18 essential SEO optimization checklists for 2022

Today, I’ll show you how to do SEO optimization checks. If you want to get a higher Google ranking, you will like the actionable steps in this guide.

• step 1: check whether your website is suitable for mobile device
• step 2: make sure Google indexes a version of your site
• step 3: speed up your website
• step 4: find and delete “zombie pages”
• step 5: find and fix index problems
• step 6: check your natural traffic
• step 7: improve your page search engine optimization
• step 8 : set keyword ranking tracking
• step 9: analyze your backlink
• step 10: repair broken link
• step 11: competitor Analysis
• step 12: increase your content 10x
• step 13: optimize UX signal
• step 14: flatten your website Architecture
• step 15: launch skyscraper article
• step 16: get from your internal link More information
• step 17: use the site checking tool
• step 18: optimize selected snippets

mobile search engine optimization is more important than ever.

, why?

first, 60% of Google searches come from mobile devices.

second, Google began to use their mobile first algorithm.

this means that Google now uses the mobile version of your website for mobile and desktop search. The

question is:

, how do you know if your website is suitable for mobile devices?

uses Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.

simply paste your website into the tool.

… You’ll see if Google thinks your site is optimized for mobile devices. Step 2 of

: make sure Google indexes a version of your website

. Did you know that Google can index different versions of your site?

, it’s true.

for example, here are four different versions of the same site:

, these URL are almost the same for you and me.

• http://yoursite.com
• https://yoursite.com
• http://www.yoursite.com
• https://www.yoursite.com

, but not Google.

will consider these versions to be completely independent sites unless you redirect them correctly.

(not good. (

fortunately, this is easy to check. And repair it.

only needs to type each of the four different versions in the browser.

they should all end on the same URL:

as far as this site is concerned, the “WWW-free” version of the site is redirected to www.wbolt.com.

when someone visits the HTTP version of the site, they are redirected to the HTTPS version.

Don’t worry if a version of your site is not redirected correctly.

only needs 301to redirect it to the version you want to use.

then proceed to step # 3. Step 3 of

: speed up your website

A few years ago, Google confirmed that the loading speed of your site was a ranking factor. Not long ago,

launched a new update that makes speed even more important.

here’s how to make your site load really fast:

First, clean up the HTML code of your website.

you can use PageSpeed Insights to easily find problems in your code.

Professional Tip: don’t just analyze your home page. Be sure to also test hot pages on your site, such as blog posts, service pages, and category pages. If you want to achieve the PageSpeed Insights test score of 100, you can refer to the tutorials we released earlier to give it a try.

Second, run the speed test.
Tests like

actually load your page. And let you understand the bottleneck of slowing down.

you can use either WebPageTest.org or GTMetrix.

Third, compress your image.

‘s huge images can bring your site to an abrupt halt.

this is why I recommend using tools like Kraken to compress images.

Professional Tip: upgrade your host. If you spend $10 a month on hosting, don’t expect fast load time. The speed difference between high-quality mainframe and cheap mainframe is crazy. Step 4 of

: find and delete the “zombie page”

and enter site:yourwebsite.com in Google.

this will show how many pages Google has indexed:

, if this number is higher than you think, then you are not alone.

actually… Many

sites have 50-75% more index pages than they expected.

(I call these extra pages “zombie pages”.

has proved that deleting zombie pages can bring you more natural traffic.

for example, Sean from Proven deleted more than 9k zombie pages from his website.

… This helps increase his Google traffic by nearly 50%: why does

work so well?

well, Google has said that more content won’t make your site better.

when you delete Zombie Pages, you give Google what it wants.

Professional Tip: deleting Zombie Pages also makes the rest of SEO detection easier. Fewer pages = fewer problems

With this, here are the most common types of zombie pages:

archive page

• categories and tags page (WordPress)
• search results page
• old press release
• template content
• streamlined content (
• , this leads us to the second step.

step 5: find and fix indexing problems

next, it’s time to find pages that are not indexed by Google. To do this for

, start Google Search Console. The

Index coverage report shows you a list of pages that cannot be indexed for some reason. As you can see,

has almost no errors. Is

all right?

, maybe.

needs to check carefully to see if everything is okay, and I recommend a free SEO tool called Screaming Frog.

Screaming Frog crawls your website in the same way as Google. It also lets you know the pages it can’t access.

(for example, if you accidentally block a page with a robots.txt file… Or the page has a noindex tag. )

so if you find that a page is blocked, double-check whether it should be blocked.

, for example, if your site paginated comments.

and you don’t want Google to index every comment page, you can put a noindex tag on those pages.

in this case, a blocked page means that it is blocked.

once you confirm that Google can access all the pages you want them to visit, you should … Step 6 of

: check your natural traffic

now is the time to see how much natural traffic you get.

to do this, please go to Google Analytics.

then goes to Acquisition & gt;> All Traffic & gt;> Channels.

clicks “Natural search”.

you will see how many people visited your site through search engines last month.

next, set the date to the past 6-8 months.

you’ll see if your natural traffic is moving in the right direction:

, as you can see, natural traffic from screenshot sites has gradually increased over the past few months.

now:

, if your natural traffic is flat (or falling), don’t worry. The goal of the

step is to establish a benchmark. After

completes this SEO test, the situation should begin to improve.

talked about… Step 7 of

: it’s no secret that improving your page search engine optimization

pages is very important.

said:

you may not have time to optimize every page on the site. Fortunately for

, you don’t have to do this.

here’s what to do:

first, identify your five most important pages.

these pages can be:

locates an important keyword

• gets less traffic than before
• has ranked well. But it has the potential to enter the top 5
• , for example…

is a list of the best free SEO tools. Except for the basics of

(such as including my keywords in my title tag), I didn’t do much to optimize the page.

and because it’s already on the first page of my goal keyword…

… It is likely to make it into the top five.

you can focus on the following five strategies:

includes your keywords in the title tag

• in the first 100 words
• add 5 + external links
• add 5 + internal links
• uses the LSI keyword
• once these strategies are in place, let’s go straight to step 8:

step 8: set keyword ranking tracking

now is the time to start tracking your ranking in SERP.

has a million ranking tracking tools.

, but for me, the best thing is probably SEMrush.

, why?

SEMrush is great because it doesn’t just track the keywords you give it.

(although it does the same thing. The coolest thing about

SEMrush is that it automatically finds the keywords you rank for it.

step 9: analyze your backlinks

there is no doubt:

backlinks are still very important.

in fact, research based on 11.8 million search results shows that backlinks are more relevant to rankings than any other factor.

it’s time to analyze your backlink profile.

is like this:

first, enter your home page into the backlink analysis tool.

(I use Semrush in this step. But you can also use any other SEO tool. )

you will get a report on your link:

then, check the reference domain and domain weight.

recommended domain = the number of different websites linked to you.

, don’t sweat too much over the exact numbers. You’re just benchmarking where you are.

you also want to view your domain weights.

each tool has its own “domain weight” name.

(for example, Semrush calls it a “weight score”. (

but the idea is the same:

domain permissions tell you how many permissions your site has. A combination based on the quantity and quality of backlinks. Finally,

, look for toxic links.

to do this, look at the most common anchor text in the link configuration file:

if you see a lot of brand anchor text (such as “” and “wbolt.com”), that’s good. Fortunately for

, this is the case with my link profile:

, however, if you notice a large number of keyword-rich but irrelevant anchor text, the link profile is toxic.

this is an example of a link profile with junk anchor text:

if you want to dig deeper, check out some of your backlinks.

most of your backlinks should come from real websites.

for example, most of the links in the screenshots below come from blogs and news sites about digital marketing and SEO.

(this is good.

however, if you notice that most of your links come from improper websites, you may want to reject these links.

Professional tip: spam links are a normal part of any link profile. So if you see some black hat links, don’t be nervous. Step 10 of

: fix broken links

A few years ago, Google said it would not “lose sleep” because the links were broken.

said:

disconnected links are not conducive to the user experience. This may damage your SEO.

(more on this later.

has it, here’s how to fix broken links on your site:

first, find corrupted pages on your site that Google cannot index.

you can find this information in the Index report of Google Search Console.

I keep an eye on broken links, so I know very well.

if your web page has a Google 404 error, you will see the following:

sometimes you delete the page for some reason (for example, you delete a bunch of zombie pages).

if that’s the case, you don’t have to do anything. Google will eventually stop reporting these corrupted pages as problems.

however, if Google cannot access the page you want to rank, you obviously want to restore that page as soon as possible.

next, use the tool to find broken internal and external links.

you can use free tools such as Semrush or Broken Link Check.

is valid for both.

step 11: competitor Analysis

it’s time to monitor your competitors.

how to do this:

first, find the competitor’s best keyword.

you can easily find this information using Semrush.

needless to say:

if your competitors rank these keywords, you are likely to rank them as well.

this makes them good target keywords.

second, look at the pages that rank for these terms.

then, find out what these pages have in common. In this way, you will know which type of content best suits your niche market.

… You will notice excellent article content in general:

is a long format (3k + word)

• contains custom visual effects and illustrations
• references from Google research, data and statement that
• is not a super technology
• finally, see who links to these pages.

does this by pasting URL into Semrush.

and view the link to the page.

this will tell you who is the influencer in your niche market. In this way, you can start to build a relationship with them.

(it comes in handy when you start to build links. )

step 12: increase your content 10 times

back to step 7, you optimized the most important pages with SEO. It’s time for

to increase the content on these pages tenfold.

, why?

this is simple: if

is to be ranked in 2022, your content needs to shine. With this in

, here’s how to make these pages 10 times better:

1. A very brief introduction.
No one in

wants to read such a lengthy introduction:

, on the contrary, the overview at the beginning of the article should be short and concise.

two。 Little ​​ paragraph.

people don’t read online. They skimmed.

short paragraphs can help viewers better consume your content.

3. A lot of subtitles.
The

subtitle helps break down your content into digestible chunks.

uses them early and often.

4. Use vision, images, and video

multimedia makes your content more attractive.

(in addition, visual effects can help people learn and understand. )

, for example, in this SEO checklist article, a large number of pictures are used:

Visual effects:

and Video:

because my content is easy to read and understand, the average user will spend 05

08:

on this page step 13: optimize UX signal

RankBrain is Google’s artificial intelligence algorithm. Unlike the old version of Google,

measures how users interact with your site.

means: to rank

in today’s Google, you need to optimize for UX signals.

in other words, your content needs to satisfy users.

when you do this, Google will give you a huge boost in rankings.

for example… The article below on

is not ranked high.

(it hovers between the 10th and 15th places of the target keyword: “SEO Campaign”. ) the content of the original

article did not provide what people searching for “SEO Campaign” wanted.

they did not take steps, but instead obtained a case study of a specific strategy:

articles also have many outdated screenshots:

in short:

because the content is not optimized for UX signals, so Google buried it.

but when you do the following

• to replace the case study with a step-by-step guide
• includes more actionable tips for beginners and intermediate SEO
• adds examples from many different industries
• and more updated

content, perfect for people who search for “SEO Campaign”:

content is designed to satisfy Google searchers, and natural pages will get better search engine rankings. Step 14 of

: flatten your website architecture

your site architecture is simple:

this is how the pages on your site are organized.

turns out that your website architecture is very important to SEO.

, why? There are two reasons for

:

first, the website architecture can help search engines find and index all your pages.

when your site architecture is a mess, Google will have a hard time finding all your pages:

, but when your site architecture links your pages together, Google can easily find your entire site and index it.

second, the architecture tells Google which pages on your site are the most important.

generally speaking, the closer a page is to your home page, the more important it is. The problem with

is:

What should be the structure of your website?

you want to keep your website structure flat.

in other words, it’s not like this:

, instead, you want it to look like this:

. )

or to put it another way:

should not be clicked more than 3 times from your home page to any page on your site.

in some cases, you need a developer to thoroughly check the navigation of your site.

but you can only add internal links to different pages.

… And add a link to the sidebar:

, as long as users can access any of your pages in 3 or fewer clicks, you are fine. Step 15 of

: launch skyscraper article

the final step in this SEO test is to publish a piece of content using skyscraper technology.

, why?

helps Google quickly find and index all the changes you just made.

, for example, whenever you post new content, check out the peak of “pages crawled per day”:

here we will not repeat the explanation of skyscraper technology, you can read the previous article to learn more. Step 16 of

: get more information from your internal links.

internal links are one of the most undervalued SEO strategies on the planet. The

question is:

, how do you link internally in the right way?

this is simple:

ensures that there are as many links to high-priority pages as possible.

Professional Tip: you may find some unimportant pages in this report. For example, you may have many links to your privacy policy or contact page. This is usually because you link to these pages from the navigation or footer of the site. Step 17 of

: using the site checking tool

I tried to make this SEO checking process as untechnical as possible.

however, if you want to delve deeper into your technology SEO, I strongly recommend that you use the SEO detection tool. What tools do I recommend for

?

actually, I use and recommend two. The first one in

is Seobility. Unlike most testing tools,

is very easy to use. In addition, these reports are easy to understand and take action.

although SEMrush is mainly called a keyword research tool, it has amazing in-depth site detection capabilities. Step 18 of

: optimizing selected clips

selected clips can significantly increase your natural traffic.

if your article appears in the selected section location.

you’ll find natural traffic soaring like a rocket:

, how do you get your content in selected clip points? For

to appear in selected clips, you need to …

• optimizes your content for mobile devices
• installed HTTPS
• uses a large number of headings (H2 and H3 tags)
• including short answers to questions (42 words)
• links to authoritative resource

summary

this is a very complete SEO check process. I hope you do not disrelish the whole process is complicated, one by one, adhere to a period of time, I believe that your site ranking and traffic will have a qualitative leap.