Complete SEO Checklist for 2023

This is the most complete SEO checklist you will ever need to tackle optimization issues without hassle. It leads through the main SEO activities to help efficiently organize your SEO process and achieve top rankings that will generate more sales. Plus, this checklist will help recover your rankings in case you spot sudden ranking drops.

The checklist outlines the best practices in SEO, briefly explaining what issues need attention and giving tips on how to fix them. The article is cross-referenced with other materials to provide you with a more in-depth understanding of SEO. Below, you will find a downloadable SEO Checklist in PDF format that will be valuable for beginners as well as experienced SEOs.

Download the SEO Checklist PDF for 2023

Download SEO Checklist

 

While working with the checklist, you will need to use major tools that will help you implement SEO. Most of them are free:

As the SEO checklist is meant for SEO PowerSuite users, it tells how to go through all the steps in the SEO PowerSuite tools. The SEO tools are:

The workflow, however, is applicable with any other different SEO tool, so you can keep the list and easily use it anywhere. After completing each step, tick the respective checkbox. This will help you monitor the overall optimization progress of your project. Take your time with every step — it’s the quality of what you are doing that matters most!

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1. Website Launch Checklist

Consider these SEO aspects from the outset, and you will save yourself the trouble as your website grows.

 Use HTTPS protocol.

Using secure encryption is highly recommended for all websites, especially for those tracking transactions and collecting sensitive user information.

Sometimes webmasters face technical issues when switching their websites from HTTP to HTTPS. One of such issues is the so-called mixed content when secure HTTPS pages include insecure content served over HTTP.

To check if your website has any mixed content issues, open WebSite Auditor and go to the Site Audit > Encoding and Technical factors section of WebSite Auditor.

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 Set one of your domain names as canonical.

Search engines see www and non-www versions of the same page as two different pages, and duplicate content issues may occur. To avoid this, set the main domain version for your website using the redirect method that works best for you.

Such indexation won’t cause algorithmic penalties. However, to get the best ranking results, make sure the version you set as the main is the one Google displays in its search results. In Site Audit, find the Redirects section and see if you have set up the redirect to the main (either www or non-www) domain version.

 Choose an SEO-friendly content management system.

Content management systems (CMS for short) are meant to simplify the way we build websites. But sometimes they do right the opposite. CMSs may pose additional challenges to SEO, such as automatic generation of duplicate content, bad URLs, restrictions on customization of major on-page elements, and a limited set of functions overall. That's why considering a good CMS from the very start saves you the trouble. For more details, check out our overview of the best CMSs for SEO.

 Implement SEO-friendly URLs.

Though being a very lightweight ranking factor, a URL is the first thing that Googlebot crawls on a new page. Besides, sharing clumsy URLs may be embarrassing to users. Generating SEO-friendly URLs doesn’t cost you anything, but your site will surely benefit from the best SEO practices for URLs.

To make URLs SEO-friendly: 

Find all URL factor issues in the Site Audit module of WebSite Auditor, URLs section. Here you will get all the warnings about lengthy URLs, dynamic URLs, etc.

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 Set up analytics tools.

To track traffic and performance on your website, you need to add a tracking code of Google Analytics and verify your website in Google Search Console (or any other webmaster tools you also consider relevant for your region, for example, Bing Webmaster, Yahoo Webmaster Tools, Naver Webmaster Tools, etc.). There are certainly alternative traffic counters and analytics tools like Mixpanel or Matomo, but Google products are truly universal and can be integrated into most other platforms. 

 Sync your SEO tools with Google Analytics and Search Console.

You can sync your Google Analytics (GA) account with SEO PowerSuite. After the app collects the data from GA, you’ll be able to see stats for landing pages, keywords, and backlinks in Rank Tracker, WebSite Auditor, and SEO SpyGlass.

 Plan your website structure.

The hierarchy of pages on a website is crucial to its SEO ranking potential. A clear site structure makes it easy for users to navigate. And it helps crawlers discover and index pages quicker. You’ve got to revise the site structure at every stage of your website development and plan it meaningfully. Along the way you go, make sure to do the following:

Use the visual sitemap

In WebSite Auditor, find a nice Visualization tool that will help you overview all your pages at a glance, detect the most prominent of them, and rebuild the project the way you need.

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The interactive map can be used to detect orphaned pages (those that are not linked to), check which pages get the most pageviews, plan new pages, and recalculate the PageRank flow. This leads us to the next step.

Check the click depth of your pages

This factor can be viewed in the Visual Sitemap and all Pages in the WebSite Auditor’s Site Audit module. Make sure that all your most important pages are no more than 2 - 3 clicks away from the homepage. For clear site navigation, implement breadcrumbs to show the hierarchy of your pages.

Optimize internal linking

Internal links are often underestimated although they influence important engagement factors, such as session time, page views per session, etc. Internal links help crystallize a website’s structure, and the choice of the internal linking technique lies in the type of business and content the website serves. Consult our evergreen guide on internal linking best practices.

Moreover, anchor texts serve as an additional factor for search engines that helps them better understand what the page is about. Pay attention to anchor diversity, interlink your pages, suggest articles and actions at the end of blog posts, and see in Google Analytics how your main user behavior metrics improve.

2. Keyword Research Checklist

Although not being as plain sailing as years ago, keyword research still remains vital for an SEO strategy. Keywords tell where your website ranks and which way to grow. Moreover, keyword rankings serve as a basis for measuring the efficiency of your SEO efforts. The list below follows universal steps for keyword research in any niche or industry.

 Find your top-ranking keywords.

Keywords determine all your SEO activities. By tracking organic rankings for your target keywords, you will be measuring the success of your general SEO strategy.

So, start a project for your site in Rank Tracker, and the tool will discover all the keywords that your website is already ranking for. You can also add your keywords manually, or use the Suggest button to let the software find keyword ideas for you. Specify a couple of seed keywords that best describe your website topic. The keywords will appear in the Rank Tracking module, where the ranks are tracked with every ranking check you run.

 Identify your organic competitors.

Find your closest organic competitors and understand their SEO strategies to improve your own. Your organic competitors are not necessarily your real competitors that offer a product or service similar to yours. Organic competitors are those websites that rank for the same keywords and topics as you do. You need to benchmark your competitors by major SEO indicators, track their regular activities, and not let them beat you out of the SERP.

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Use Rank Tracker’s Competitor Research module to discover your main competitors by domain or topics. The tool shows the level of intersection between several competitors’ domains and their common keywords. In SEO SpyGlass, you can compare your competitors by domain strength. You can add the discovered competitors to the Rank Tracking module and monitor their performance alongside your web pages.

 Research new keyword ideas.

Researching new keyword ideas, you plan website growth to add more pages that will bring organic traffic from Google. That’s an important step because keyword research involves thorough competitor research, which helps businesses better formulate their unique value proposition.

There are a variety of places to find new keyword ideas, such as Google Autocomplete, Google Ads Keyword Planner, Bing Autocomplete, etc. Doing keyword research manually may take time, so Rank Tracker combines 24 keyword research methods in one module, to find new keywords in a matter of minutes.

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In the keyword suggestions wizard, pick the keyword research method that will be used to build up your keyword list. Depending on the type of content you optimize, you can use such methods as the YouTube Keyword Suggestion tool, Amazon Autocomplete, etc. Add your primary keyword, and the tool will pull hundreds of terms from the keyword database, together with their statistics (search volumes, keyword difficulty, organic traffic estimates, CPC, and PPC costs) to estimate their ranking potential.

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Watch a video tutorial: Searching for new keywords

 Choose the most profitable keywords.

After the tool collects new keyword ideas for you, you need to pick the most efficient ones. Rank Tracker shows several SEO metrics as well as filters to do this quickly.

Locate long-tail and short-tail keywords.

You can apply the filter by the length of key phrases (although this is not exactly what differentiates long-tail keywords from short-tails, but still). A good practice is to make sure your keyword list includes 2-4-word phrases. A single keyword may be too generic (e.g., “cars”); a phrase too long may attract little or no traffic (e.g., “where to buy a red ford with white doors in Seattle”).

Mind the keyword difficulty.

Rank Tracker evaluates the Keyword Difficulty data in two ways — by analyzing the difficulty for the top 10 and 50 organic results. 

In the SERP Analysis tab, the tool checks the top 50 ranking pages and shows how difficult it will be for your page to unseat them for the selected key phrase. The tool finds a correlation between different page factors, comparing page strength, links pointing to it, the keywords it ranks for, etc.

Then the average keyword difficulty score is provided: the higher the score, the harder it’ll be to rank in the top. Focus on keywords with low and moderate (marked green and yellow) difficulty scores.

Choose terms with a better Keyword Efficiency Index.

When choosing the final keyword list, pay attention to KEI, which is the searches to competition ratio. Generally, the higher KEI (marked green), the better, meaning that a lot of people are searching for this keyword, but there’s no huge competition among websites. Note, in some cases KEI can be low (marked red) for all of your project keywords (e.g., all key phrases have low search volume).

Just keep in mind that KEI is a relative metric and look at the numbers as relative values inside a niche. There is no good or bad KEI. So, you should only compare one keyword with another.

Mind keyword intent.

Keyword intent is the most important component of keyword mapping and creating different types of pages. Differentiate keyword intent such as:

Based on the intent behind the target keywords, decide what type of pages you need to create for them: a blog post or a product page, service pages, white papers, help pages, etc.

 Map keywords to content.

Next, you’ve got to define your landing pages — the pages you are going to optimize in the first place to earn more traffic, conversions, and sales. It’s better to select these pages out of your best ranking content.

In Rank Tracker, right-click on the selected keywords and choose from the menu Assign keywords to landing page(es). Do not assign too many keywords for a single page. The more focused your landing pages are, the better. The assigned landing pages will appear in the Keyword Map module.

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Pay attention to the fact that the clustering tool in Rank Tracker has already split your keywords into topic groups. You can regroup and rename keywords groups, or create new groups from scratch (for example, you can group keywords by search intent). The Keyword Mapping guide is here to help with this.

3. On-Page & Content Optimization Checklist

As Google algorithms seek to reward the best content, on-page SEO remains one of the strongest ranking factors. While on-page SEO and content optimization refer to approximately the same thing, they are somewhat different by scope. I suggest taking smaller steps for on-site improvements (like optimizing CTRs or updating content for freshness). Soon, you will get a bird’s-eye view of your content strategy and will be able to work out a holistic approach.

 Rewrite too long, duplicate, or missing titles.

In the Site Audit module of WebSite Auditor, find the On-page section. Check the Duplicate titles and Empty title tags factors. If there are duplicate title tags, they need to be rewritten, with the primary keyword included. Besides, pay attention to the factor Too long titles. If the titles are too long, Google may have them truncated and rewritten. The most effective page titles are between 45 and 50 characters long, including spaces.

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 Optimize meta descriptions.

Some people may doubt the benefit of meta descriptions, however, to me it seems the next important on-page element after the title tag. Meta description serves as a kind of a marketing banner with a call-to-action on it. Together with title tags, this is the main on-page element that affects the organic click-through rates of your pages. So don’t waste a chance to get more organic traffic thanks to an optimized meta snippet. ‘Cause if you don’t do it, Google will, and nobody guarantees it will be great. 

In WebSite Auditor, check the On-page section in the Site Audit. Review the Missing meta descriptions factor to see which pages need a description, and the Too long meta description factor to detect descriptions that need to be rewritten. For optimum effectiveness, a meta description should be about 150 characters long.

 Diversify text-only content.

Use images and video to diversify your page content and get more traffic from Google search. With some additional multimedia, a page has chances to show up in rich results like Google Images or Google Videos. Besides, visuals serve as an explanatory medium, so most surely they will improve user engagement with your content.

Meantime, mind that images should be optimized for organic search. Make sure images are converted to a web-friendly format, load fast, and aren’t heavy. 

You can review all your multimedia resources in WebSite Auditor’s module Site Structure > Site Audit > All resources. Also, in the Site Audit report, check out the Images tab, where you will find broken images and empty ALT text fields — these have to be filled in for better rankings in image results.

 Optimize the main content.

Go to the Page Audit > Content Audit module in WebSite Auditor, pick the page, and type in 1-3 keywords for it. After the tool scans your landing page, it will offer optimization advice based on the top-ranking competitors.

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Switch to the Content Editor module, and the tool will provide you with on-page optimization tips. Right-hand, you will see the optimization score that improves live once you start editing your text in the app. The tips in Content Editor are generated based on the analysis of top competitors in search results for the selected keyword. This way, you will have recommendations on keyword usage, and have additional topics and questions to embed into your content. Structure your content with subtopics, bullet points, and numbered lists, and use clear HTML formatting.

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 Add structured data.

Structured data boosts your chances of getting rich snippets and a couple of other SERP features that make a page stand out from a crowd on the search results page. Schema markup represents standardized tags added to HTML code to help search engines identify that the page contains some type of information, e.g. about the author, the product, business, FAQ, etc.

There are plenty of free tools for implementing schema, for example, Google Structured Data Markup Helper. Bear in mind that incorrect implementation may lead to ranking penalties and loss of traffic. So, make sure you do it right, refer to our definitive schema markup guide.

 Work on your website E-A-T.

Search engines have independent raters to evaluate search results, following the search raters’ guidelines for content assessment. The goal of such practices is to confirm that the algorithm updates provide the best results, checking the content against Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness factors. This factor is particularly important to YMYL (Your Money Your Life) websites, including those about news, health, and financing.

This means long-term consistent work sticking to a content plan. Although, some things can be done right now, like adding E-A-T signals to your website to make it more credible in the eyes of search engines and of users who will definitely grow into a loyal audience of the website.

In the long run, hold a content pruning campaign. In other words, you should remove low-quality or outdated content and instead add high-quality blog posts that give value to users.

4. Technical SEO Checklist

One may think that technical SEO is hard and complex. At a closer look, you will see several major factors that are part and parcel of modern-day search, and they are the same for all niches and industries.

 Check indexing and crawlability with robots.txt and sitemap.

If content cannot be accessed by search engines, it will not appear in search results. All you can do is find out how your website is visible to search engines.

Step 1. Consult with Google Search Console. You can find indexing and crawlability issues in the Coverage section.

Step 2. Launch WebSite Auditor, type in your website URL, and let the tool perform the audit. Find Pages restricted from indexing category and see if there’s any blocked content. Make sure that important content is not blocked by:

Note: If some of the important pages are blocked by the robots.txt file, you can edit the file right in WebSite Auditor. Go to the Pages module and open the menu via the Website Tools > Robots.txt. Here you can specify the rules the search engines will follow when crawling your website.

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Besides, for better crawlability, you can create and upload an XML sitemap. WebSite Auditor also lets you do it in two clicks.

 Find technical errors that eat your crawl budget.

When a crawler finds broken pages too often or cannot crawl a resource, it may decide the website is of low quality and will start visiting it less frequently. Find and fix the following issues on your site, if any:

Broken links hinder usability and can cause traffic losses. When pages become obsolete, for example, a product is removed or a sale ends, the page can be redirected to another page similar to the topic. Fix all broken links by correcting the invalid link URLs and setting the 301 redirects. Though, keep in mind that having too many redirects on a website is no good for the crawl budget.

Customize a 404 page to make it useful to your website visitors. The custom 404 page may include links to the most important pages of your website.

 Find uncrawlable on-page elements.

Although these days JavaScripts and frames are less of an issue, keep them in mind, as it’s still hard for search engines to properly index the content in frames. You should use these elements carefully so as not to hinder website crawling.

In the Encoding and technical factors category of the Site Audit module, check if you have any pages containing Frames, and follow the recommendations you see in that section.

If you have a lot of content in frames, add text transcripts to the pages.

In WebSite Auditor’s Advanced crawling settings, set the crawler to execute JavaScripts, scan specific pages, etc., and see if there are any errors.

 Check site speed and page load time.

Page load time is one of the ranking factors used by Google. To improve page load speed, you can:

It may of course take different time spans for pages to load, depending on the speed of the Internet connection and other factors. Therefore sometimes it makes sense to look at page size rather than load time. To see which pages can take longer to load, check the Too big pages factor in the Site Audit, the Encoding and technical factors section.

You can use Google’s PageSpeed API, a free tool that checks the site’s compliance with the Core Web Vitals factors. To amplify the tool’s potential and do a bulk check for all pages, integrate the PageSpeed API into WebSite Auditor and check all the factors and resources laid out conveniently in a single workspace.

 Check mobile-friendliness.

The mobile-friendliness factor has become crucial to each and every website once Google fully rolled out the Page Experience Update in summer 2021. A minor remark: soon mobile-friendliness signal won't be a ranking factor for desktop, once the Core Web Vitals thresholds will apply for desktop as well starting from February 2022. While all previous Google requirements for usability (like penalizing intrusive interstitials) will remain.

First, consider whether you’re catering the best experience to mobile users. Check your website with the free Mobile-Friendly Test from Google. To have an overview of all your issues, tap into the Search Console data, on the Experience > Mobile Usability tab.

Second, use WebSite Auditor’s mobile bot crawler to scan your pages and see how the Google mobile search engine sees your website.

And last but not least, think of tracking your desktop and mobile rankings separately. You can do it with Rank Tracker, selecting the geolocation and mobile user-agent to track as a separate search engine.

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For a more in-depth overview of mobile-friendly factors, read our guide on the best practices in search engine optimization for mobile devices. 

5. Link-Building & PR Outreach

Backlinks are important for SEO, but you should also remember that it’s the quality that matters first, not the quantity. Off-page SEO has a direct impact on organic rankings. That’s why backlink analysis has to become an integral part of your SEO strategy. By doing regular link checks, you implement several crucial tasks for search optimization:

So, here are several steps to take for link-building efficiency.

 Fix spam issues.

If search engines detect spam issues on your pages, they might penalize your website, and it will lose rankings. These can be either algorithmic penalties like Penguin or manual actions handed down from Google. Therefore, you need to fix link issues as soon as possible, mind at least those:

For this, you’ll need to check your website’s link profile and see which pages have suspicious links. You can do it at first with the WebSite Auditor’s overview of resources.

In the Site Audit find the Pages with excessive number of links factor (Links section). Having too many links on your pages may cause your website to appear as a link farm or a spam site and can potentially hurt your site’s SEO. For best results, try to moderate outgoing linking to 100 links per page or fewer, and link to relevant pages that are of value to your visitors.

For an in-depth overview of your backlink profile, explore your site’s existing backlinks in SEO SpyGlass. Launch the tool, and let it scan your website for the existing links. SEO SpyGlass will use multiple methods (including its own backlink tool) to collect as many links as possible.

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Now check how strong your backlink profile is. After SEO SpyGlass gathers the backlinks, you analyze them according to the most important backlink factors, such as:

Review the origin of your backlinks.

Consider Google PageRank, age, the number of outbound links, and the geolocation of the linking page. You can analyze the linking pages of your existing backlinks in the Backlinks module of SEO SpyGlass.

Focus more on dofollow links.

In the Backlinks module, you can also see that some of your incoming links have the nofollow tag. This basically means that these links do not pass link juice (or PageRank) to the linked pages. That’s why it is better to focus on building more dofollow backlinks pointing to your site from relevant resources.

Anchor text should include your main keywords.

Anchor text (the visible clickable text in a hyperlink) should be optimized for your target keywords. Search engines use this text to determine the relevancy of the linked-to document.  Anchor texts like here, read more, this page are less useful in terms of SEO value because they are not descriptive. To check anchors on your backlinks, press the Statistics button in the Backlinks module to view the detailed anchor data.

Remove backlinks with a high penalty risk.

When search engine bots analyze your site’s links, they check how natural they are. The Penalty Risk module in SEO SpyGlass gives clues why a page may look spammy to Google. High-risk backlinks are marked red showing they potentially can cause a penalty for your site. If they are too many, contact webmasters of the linking websites asking to take them down, or instruct search engines to ignore them by using the Google Disavow tool.

 Get more backlinks.

Generally, the more backlinks you have, the better. Try white-hat link-building techniques that get you natural links. Credible links are those pointing from relevant resources in a niche similar to yours. This implies people will find your content useful and interesting, and the links are not manipulative or placed artificially.

Step 1. Find link-building prospects.

LinkAssistant is just the right tool to find relevant link sources. Launch the tool, create your project, and press the Search for prospects button. You are suggested to choose the search method and type in your target keywords.

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There is an abundance of tried-and-trusted ways to find places to build natural links from, the main ones are:

LinkAssistant is flexible to search whatever exists on earth, so use filters and parameters to sort out rubbish and leave only high-quality websites on your prospects list. You can specify filter phrases such as “submit a guest post,” “add a comment,” “forum”, modify the search type, discover resources by locations and by topics.

Step 2. Compare link profiles of the discovered websites (competitors, link prospects).

Usually, competitors’ backlink profile analysis helps you easily find new great link sources for your own site. There are a number of methods in competitor link research to use for white-hat link-building.

Finally, you can analyze projects for competitors’ sites and investigate their links. Find their best link sources, see what anchor texts they have, and analyze each link for a variety of factors including Google PageRank (InLink Rank is very close to it), Alexa rank, domain age and IP, link value, and many more.

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There are a bunch of other fascinating link-building techniques that deliver the best results with less effort, such as broken link building, skyscraper link-building, or using expired domains with a good link profile. Have a look at our guide to the best link-building techniques that still work in 2023.

Step 3. Run an effective link outreach campaign.

After you’ve found sites for link building, it’s high time to connect with their owners or webmasters. First of all, let LinkAssistant’s email scraper find the contact details for the selected websites. Then, select the prospects and click the Email button and you’ll get to the built-in email client. Here you can manage all your link-building correspondence with personalized emails that can be built on ready-to-use outreach templates.

For a complete link-building workflow, I suggest reading our complete guide to email outreach campaigns.

 Optimize your social media pages.

Social networks are the driving force of the web, helping to engage more users to visit websites regularly. Fill out all the necessary business information on your Facebook page, Twitter account, or YouTube channel. Make sure that users can easily find the description of what your company does, get your contact information, or access CTA buttons.

Invest in your social media strategy. Develop your unique SMM approach, use visuals and infographics, and tap into analytics to measure engagement with your content.

Make sure that sharing buttons are easily available on your site. Engage your readers in sharing and discussing your posts, photos, and videos.

 Identify your best-performing posts on social media.

Check the volume of social media traffic sent to your landing pages. Go to Google Analytics and see Traffic > By channel > Social media. Check which pages have brought most of the traffic.

Analyzing your social media marketing strategy, identify what pages have got the most social media activity and why. To find top-performing posts, use WebSite Auditor. Go to Site structure > Pages and select the All Pages tab. By filtering the Facebook and Pinterest columns, you can see which pages have been most popular on these nets. See which pages get more signals and create similar content to get high user attention.

 Leverage social media signals with social listening tools.

It’s useful to leverage mentions on popular networks and interfere where necessary. One of such social listening tools is Awario with its powerful mentions discovery and sentiment analysis. Add a URL to create your project, add your brand name to check the mentions of it on social media.

Awario discovers all mentions and influencers who have spoken of your brand over the selected time span on various sources such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, as well as in blogs and on the web generally.

Down to the analytics board, check out the reach stats and segments of your audience. Make sure to tackle negative mentions, as it’s easier to put out fire at the very start. The Sentiment Analysis tool is really helpful to measure the success of your marketing campaign and deliver better customer support.

6. Local SEO Checklist

Location makes a great difference for search optimization, which is why I suggest considering it as a separate topic.  

 Track organic search rankings by geolocation.

Rank Tracker supports search engines in any country and location possible, up to a specific street address.

 Fill in your Google Business Profile.

Complete Google Profile listing to enhance visibility in local search results and on Google Maps. It provides truly helpful features for businesses with a physical location. What is more, it’s absolutely free. Reviews, location in maps, information about working hours, product availability, and even crowdedness - you can view all these thanks to Google’s business tools. Get help from our Google My Business guide.

 Implement local schema markup.

Structured data is a way to provide search engines with more information about your website and thus enhance your online visibility. Local schema markup is crucial for businesses. It gives NAP info: the business’s name and the address, phone number, and the website.

 Implement hreflangs to serve the right language version of your site.

If you run a global website aimed at multiple locations, make sure you serve the right language version to users. One way of implementing multi-language websites is with the help of hreflang tags. Use in-built website tools in WebSite Auditor to implement hreflang tags automatically with no fuss.

 Build local citations.

To be successful commercially, you’ve got to be present in the most powerful media channels of your place or community. LinkAssistant will help you find relevant business directories, forums, local media, public channels, and communities with whom to partner.

 Run advertising campaigns.

Plan effective advertising campaigns by choosing the best timing and platforms. You need to analyze the effectiveness of your marketing channels and choose where to run your next advertising campaigns, be it Google ads, display, or Facebook ads. Rank Tracker can help you by comparing CPC versus PPC costs of your keywords.

 Optimize for relevant platforms.

E-commerce on specific platforms requires some special knowledge. Optimization techniques for YouTube differ from SEO aimed at Amazon or Shopify.

7. SEO KPI tracking

And last but not least, define benchmarks for measuring the efficiency of your SEO strategy. Below are the most common key performance indicators in SEO, but of course, they all may differ from one company to another.

 Track your rankings for keywords and traffic.

Make sure you track your search engine rankings for keywords in Rank Tracker. You will be able to see your current rankings and history and compare your rankings to competitors.

Check both regular organic results and Universal Search results (Images, Videos, Places). Rank Tracker will also show the multiple positions a ranking page has.

 Track SEO goals with Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can provide powerful insights when you use its full marketing potential. To start with, set up SEO-focused goals, for example, completed conversions on your landing pages. You can also link Search Console with Google Analytics and have more data about the most profitable keywords. However, for deeper analysis on keyword performance, you will need the advice of the Console and Rank Tracker.

Find out which keywords bring the most traffic, what landing pages have the most conversions, and improve them to make the most of it. Here are a few advanced tips on what to track in GA. 

 Improve behavior signals on your site.

Each and every factor will give you clues on how to optimize pages to power the growth and efficiency of your website. Find pages that spoil your average and improve them. Analyze the behavior of your audiences and metrics like bounce rate, page views per session, dwell time, etc.

 Publish cookie policy.

Cookies describe what user data are tracked and why. A cookie policy is a declaration to your users on what cookies are active on the website. Since cookies may expose users to privacy risk (because they can track, store, and share user behavior), some laws, for example, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, require websites to detail their application of cookies to users. User consent to process their data remains the core requirement of most data protection laws.

One of the largest concerns has remained privacy and data protection. The new marketing environment is yet to come, with Google promising to phase out third-party cookie collection for Chrome Browser in 2023 (a year later than it was initially planned). Instead, the tech giant has set to implement the Privacy Sandbox to build a more private and open web. The approach is based on Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a machine learning technique that hides individuals behind cohorts (and Google even created a comic for people to grasp the idea of it).

Meantime, Apple requires to receive user permission for app tracking in all its products starting from iOS 14.5 update. According to the Flurry App Tracking Transparency report, the monthly opt-in rate was 24% in December 2021.

All these mean drastic changes for the targeting ads industry, with massive shakeups in conversions and ads expenses. The upside of all the processes is that users feel more secure with enhanced privacy. So far, the bottom line is that, whatever technique you use for processing user data, a declaration on privacy is a way to communicate with your users (and spare yourself from legal risks as well).

That’s all for the complete SEO checklist for 2023, hope it is helpful. If you've decided to brush up SEO with SEO PowerSuite, pay attention to our learning hub and