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SEO Checklist 2016 – Score higher in Google.

SEO CHECKLIST 2016

I have put together our SEO checklist 2016 especially for you.
SEO is a broad concept, but Google is actually making it simpler and simpler. Pulling all kinds of tricks to score high in Google stopped working long ago. In fact, Google now punishes it with a drop in your ranking.

SEO TOOLS

  • Install Google Analytics. These days a requirement. (measuring = knowing)
  • Install Google Webmaster Tools. The free tool for optimising your pages. Among other things you can track down 404 pages, faulty titles, technical errors and duplicate content.
  • Install Screaming Frog to track down broken links quickly.
  • Browseo gives you insight into technical errors. You can then put them right.

KEYWORDS

Google’s Keyword Planner quickly shows you whether your keywords are interesting and how things stand with the competition for that keyword. Sometimes you are better off focusing on synonyms, where the keyword is less popular but the competition lower. High competition is sometimes impossible to beat. In that case, accept it. You can also extend your focus keyword with two more words, which makes your keyword more specific and gives you a better chance of success.

TEXTS

  • Make sure your focus keyword is worked into the URL as well. This still works perfectly.
  • A good browser title still carries important weight. Both for your findability and for your conversion. When your browser title can pique the visitor’s interest in Google, you make it more likely they will click sooner. Google attaches value to this too.
  • H1, H2, H3 and H4 headings are still important. We are really going back to basics. Build your page like a book, but don’t take it too far either. Don’t let your keywords reappear in every heading; play with it creatively and think about the quality of the page.
  • Aim for at least 300 words. This is debatable, but choose quality over the magic threshold of 300 words.

META DESCRIPTION

  • In the meta description you briefly explain what the page is about. Make sure you use no more than 155 characters.
  • Keywords. Just stop doing that!

QUICK TIPS

  • Images. Ten years ago this was THE optimisation trick. Plenty of images on every page with good file names and ALT tags and your ranking would shoot up. These days that is no longer the case. It is still an important factor, though. So do put a nice image on your site with a good name and ALT text. It makes your site friendlier and better looking into the bargain.
  • Internal linking. Always make sure your visitor doesn’t end up at a dead end, and encourage them to read on. Internal linking with good anchor text (the selected text) is still an excellent means of optimisation.

PAGES

  • Landing page. Look at every page as a home page. Your visitor sometimes arrives on a page other than your home page, and for them that page is the starting point. Think about goals for every page and ask yourself: what do I want to achieve with the visitors who are on this page? (A small piece of conversion advice thrown in.)
  • Duplicate content. I have already touched on it briefly, but really do always produce unique quality texts of your own and never copy texts from your competitors. Incidentally, this used to work well — only Google has grown a little older and wiser too.

ADDITIONAL TIPS

  • Make sure you have an XML sitemap. An HTML sitemap matters less, but it can sometimes be handy for your visitor. In that case do make sure it is easy to take in.
  • Create a robot.txt and submit it to Google.
  • Social media. Google cannot avoid taking social media into account in its ranking as well. By now this has become an important element too. In the Netherlands, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are all worth using. Above all, refer back to your site from these channels.

SPEED & OPTIMISATION

  • Responsive, in other words a mobile-friendly website. Very important. I have seen surprising results from this myself, with a webshop scoring more than 16,000 euros in extra monthly turnover through mobile visitors. These are the success stories, of course, but responsive web design is absolutely a must-have these days.
  • Speed. Check your website speed with Google PageSpeed tools among others. Speed is an important factor. When you place an image, make sure it is optimised too. In a program like Photoshop you can sometimes set the quality as low as 50% without seeing any loss of quality on your screen, while reducing the file size by more than 80%.

HOW GOOGLE THINKS

Google wants to recommend the best results to its visitors. Google can tell quite quickly whether your page is genuinely interesting for the keyword searched. If a lot of visitors leave your page quickly, that is already a signal that the information isn’t interesting for them. Our focus therefore lies on quality. If the quality of a page is good, that will also lead to better conversion — whatever your goal is. We hope our SEO Checklist 2016 helps you score higher in Google!