A Quick Simplified SEO Checklist To Make The Most Out Of Every Post

Search engine optimization or SEO for short is a topic that is often much more complicated than need be. Don’t get me wrong this is something that you could spends months learning about and still not understand all of the many nuances and yet within one article you could learn all you need to know to get you up and running. Having a basic understanding of SEO is essential for every business in today’s day and age. What I’ve put together here a quick and to the point checklist to get you started with articles that you write. This doesn’t cover everything and is not meant to be comprehensive and also (as with any anything having to do with the internet) this data will change and become irrelevant at some point.

Google is always adapting and changing. What I’ve laid out here are things that have stayed pretty consistent through of all Google’s updates and changes and will probably remain consistent for some time to come. Also it’s good to keep in mind that even with the best SEO tactics in the world if your content is crap and doesn’t give value then it’s not going to matter. On the other hand you could have the best content in the world and if it’s not at least somewhat optimized for Google and the other search engines it’s not going to matter because no one is going to find it. Sort of like having a diamond mine buried thirty feet below your house. Not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. Alright for best use of this list I’d suggest you run through it after writing an article for your site. Print it out if it’s easier that way.

A Quick Note On Keywords & Search Engine Optimization

First thing’s first. You have to know what keywords you are trying to rank for. You can do this through guessing (not recommended) or from making use of a keyword tool. My favorite is keywordtool.io there you’ll place a keyword you think might be relevant to your niche. Then you see what comes back. You want keywords that are not only relevant but that have a high number of searches. However those at the top are going to be harder to rank for than those in the middle so take that into consideration when planning your content strategy. Alright now for the list.

SEO Optimization Strategy #1 – First Paragraph

You want to make sure that your keyword is in the first paragraph that you write. You want to make things as easy as possible for the spiders that crawl your site (robots from Google that index your site and figure out what it’s about and therefore how to rank it). They don’t always crawl all the way down a page’s content so you want to make it easy for them to find your keyword that you are trying to rank for.

SEO Optimization Strategy #2 – Bolding & Underlining Keywords

Another step to make your keyword stand out is to either bold or underline the keyword. This gives it greater importance to the spiders crawling your site. This isn’t something you want to do every time the keyword is in the content as that can make it come across as being spammy which Google doesn’t like and will hurt your search engine rankings. But doing it atleast once (granted that it makes sense and flows with the content) will help with your rankings.

SEO Optimization Strategy #3 – Keyword Saturation

Putting your keyword in only once isn’t going to do the job. You need to have the keyword mentioned multiple times in multiple places. However with that being said you don’t want to do what is called keyword saturation which is where you spam the keyword in every paragraph (unnaturally) which Google will notice and again will hurt your search engine rankings. You want keyword saturation to be below 10% but over 3% so anything with that range will be fine.

SEO Optimization Strategy #4 – Article Length

Blogging is a great platform for growing you ranks in the search engines as well as building up your expertise. However you need to make sure that you articles are hitting a certain length. I’m not sure why but anything under 300 words Google doesn’t give very high priority too. So when writing you just want to make sure that all of your articles are at least 300 words long otherwise Google may not index it because they feel that there isn’t enough there to be truly valuable. On the other hand you don’t want to write too long of posts because people’s attention spans (especially online) are very short and the want to get the content and then leave.

SEO Optimization Strategy #5 – Keyword In The URL

You’ll notice that wordpress gives you different options for how you want the URL (the address at the top of the screen) to come across. It can be random numbers, set words, or different with the content. You want it to be different with the content so that the title of each and every article is in the URL. Having keywords in the URL is a strong ranking factor as it’s easy for the spiders to read and has higher priority than keywords found in the text.

SEO Optimization Strategy #6 – Keyword In Page Title

With that being said you also want to make sure that you’re putting the keyword in the page title. Towards the front is better than towards the back but honestly with this as long as it’s there that’s good enough. However when it makes sense to put the keyword in both the front and the back then go ahead and throw it in the front. It is given higher priority, the first word is the best and so on and so forth down the line.

SEO Optimization Strategy #7 – Keyword In Headings

WordPress gives you the options of multiple headings (h1 through h6) with each being given higher priority than text in the paragraph format. What you want to make sure that you’re doing is that your keyword is in at least one of the headings on the page. Heading 1 is better than heading 2 and so on and so forth. The bigger the heading the more importance that is given to the words in that heading. Remember you want to make it as easy as possible for the spiders to find the relevant keywords in your content.

SEO Optimization Strategy #8 – Linkage

While this is something that is to some extent out of your hands it’s very important to make sure that you’re getting links to your pages from reputable sources. The more popular and relevant a site is the more a link from that site is going to matter. If you’re in the red pill/manosphere niche then I’d recommend you submit your site to manosphere.com where every article you post will have a link going to it. It’s a great site and a great resource that I’d recommend you take advantage of.

Summary

This is by no means a comprehensive checklist. I’ve said nothing of images or many off page elements but this will serve as a workable, useable, and most importantly effective checklist to get you started and in the right direction. Remember SEO is just one part of having you content make the impact that you want it to. You must also write good content that solves specific issues for a specific niche as well as make sure that content is search engine optimized so that the niche can find it and benefit from it. Don’t ignore SEO as I did for such a long time, it’s plays a big role in the success of your website, blog, and online ventures.

If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.

-Charles Sledge