24 SEO Maintenance Checklist for 2023

SEO matters a lot, regardless of the size of your website. After all, you won’t draw in new potential clients if people are unable to find your website. Many people desire a guide to best practices because of this. Numerous SEO checklists are available; however, some are specific to local SEO, some to international SEO, and still others to e-commerce SEO.

What about a basic SEO check list that ensures the essentials are covered while covering the majority of sites in the majority of conditions without delving too far into specifics? This SEO checklist is meant to help with that.

Here are some SEO Maintenance Checklist you can use in 2023

1. Create a Google Search Console account

You can sign up for Google to host your website here. You must go to Google Search Console and sign into your Google account in order to accomplish this. You’ll then provide Google with everything they require to begin going. You will eventually be able to use the console to submit sitemaps and carry out other maintenance procedures.

2. Create a Bing Webmaster Tools account

In case you were unaware, Microsoft runs the well-known search engine Bing. You can obtain a vast array of site owner tools with Bing Webmaster Tools, which aid in your Bing indexation. They also provide SEO and other features to support the expansion of your website. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools and sign in with your Microsoft account to register.

3. Make an XML sitemap and submit it to Bing and Google

Making an XML sitemap is the next SEO checklist item to do after registering your website. In order to speed up the indexing process, this lets search engines know which URLs are on your website. Search engines rank websites based on indexing. Use the Yoast SEO plugin if you use WordPress to have this generated automatically for you.

4. AdWords Tracking

Every webmaster should install Google Analytics, a free tool from Google, on their website. GA provides you with an abundance of information about every topic you might possibly be interested in learning about your website visitors and their interactions. Google Analytics will be a strategic tool that you utilize later on to help plan your SEO strategy and other maintenance activities.

5. Site Velocity

Site speed is a crucial ranking criteria that not everyone considers. Your website will be penalized by search engines if it loads slowly. You should therefore make sure that your website loads swiftly. To help you uncover ways to speed up your website, use Google Page Speed Insights.

6. Design Using Mobile First

The ease of using your website on mobile devices is a crucial ranking factor. Make sure your website is formatted to look excellent and be user-friendly, even on mobile devices. It’s obvious that Google is promoting Mobile-First Indexing, therefore if you want to keep or improve your search engine rankings, you need make sure your website follows this trend.

7. Off Page Search Engine Optimization

Off page SEO exists in addition to on page SEO and site architecture. This involves researching the performance of your rivals, examining backlinks, and improving your social media competitiveness. I suggest using Serpstat for this, and in the sections following that are pertinent, I’ll walk you through how to use it for other parts of this SEO checklist as well as give screenshots from it.

8. Verify Keyword Search Volumes

It takes more than just keyword research to maximize your SEO. This is a result of the popularity of some terms over others. These variations may result from relevance, issue awareness, or other causes. This is an example of a Serpstat keyword search that displays search volumes broken down by term variation.

9. Verify Keyword Search Intent

In other words, search intent represents the information that users seek for when they search for particular terms. It also clarifies for you why they would search it up. For instance, if someone is acquiring a new puppy and wants to learn how to stop “accidents,” they may search for “puppy house training tips.” Alternatively, they might want to use the same information to assist another person who is a puppy owner. This denotes two different search objectives.

Searching for your phrase on Google and seeing what comes up in the search results is the greatest way to verify the search intent. Since Google is a clever company and knows what people look for when they enter a keyword, if the results for a keyword you want to target are unrelated to the goods or services offered by your business, move on to the next one. There’s a good chance you won’t rank for the keyword with your perspective, and even if you do, it might not stay on the first page for very long.

10. Verify that your keywords are competitively difficult

Likewise, determining the level of competition for each keyword need to be on everyone’s SEO checklist. In other words, if there aren’t many web pages dedicated to a keyword, it probably won’t be highly competitive. Conversely, a topic that becomes popular among writers will be more difficult to compete with. Targeting the “easier” related keywords is often a wise move until you surpass your competitors in domain authority.

11. Place the target keyword in the areas of your website that are most pertinent

Specifically, make sure to incorporate it into your SEO title, description, H1 title, opening paragraph, and a few of your subheadings. Including your term here helps search engines find it more easily. Additionally, the keyword’s general prominence is indicated by its earlier placement.

12. Make sure your URL is brief and contains the target keyword

It is more difficult for individuals to share your URL online if it is too long. Not all venues for distributing content have URL shorteners, even though Twitter does. Including the target keyword in your URL also emphasizes its significance to users and search engines alike. Your page will be simpler to locate and recall in this method.

13. Give every image an alt tag

Text positioned beneath your photographs is called an alt tag. Because search engines can index the content, it helps with SEO and describes your image. Furthermore, alt tags include a description that screen readers for the blind can recognize and display in the event that the image is unable to load.

14. Hyperlink to Reputable Websites

An SEO checklist would not be complete if domain authority was not mentioned. Search engines have recognized websites with high domain authority as important sources of information on a certain subject. By positioning yourself as an authority, you can increase the domain authority of your own website by linking to these reputable websites. This raises your ranking in the SERPs as a result.

15. Ensure that Your Strategic Content Has Internal Links

Internal linking is a crucial step in optimizing your SEO performance. This strategy gives readers more opportunities to view what your website has to offer by encouraging them to visit other pages. Having visitors stay on your website longer enhances its overall effectiveness, especially for e-commerce and professional blogging sites. Additionally, the links generally improve your SEO.

16. Use Keyword Clustering to Optimize Semantic Content

The process of classifying your keywords is called keyword clustering. For example, my website has two categories: one for SEO and the other for content marketing.

17. Use Visual Components to Lengthen Your Stay

To put it simply, dwell time is the length of time that users spend on your website. Additionally, each visitor has a dwell time for the entire website. Search engines use both of these measures to assess the value of your website to individuals within your specialty. By including visual components, you can boost stay time by making the website an enjoyable place to visit. Additionally, images present yet another chance to include SEO keyword data.

18. Create Schema Markup When You Can

What is markup schema? Many large search engines have devised a mechanism to help website owners understand the value of their content. This is accomplished via the markup, which aids the search engine in properly comprehending the website and, as a result, more precisely cataloging the data. Schema markups thereby aid the search engine in delving deeper if keywords are the high-level organizing tools.

19. Monitor Your Google Search Engine Results Page

In the event that your SEO efforts are fruitful, you ought to start appearing in search results for the specific keywords for which you have written content. Keep a watch on them and notice any significant changes that could point to competitors, search intent patterns, or other issues that require your attention.

20. Reposted Expired Information

Even though you put a lot of effort into making content relevant over time, not all of it is evergreen. For example, over the past few years, content concerning sizable in-person events has been less significant. Sometimes, people who posted about things required to update their content. Saying things that people want to know will help you accomplish this, especially when things change or conversations take a different turn.

21. Consistently Remove Superfluous Content

Understanding when to take anything offline is a crucial component of any SEO checklist. It’s time to take stuff down from your website when it gets so obsolete as to be irrelevant. If you’re unable to update it, that is. You can maintain visitors’ interest in your website and, eventually, maintain your SERP position more effortlessly by removing less valuable content.

22. Monitor Crawl Errors in Google Search Console

Even intelligent machines are fallible. You can view where and when Google crawled your website to index it using Google Search Console. Simultaneously, you will be able to identify any technical issues and mistakes that were made, such misinterpreting your content. From here, you can provide Google with any necessary corrections.

23. Mend Damaged Links

Broken links pose another risk to high SERP rankings. Site owners move and remove pages over time. You can have a broken link as a result of that. If you have too many links on your website, search engines may penalize you, thus it’s critical to remove or update them. In addition, the majority of individuals find it annoying when they encounter faulty links. If you have several of these, people will stop visiting.

24. Increase CTRs on Google

Regarding the SEO checklist, you should build on and contribute to the good rankings you start to acquire. Increasing your Google CTR with A/B testing is one approach to achieve this. When users click through from search engine results to visit your page, it contributes to an even higher SERP ranking.

SEO is labor-intensive no matter how you slice it. This is particularly true now as the competition on the internet has skyrocketed in the last several years. Furthermore, there are more resources available than ever before for improving search engine rankings. Fortunately, you can compete with the competition if you follow the procedures in our SEO checklist.