This is a top-level SEO checklist that provides the framework for measuring your online business’ current state of optimization, diagnosing trouble areas and taking action to correct the issues that are identified.

SEO Basics Setup

Before you start, you should set yourself up with software that will provide insight into the state of your business’s SEO.

1. Setup Google Analytics
2. Google Search Console
3. Bing Webmaster Tools
4. Google Business Listing
5. SEO Software such as Semrush, Moz or Ahrefs
6. Website SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO for WordPress and SEO add-ons for ecommerce sites

These SEO software tools will provide great insight into the current state of your business, identify opportunities and create reports that measure your progress on a regular basis (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually).

Has Google Indexed Your Site’s Pages?

First things first, have your web pages been indexed by Google? If not, you can’t rank! You can check if your web pages are indexed a few ways.

1. Google Search. For a quick check you can type site:yourwebsite.com into a Google search and Google will list the pages they have listed and will show the total number of pages they have listed.
2. Google Search Console. Use Google Search Console to get a list of the pages Google has indexed. You can also check on an individual page by using their URL Inspection Tool.
3. SEO Software such as Semrush, MOZ and others.

Some reasons for not having your web page indexed by Google include a faulty Robot.txt file that is blocking indexing, orphaned pages that have no links to the page and no follow internal links. You may have also inadvertently set the page to not be seen by robots in the backend of your website. WordPress and ecommerce websites have this setting and you should confirm that everything is set to be crawled.

If your website pages are not getting indexed by Google you can use Google Search Console to submit them by using the Google Search Console URL Inspection Tool, although there is no obligation on Google’s part to index anything.

Also, add non-indexed pages to your sitemap.xml file and submit it to Google. A sitemap.xml file provides search engines with the structure of your website by listing the URL’s of your pages, which makes it much easier for their robots to crawl your website and not miss anything.