Having a website is probably the best investment you will ever make for your business. With a website, you can do several forms of marketing, such as EDM. You can also build an online presence that will help your business grow as more people search online. Apart from that, you can also offer your services and products online, for example by opening an online shop. In short, a website can be a valuable asset to your business.
However, for your website to produce the best results, you have to make sure that it can be found by people.
The internet is a vast place. If the internet is an ocean, then your business site is a bubble among the many bubbles in the ocean. When a user searches for something on the internet using a search engine, such as Google, the search engine will search and sort out bubbles (website pages) related to what the user is looking for. The search engine will then sort all pages that are relevant to the user's needs based on several things.
If you want your website to be found more frequently by search engines and users, then you need to understand Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is easier said than done. You may have come across agencies or companies that offer SEO optimization services for websites. This is because optimizing your website's SEO is difficult and technical.
However, that does not mean it is impossible to do it by yourself. Today, you can find many tutorials, tips and tricks, and guides that can help you to understand the SEO basics checklist. Strikingly provides an SEO checklist to help its users optimize the SEO of their website. Let's take a look at what's on the SEO checklist at Strikingly.
SEO Checklist by Strikingly
With Strikingly, you can easily optimize the SEO of your website. You can also use this checklist as your SEO checklist for new websites. Here is the SEO checklist to help you optimize your website:
The first on our SEO checklist is descriptive titles. When Google shows the results of your searches, you will find something like this:
The title of a page is indicated by the red rectangle. To help your page ranks better you need to give your website pages a descriptive title. To start creating a descriptive title, you can start by combining the name of your business and the location. For example, ‘Mary’s Shop - Washington’. Then you can start adding the services or products of your business. For example, ‘Mary’s Shop - Find The Perfect Wedding Gift in Washington’. Now, you have your name, product or services, and location listed in the title of your website page.
How to give your website pages a descriptive title in Strikingly?
Go to your Strikingly website editor. Next, go to Settings and click Basic Info to find basic information about your website page. You will find a column titled Site Title. Put your desired title for your site in there.
Image taken from Strikingly website
Once you have edited your website’s title, click Save. If you have more than one page on your website, always remember to edit each one of them to increase your SEO ranking.
The second on our SEO checklist is meta descriptions. Let us go back to the Google search results page.
Beneath the title, you will find the meta descriptions of a website page, as indicated by the green rectangle. As the name implies, the meta descriptions describe the content of your website pages. Here, you need to start adding keywords that you want search engines, such as Google, to relate to your website. If you want your website to be related when people are looking for the best bakery in Washington, then you need to put those keywords in your meta descriptions.
However, you need to remember that although it is the search engine that ranks your pages, it is the human that will read your page. It means that you need to be sensible when putting your keywords on your meta descriptions. You must not stuff your keywords for the sake of putting it, such as ‘Best bakery in Washington. Bakery in Washington. The Best of Washington Bakery.’. While you are technically successful at putting all the necessary keywords, people will simply be confused at such descriptions. A good description does not only include necessary keywords but also informative and straight to the point. Always keep that in mind when working on your on-page SEO checklist.
How do you add meta descriptions to your website in Strikingly?
Go to your Site Editor and click Settings. Then, click the Basic Info, and you will find the Site Description column just beneath the Site Title column.
Image taken from Strikingly website
Click Save once you have finished your website page’s meta description. Again, if you have more than one page on your website, you need to edit each of them.
- Add Keywords to Your Heading
Now, let us move on to the inside of your website. The third on our website optimization checklist is adding keywords to your heading. Your website is divided into several sections. For example, your website could have an about section where you explain the history and story of your business, a contact section where you provide your contact details, products or services section, and so on. These sections will be the headings for your website.
Why is having headings important?
Headings can help search engines to understand your website better. For example, suppose you have a section that tells the features of your product. This features section will then have other small sections, namely the features of your product. By using headings, search engines like Google will understand the relationship between one element and another on your website.
Finally, adding keywords to your headings will further help search engines to understand your website better. Naming such as ‘About Mary’s Shop’ is much more descriptive and helpful for search engines rather than simply ‘About’.
How to add headings on your website with Strikingly?
Go to your site editor and click on a text that you want to edit. You will find a dropdown menu that contains several heading categories that you can apply to your text. Choose the most relevant category for your headings to help search engines understand your website better. Once you have finished editing, click Save.
Image taken from Strikingly product
There are some tips on how to optimize your headings better. As you know, there are several categories for headings. Each category is often used for each separate element. Headings 1 (H1), for example, is suited for a title. H2 is better used for sections, such as the contact section. H3 is for items inside H2, and H4 is for the subtitles of H2.
- Content is King
Now, moving to the fourth on our SEO checklist is creating quality content. As the saying goes, content is king. What does it mean? It means that content is so strong and important for your business. With content, you can create brand awareness by telling how awesome your products or services are. You can also educate your customers about your business, for example, what do people need to know when they are looking for a cheap apartment. In the context of SEO, creating quality content will establish your business as an expert and search engines will rank your website higher.
With Strikingly, you can start creating high-quality content by creating a blog. You can also find several guides on how to optimize your blog and help your website rank higher.
- Describe Your Images
Related to content creation, you might find yourself using images on your content. When using images, you need to remember the fifth on our SEO checklist that is describing your images. Google read your website to understand and rank it. However, Google cannot see images, it can only read text. To help Google understand the images that you use on your website, you can add an alt-text to your images.
To add an alt-text on your image, go to your site editor and click on the image that you want to edit. Click Add Alt Text, and you can add a description for your images.
Image taken from Strikingly website
- Connect a Domain
Now, let us move on to meet the first item on our technical SEO checklist: connecting your website to a domain. A free domain that you receive from a website builder can be pretty good sometimes. However, as has been said before, a free feature will not help you much in the long run. With Strikingly, you can easily connect your website to a domain. You can find a comprehensive guide on how to do that in our help center.
- Share Your Website
The next thing on our SEO checklist is sharing your website. Why is sharing your website important?
The more backlink or links that direct people to your website, you have, the more likely that search engines think that your website is relevant to what people are looking for. You can imagine it like quoting a well-known person.
You do not need people to promote your website. You can always find a forum or blog that is talking about something related to your business and share your content there.
- Analyze Your Website
The last item on our SEO checklist is analyzing your website. The SEO process is a continuous process. As time goes, your website will be ranked better and better by Google, and sometimes, other websites can overtake you. This means that you always have to improve and upgrade your website to stay in the game. To help you do that, you need some analysis tools.
One of the best tools that you can utilize is Google Search Console. It is a service provided by Google that can help you to index your website better and provide you with your website’s performance report. For example, Google Search Console will tell you whether your website is mobile-friendly or not or whether all your website pages are discoverable or not. It is a really helpful tool that will help you in the long run.
You can combine Google Search Console with Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you can analyze your website’s performance better. You can find out information such as traffic and where all of them are coming from. For example, you might have a social media campaign and share your link on several social media. You can find out which social media is most effective for your campaign, which means a lot of traffic is coming from that particular social media, and you can decide to focus on that particular social media to save cost and time.
That is that. That is a basic SEO checklist that you can apply to your website. Simply put, SEO has something to do with how a search engine can read your website. If a search engine, such as Google, can read your website easily, it will be more likely that your website will be ranked higher and relevant to a user’s search by Google. Optimizing your website SEO means that your website will have a better chance to be discovered and help you to make new customers.
The first item on our basic SEO checklist is focusing on a keyword that you want Google to relate to your website, for example, you want Google to relate your website with ‘Bakery in Washington’ keywords. Once you have keywords that you focus on, it is time to add them on your website, on your website’s page title, meta descriptions, headings, and so on. If you have images, make sure to describe them using alt-text since Google can only read text. Once you have finished all items on our SEO basics checklist, you can start improving and upgrading your SEO website over time by using Google Search Console and Google Analytics. SEO optimization is a continuous process. You need to continue learning and follow the current SEO best practices checklist to help you stay in the game. Fortunately, you can learn a website optimization checklist easily on the internet and from others.
Create your website today with Strikingly and make your website discoverable with the basic SEO checklist!
