Doing the off-site SEO, you must be creating backlinks. It is a crucial technique with regards to ranking on page number one.
2.) Social Media Marketing
3.) Guest Content
4.) Forum Posting
5.) Local Listings