On & Off Page SEO List

If you are a business owner who is looking to learn about SEO, or if you are looking to hire an SEO firm, this SEO list will be a great resource for you. In this article, we will cover both on-page and off-page SEO so that you can begin to tackle things on your own, or be better able to choose an SEO firm to work with. And should you need help with SEO, you can set up a fee consultation with us. We’ll be happy to discuss your issues and what solutions we think would benefit you best.

Google SEO Must Haves

Google is king when it comes to SEO, and while there are other search engines like Bing and Duck Duck Go, we have noticed that all of our clients receive the bulk of their traffic from organic Google searches. It is incredibly important for you to prioritise Google. Here are some of the Google products (all of them are FREE) that you need to have if your business plans to play in the SEO game.

Google Search Console

This is probably the most important SEO tool in your arsenal. The insights you get come directly from Google and tell you about your website’s performance on search. It also gives you insights into your website’s visibility. Most importantly, it sends you notifications when there is something technically wrong with your site that affects your search engine rankings.

Google Analytics

This is equally as important as Google Search Console. Google Analytics tells you how many people visit your site, how they get there, where they are from and much more. Once you have set up Google Analytics and Google console, you need to link them together to have an incredibly powerful duo of free SEO tools.

Must Have Plugins & Tools

Google Search Console and Google Analytics can only take you so far if you don’t take actions on the data they give you. These are some tools that will make it easier to execute on Google’s tips and data.

A Powerful SEO Plugin

If you are not an engineer or a coder, plugins can make your life significantly easier. A good SEO plugin will help you to get started on optimizing your website. These are two of our favorites:

  • Yoast SEO (Freemium) for WordPress Sites
  • Plugin SEO (Freemium) for Shopify Sites.

Let Google Know Your Site Exists

You have set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console. You have an SEO plugin. Now you need to let Google know your site is there and what content is on it. 

Generate and Submit A Site Map

A site map tells search engines what is on your site, which allows these search engines to crawl your site, index it, and hopefully rank it in the top 100 results. The best type of site map is an XML site map. Luckily, this is pretty easy since you have already added your SEO plugin on WordPress (and you don’t even need to do this on Shopify).

HOW TO GENERATE A SITEMAP WITH YOAST

  1. Log in to your WordPress website. 
  2. Click on ‘SEO’ On the left-hand side.
  3. Click on ‘General’
  4. Click ‘Features’.
  5. Toggle the ‘XML Sitemaps’ switch to “on”.
  6. Click ‘Save Changes’
  7. That’s it.

HOW TO GENERATE A SITEMAP ON SHOPIFY

Shopify automatically creates a sitemap. To find it, use the url for your website and add /sitemap.xml at the end (ex – your site.com/sitemap.xml)

HOW TO SUBMIT A SITEMAP

Log into Google Search Console. On the left hand side, you will see “Sitemaps”. Click that and enter the sitemap URL where it is asked for. Click submit.

Set Rules with Robots.Txt

A robots.txt file sets rules as to what pages and files a search engine’s crawlers can access (request/call) and which they can’t.  To check if you already have a robots.txt file, simply add /robots.txt. to the end of your domain (ex – your site.com/robots.txt). If you try this and nothing comes up, you will need to create one. There are various plugins you can use to take care of this.

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