Ultimate SEO Checklist 2018: Daily, Monthly, and Annual SEO Tasks

I have scoured the web to find every worthwhile on-page SEO task and checklist available to help you construct your own SEO strategy, with or without the help of curated daily SEO tasks that should take less than 15 minutes per day and still build up to awesome results.

Because, let’s not beat around the bush: I built SEO Prompts due to the fact I freaking hate SEO checklists. They are overwhelming, difficult to maintain, and generally exhausting. Despite this fact, I am here to provide for those who love a good checklist. Without further ado, I present to you the ultimate SEO checklist for 2018. I’ve broken everything down into daily, monthly, and annual SEO tasks for the ambitious website owner who has too much time on their hands. 😉 (Don’t mind me, I’m just jealous of all that free time!)

If you don’t like my SEO checklist, skip to the end and you’ll discover a massive list of every reputable on-page SEO checklist I could get my hands on. Happy optimizing!

Disclaimers:

These are all based on how often I would run these kind of tasks to be effective without driving myself crazy or letting SEO consume my entire business. If you’re looking at building an intensive SEO strategy, you’ll need to gauge frequency for yourself based on your goals.
The focus here is on-page SEO because when you first get started, it’s important to begin with your foundation first. Off-page SEO is another beast and is certainly important, but without a strong foundation likely won’t help you reach your goals in the long-run.

One-Time SEO Tasks

Some SEO tasks can be set up as a one-time deal, and then used to complete other ongoing maintenance tasks.

Install Google Analytics (or other traffic tracking tools).
Install Yoast SEO if you’re using WordPress. Otherwise, find a suitable alternative for modifying page titles and meta descriptions.
Use a sitemap generating tool to keep an updated sitemap at all times. Yoast SEO handles this for you if you are on WordPress!
Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Create and upload a robots.txt file so search engines can properly crawl your website. WordPress manages this for you.
Install an SSL certificate.
Ensure your site is mobile-friendly using Google’s mobile-friendliness testing tool.
Claim your business on all business listing sites, such as Google My Business and Yelp.
Claim your brand name around the web. You can use tools like NameChk or NameCheckr to speed things along.
Add Structured Data Markup to your website.
Make sure essential pages are present: About, Contact, and Privacy are a bare minimum.
If you are a business, be sure to list your official company name, address, phone number, and opening hours on the contact page of your site (and in the footer, if possible).

Daily and Weekly SEO Checklist Tasks

These are tasks you can carry out more frequently! Whether you choose to go daily or weekly is up to you. Personally, I find that you can typically break your monthly tasks into a full schedule so you’re not overwhelmed. Of course, if you’re trying to spend hours on SEO per day, knock yourself out. 😛

Create new content that follows a content marketing plan based on your goal keywords. Your content should hit these marks:
- Natural, conversational tone that is easy to skim through.
- The title should be true to the content found on the page.
- Your content should be written as simply as possible, so anyone could understand it.
- Be sure to pose and answer common questions within the article. This helps you land in Google’s Answer Box.
- Ensure your keyword is in the title and within the first 100 words of the text.
- Choose short, keyword-friendly URLs.
Include media on your website, such as photos and videos. Be sure to optimize images for speed using tools like TinyPNG.
Take a quick look over old articles and ensure any time-sensitive data is updated. Google cares about fresh content.
While reviewing your articles, make sure you’ve included at least a few relevant links to external websites.
Ensure every piece of content you write concludes with a call to action, such as leaving a comment, clicking a link, or subscribing to your email list.

Monthly SEO Checklist Tasks

These are tasks you should keep track of about once every month to measure your overall progress.

Check your website’s loading speed using GTMetrix or Pingdom.
Check for broken links on your website and replace them with updated ones. Screaming Frog is a popular tool for this, and Google Search Console will likely alert you to any problematic links as well.
Validate your site’s HTML and CSS.
Review your goal keywords. Here are tools to help you along the way:
Optimize page titles, meta descriptions, and content (including images!) for your goal keywords. Be sure to avoid keyword stuffing! Your text should still sound like it was written for normal human beings.
Make sure any new content links to appropriate other pages on your site, and add links to the new content on older pages as well. This will help strengthen your internal website linking.
Prioritize optimization for high-performing pages over low-performing pages, especially if you’re short on time.

Semi-Annual and Annual SEO Checklist Tasks

Here are a few SEO tasks you should perform to check in and rebase about once or twice a year. SEO simply takes time, so these tasks tend to either be quick checkups (when things are working) or intensive audits (when things aren’t going well!).

Ensure each page has a unique target keyword.
Perform a content review to make sure pages are using heading tags properly.
Do a spring cleaning to ensure your site loads as quickly as possible.
Review your website’s design to ensure it still performs as expected on desktop and mobile devices.
Check for 301 and 302 redirects and make sure they are working as expected. BrowseSEO.net is a great tool for this.
Double check for broken links and other crawl errors.
Check in on your competitor’s strategies, backlinks, and keywords to get ideas for what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few tools to help:
Double check your URLs to ensure each page’s URL aligns with its target keywords.
Review page content and make sure every page’s keyword is incorporating synonyms. This will help you with your semantic SEO, so Google can rank your pages for similar keywords. LISGraph can help you with this.
While you’re reviewing page content, ensure every page has at least 500 words. Simply remove any dead weight pages that you aren’t able to improve.
Review your web hosting experience. If your site has been particularly slow or you’ve had any issues without sufficient support, consider switching to a better web hosting company.

Roundup of Reliable SEO Checklists

Source: https://seoprompts.com/articles/seo-checklist-tasks/

8 major Google ranking signals in 2017

What’s a top Google position made of? Here are the 8 ingredients that make all the difference. It’s no secret that Google’s ranking algorithm is made up of over 200 components, or “signals.” And while the list is impressive, it can get daunting if you’re a just regular human with 24 hours in a day. Luckily, SEO isn’t about getting every tiny thing right; it’s about getting your priorities right. Below, we’ve put up a list of top eight rankings factors, based on the industry studies by SearchMetrics , Backlinko and SEO PowerSuite . Read on to find what they are, and how to optimize your site for each. Backlinks Surprise, surprise, right? In 2017, backlinks continue to be the strongest indication of authority to Google. Let’s look at the things that can make or break yours. 1. Link score How does Google turn the abstract concept of “backlinks” into a quantifiable ranking signal? In several patents , Google explains that this is done by calculating a “link score.” Th

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