Marketing is an important aspect for any organization to display its products or services, which further paves the way for increasing its brand image. 21st Century is also known for Digital revolution, and the technology driven marketing is the new normal. Digital Marketing Services yield fruitful results when used appropriately and adequately. Although, digital marketing has varied approaches, but one of the most interesting one is ‘SEO – Search Engine Optimization’, which is a mean to increase the visibility of relevant searches.
Search Engine Optimization Specialist follows a structured approach by using a robust checklist that guides the search, and increases the organic traffic on the website, ultimately improving the Google ranking.
Basic SEO Checklist:
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tool: Both the tools have some common features like keyword ranking, fixing website errors, submitting sitemaps, and google messages. Although, Bing administers the built-in keyword research tool, but it’s not as popular as Google search.
Google Analytics: This is important to track the progress and performance of the website varied period, as required for ex. daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. It has features to display traffic from Google, bounce rate, number of visits on the page, and the time spent on the website.
Meta Title: Also known as Title tag, is a component in the head segment of an HTML document that describes the title of the page on the website. It’s imperative to include targeted keyword in the tittle tag. The title should be 50 to 60 characters, not too short and not too lengthy, otherwise it may impact the search result.
Meta Description: These are a snippet of the text that describes a particular page’s content; in other words, it provides a short information about the data. Meta description should be unique, with 150-160 characters. It has a set of elements that define the illustrated page, author of the content, the keyword used, etc.
SEO-Friendly URL: URLs basically help Google assimilate the information about the website page, and is usually enriched with keywords. A keyword in the beginning of the URL yields a better rank than long URL.
Example: https://semtitans.com/blog/seo-checklist/
Image Alt Tags: Image enriches the content, and reduces the bouncing rate as it generates curiosity and interest. Image size and its quality is not sufficient, a description of the image, along with target keyword is also important for Image Alt Tags.
Schema Markup: Accumulating Schema Markup on one’s web page, help search engine in understanding the content better or simply shows rich snippet. It stimulates click-through rates as well as increases the traffic on the website.
Heading (H1) Tags: H1 tag is normally used for the title of the page or any post that works as the content’s main heading. It must have the target keywords in the title, to help user realize that they are at the right place and help google in navigating the page.
Internal Linking: When anyone posts a blog or a new piece of content, it is advisable to link the blog or content page with their main website. It should have the target keywords, and two to three internal links to help Google identify, interpret and index the website pages.
Example: https://semtitans.com/blog “SEO checklist”
Social Sharing Buttons: Social media marketing services have an added feature of social sharing button that provides an overview of the content, products, and services to the users who visit the website. It also boosts the brand awareness among the customers on various social media pages through content sharing, thus increasing the traffic.
Final thoughts
The basic SEO checklist discussed above has been recognized and applied by different primary and secondary users. The checklist users can always customize their requirement and use the checklist as applicable to them, to achieve the desired digital marketing results for their respective organizations.
