SEO Checklist: 10 Tips for Success in 2021
Website Speed
Website performance speed is a huge factor and one of the few ranking signals that were officially confirmed by Google. You Google PageSpeed Insights tool or GtMetrix to test your website’s loading speed and get suggestions on how to improve it.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is one of the most undervalued metrics in SEO. This is the percentage of users who navigate away after only viewing an individual page on the site. When Google sees that visitors are bouncing from your page, it’s a clear sign that the page is not a quality result for the search term. This will result in a drop from the first page. In order to reduce bounce rates, you can include links throughout the article or page.
Long Content
According to recent studies content that is longer in length ranks better than shorter articles. Make sure that you are writing focused, comprehensive content that hits the 1,500-wordmark.
Social Signals
Make sure that you have social sharing buttons that are prominently displayed on the articles and product pages. The easier you make it for your visitors to share your content, the more likely they are to do so.
Heading Structure
Add your most important keywords to your H1 tag. Usually, most platforms and CMS wrap your page title in H1, which is fine. You can also add your keywords to H2 and H3 tags although they are less important.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence means that Google pays very close attention to not only how often a keyword has been used in a page or article, but also where it appears on the page. The earliest it appears, the more important it must be. Include your target keyword in the first paragraph of the article or page.
Internal Links
Internal links are an essential SEO item and by adding them to your pages and articles you make sure that Google understands the relevance and relationship between different pages of your site. Again, similar to the bounce rate mentioned above, include internal links throughout the article.
Outbound Links
Outbound (external) links are one often neglected SEO item. Be an active member of the web by connecting to other sites that are valuable and interesting for the visitors. Include at least 2-3 external links to related authoritative sites in your niche.
Title Tag
Title tags are still seen as one of the most important aspects of your SEO strategy. However here we won’t tell you that you need to have a keyword-optimized title tag. We tell you that it is important to “front-load” your title tag. Include your target keyword at the very beginning of your page title.
URL Structure
Having an SEO-friendly URL structure will help both your users, as well as Google to figure out the topic of the page. Make sure that you have short and clean URLs that include your target keyword. You want visitors to understand what is on the page just by looking at the URL.
