Setting the ball rolling in a start-up may not be an easy feat. Regardless of the nature of company in question, there would be plenty of work to do. Be it, financing, staffing, resource planning, testing or paperwork; they would all need an equal amount of attention. And there is also a SEO strategy to devise and implement. Your SEO expert will provide a basic SEO checklist that can help. Here is an SEO checklist for your website.

Begin by installing Google Analytics

Google analytics is the best analytics tool that is available in the market and it is free. When measuring the success of your SEO strategy, the most common metric that comes up is the keyword ranking. However, if you choose to focus on the SERP positioning of the website alone, you will be missing out on the bigger picture. This is why a comprehensive analytics tool is important in order to have a clear understanding of how the organic traffic is being converted. Even the most basic SEO training course will help you learn how to use this analytics tool.

Use the Google Search Console

The Search Console is a free tool that is provided to those who manage websites, by Google. It was previously called Webmaster tools and is used for getting data about the status of the website and its organic performance in the search engine. You can use this very handy tool to check if your website has duplicate content and can also keep a tab on the search engine rankings. It also helps you check how many people visiting your website and the click-through rate of your web pages.

Watch out for errors and broken links

Search engines reach out to your websites through these links. Therefore, if there are crawl errors or broken links, the search engines may not be able to find your website content and hence may not be able to perform the indexing and push traffic into it.

These complete the basic SEO checklist for your website. We will be looking at more such important points in the second part of the checklist.

Have you ever felt that no matter how much effort you take, your SEO strategy never becomes as successful as you want it to? As your SEO services specialist will explain, you need to perform a detailed competitor analysis. You need to know what your competitors are doing right that you are not. We look at 3 more steps for performing an in-depth competitor analysis.

1. Take time out to study the competitor website

Most of the time, we are obsessed with keywords or Meta tags or back-links. However, one of the simplest things to do is simply study the websites of your competitors. You should check how the site has been designed, the quality of content that have used, whether they have static URLs or dynamic ones and so on. A simple study can give you complete view of the how their web presence is and where you need to improve.

2. Check on the seemingly unimportant SEO factors

Keywords and back-links done, now it is time to look at some other seemingly unimportant SEO factors which are actually very useful. Check the SEO ranking of your competitors on Google. Check how they are performing on other popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo. Find out how many indexed pages your competitor sites have with the more popular search engines.

3. Check the social media presence of your competitors

Your SEO consultant is likely to advise you to check on the nature of social media presence enjoyed by your competitors. Social media is responsible for driving traffic. However, this study may not be a simple one. You can start with social bookmarking. Look through some of the better known bookmarking sites. Check for competitor posts and how popular they are. Browse through Facebook and Twitter to check if your competitors have profiles that are publicly available.

Performing a competitor analysis for SEO is not an easy job. You need a specific set of tools and templates provided by your SEO services assistant in order to complete your analysis.

One of the key steps to undertake right at the beginning of formulating an SEO strategy is a comprehensive competitor analysis. As your SEO expert will tell you, mapping your competitors helps in a fair understanding of where your own position in the market is and what you should do to climb up the ladder. Here are 3 steps to begin with.

Step 1: Identify your competitors

Begin by identifying at least four competitors you wish to map. This could seem confusing since the rankings would be based on online searches and local business competitors. What you need to do is combine both and arrive a concise list containing not more than four entities. There are some specific tools available for help. Opt for a SEO training course that guides you on the same.

Step 2: Perform a keyword research

Once your competitors have been identified, perform a keyword research. You need to know which keywords are being used by your competitors and how successful they are proving to be. Here again, there are some special tools to be used for carrying out a keyword research. You can ask your SEO expert to assist you.

Step 3: Perform an analysis of back-link gaps

Analyzing back-link gaps will tell us which of the websites are establishing links with our competitors but not building links with us. This analysis is critical because this helps us to close the gaps with their back-link profiles and boosts our search engine rankings by fetching the links that are attached to the competitors. Here again, there are tools available for your help and assistance. Your SEO guide can share the same with you.

A competitor analysis incorporates a few more steps. We will look at them in the following article for a more comprehensive guidance.

Headlines are the real focus point of any content. A hungry headline can attract the attention of the readers and help you tell your story to more people than you could possible imagine. Search engines have their own ways to check whether the promise you made in your headline has been kept in the actual content. As your SEO services specialist will tell you, getting the heading right improves your search rankings substantially. We look at 4 rules that help in creating the best headings.

1. Write descriptive and not illusive headlines

Very short illusive headlines may work for the print media but they aren’t befitting for the online space at all. In order to grab more eyeballs, the heading needs to be concise yet descriptive. In short, it should tell you what the following article is all about. Refrain from being sketchy.

2. Use more of proper names for matching search engine queries

A majority of searches are performed with proper names. It could be the name of a country, city, town or area. Street names are also used in searches. Therefore, including proper names alongside other words can help in matching more queries. Choose the names judiciously.

3. Use keywords wisely

Keywords are words and expressions that describe the content. However, it is important to understand that you are not creating your headlines for search engines alone. SEO consultants always advise against stuffing headlines with keywords. In fact, search engines tend to discard content with meaningless usage of keywords.

4. Avoid click-baits and hyperboles

Refrain from going over the top and promising the moon to your users. Never use headlines that refer to utopian concepts or sound too good to be true. Steer clear of hyperboles and click-baits. Keep it real and grounded, as much as possible.

Always engage an experienced SEO services specialist who keeps track of changing search engine algorithms. Only then can his advice be of help.

Around 76 percent of all local internet searches result in a phone call and may even lead to a store visit, according to a recent study. Getting your local SEO rankings right is extremely important for improving the prospects of your business. As your SEO services will guide you, here are some more local SEO mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Duplication of “My Business” profile pages

SEO consultants reiterate that search engines like Google hate duplicate content. And the reason is obvious! Duplicate content give users a bad surfing experience when they find the same content over and over again. The search engine’s resources are wasted too by analyzing and storing duplicate content. This is why each location should only have one profile page. There are tools available for checking on duplicate listings. You need to track them down and ask Google to remove them so that they cannot drag down your ratings.

2. Keyword stuffing in the footer

It was believed for a long time that stuffing names of cities and zip codes as keywords in the article’s footer can help improve local search rankings. However, it is important to remember that search engines like Google have changed their algorithms and such manipulative behavior is being penalized now. Google has clearly stated that irrelevant keywords create a seemingly negative user experience. To avoid keyword stuffing in the footer or it can affect the rankings of your website.

3. Ignoring common ranking factors

Your SEO services provider will educate you about factors that commonly impact your overall SEO rankings. Domain authority, for instance, is a common factor to consider. The more robust the domain authority, the better the SEO ranking would be. Backlinks are also one of the important determinants of SEO rankings. The nature and diversity of your backlinks determine your SEO ranking, local or otherwise.

Avoiding the above mistakes and following any advice given by your SEO services provider will certainly help you improve your local SEO.