Table of Contents
SEO can be checklisty, and there are several fundamental SEO tasks you can follow that will help improve your site’s health, organic ranking, traffic, and conversions.
That’s exactly why I’m sharing this detailed SEO checklist. It’s the same one I used to:
- Achieve a 42.6% increase in a not for profit’s keywords in the top 3 positions in seven months
- Boost Oz Hair & Beauty’s organic revenue by 40.1%
- Add a 49.2% YoY increase in organic revenue to a pet niche client
- Drive a 126% YoY click uplift to an automotive client
This article isn’t just another checklist that tells you to “optimise your titles” and “do keyword research” without showing you how.
This SEO checklist is a step-by-step walk-through covering how to perform keyword research, local, on-page, off-page, and technical SEO—all built to work with Google’s latest updates.
If you want to stop guessing and start ranking, read on!
Fundamental SEO Setup
SEO success relies on these foundational tasks.
Set Up Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool for monitoring, troubleshooting, and improving your website’s visibility in Google Search results.
Google created this tool with features that help you:
- See which keywords bring traffic to your site (via the Performance report).
- Submit sitemap files
- Monitor crawling, indexation and request indexing of new or updated pages.
- Find and fix technical issues quickly.
- Monitor mobile usability and make sure your site works well on all devices.
- Optimise pages based on actual performance, and more.
The reason GSC is so powerful is because it is first party data on the keywords Google is serving your website for, along with how they are crawling and indexing the domain.
Here’s how to set up your Google Search Console account:
Step 1: Sign up for a Google account if you don’t have one
Step 2: Go to the Google Search Console homepage to add and verify ownership of your site.
Step 3: Choose Your Property Type
You’ll see two options:
- Domain: Tracks all URLs across subdomains (e.g., www.example.com, blog.example.com, etc) and protocols (http, https).
- URL Prefix – Tracks a specific URL path (e.g., https://www.example.com).
Pro tip: Go with Domain for full coverage.
Step 4: Verify Ownership
For Domain properties: You must add a DNS record (TXT record) in your domain host (e.g., GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare).
GSC gives you the code, so you just paste it into your DNS settings.
Once done, click “Verify” (DNS changes might take a few minutes or hours to reflect).
Here’s an example for NameCheap on where to add the TXT record for Google Search Console verification:
- Sign in to your Namecheap account
- Click “Domain List” from the left-hand sidebar in your Namecheap dashboard.
- Find the domain you want to verify and click “Manage” next to it.
- Click the “Advanced DNS” tab at the top of the page.
- Scroll to the “Host Records” section and click “Add New Record.”
- Choose “TXT Record” from the drop-down menu.
Fill in the details like this:
- Host: @ (this means the root domain)
- Value: Paste the TXT record you got from GSC
- TTL: Leave as Automatic
Click the green ✔ Save Changes icon. Return to Google Search Console and click “Verify” in the setup window.
For URL Prefix properties:
You can verify using one of the following methods:
- HTML File Upload to your site’s root directory
- HTML Tag in your site’s <head>
- Google Analytics (if already set up)
- Google Tag Manager
Set Up Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a Google Search Console twin tool that simplifies SEO. You can connect both tools to see your search performance data in GA4.
Google Analytics 4 helps you track and understand how visitors interact with your website. With this tool, you can:
- Track clicks, form submissions, and other behavioral insights
- Track your traffic sources
- Export your data to BigQuery for free
To create your account, follow Google’s guide on how to set up Google Analytics 4 for a website.
Set Up Bing Webmaster Tools
Bing’s current market share worldwide is 3.95%. Even though the data is small compared to Google’s 90.15%, it’s worth setting up the Webmaster Tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console in purpose. It helps you monitor and optimize your website’s presence in Bing search results.
Follow this checklist to set up your account:
Set up Google Merchant Centre (if e-commerce)
Google Merchant Center allows e-commerce store owners to upload and manage their product data so that it appears in Google Shopping, search results, Maps, YouTube, and other Google services.
It also features a personalised report that shows product performance, trends, and competitor insights.
To get started:
- Sign in to merchants.google.com with your Google account. If you have a Google Business listing, you can also trigger this via the on-SERP options
- Enter your business information (name, country, and time zone) and click “Continue.”
- Choose where customers check out (your website, local store, or Google).
- Choose Tools and Options (Optional). You can connect services like Google Ads, Shopify, or WooCommerce. After making your selections, click “Continue.”
- Agree to the terms
- Verify and claim your website
- Go to “Business Information” > “Website” and enter your site URL
- Choose a verification method (Add an HTML tag to your website’s <head>, upload an HTML file, or use Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics)
- Once verified, click “Claim” to complete the setup.
Set Up Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager allows you to easily add and manage tracking codes (tags) on your website or app without touching the code every time.
With this tool, you can:
- Add, update, or remove tracking tags (such as GA4, Facebook Pixel, etc.) without editing your website’s code.
- Use the pre-made tag templates for Google Analytics, Google Ads, Hotjar, and LinkedIn.
- Fire tags only when specific actions like clicks, form submissions, or page views happen.
Follow Google’s step-by-step guide to get started with Tag Manager.
Get SEO Plugins (for CMS users)
SEO plugins are tools (usually for CMS platforms like WordPress) that make optimising content, metadata, sitemaps, schema, and other SEO-related elements easier.
Here are some popular content management systems and their recommended SEO plugins:
| Content Management System (CMS) | Recommended SEO plugins |
| WordPress | Yoast SEO – All-in-one SEO optimisation (meta tags, sitemap, readability, etc.) Rank Math – Advanced features like schema, redirection, and content AI All in One SEO (AIOSEO) – Beginner-friendly with powerful SEO tools SEOPress – Lightweight and fully customisable The SEO Framework – Minimal and automated SEO solution |
| Shopify | Plug in SEO – Scans and fixes common SEO issues Smart SEO – Automates meta tags and alt text, adds structured data SEO Manager – Offers advanced controls for meta data, redirects, and more JSON-LD for SEO – Adds rich snippets for products and reviews |
| Magento | Mageworx SEO Suite – Comprehensive SEO toolkit for eCommerce Amasty SEO Toolkit – Automates metadata, rich snippets, and canonical tags Mirasvit SEO – Boosts SEO with rich templates and structured data |
Note: Some CMS come with built-in SEO tools. Take your time to analyse their purpose and add SEO plugins with features not included in the built-in tools.
Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity is a free analytics tool that helps you understand how users interact with your website through heat maps, session recordings, and user behavior insights.
It comes with key features like:
Session Recordings: You can watch recordings of real users navigating your website, including mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling.
Heatmaps: Provides visual maps of user interactions, highlighting areas with the most and least engagement.
Dashboards and Metrics: This section summarizes your website usage statistics, such as session counts, total users, and page views.
Follow this guide to set up and verify Microsoft Clarity.
Keyword research and Rank Tracking
You need to track your keywords to see how your pages rank for their target keywords in search results. This strategy helps you vet the success of your SEO strategy and campaigns.
Google Search Console works well as a keyword rank tracker, but it’s limited in some metrics. It can’t track your real-time rankings by location or device, competitors’ rankings, SERP features or even provide custom alerts for keyword ranking fluctuations.
You should sign up for paid keyword trackers like Semrush, Ahrefs, Keyword.com, Accuranker, and more. These tools track keyword rankings across desktop & mobile devices, show SERP features, SEO Share of Voice, and competitor rankings.
Now that the foundational SEO setup is perfect, you must ensure that your website is structured correctly, fast, secure, and crawlable so that search engine bots can easily access, index, and rank your content.
Technical SEO Checklist
Here are compulsory technical SEO checks your site must hit to function effectively:
Create and Submit Your XML Sitemap
A sitemap is a file (usually XML) that lists all your website’s essential pages (indexable and quality links) to help search engines crawl and index your content.
CMSs like WordPress and WebFlow automatically generate XML sitemaps for users and update them whenever they publish new content. If you aren’t a WordPress user, you should use a sitemap generator tool to create one yourself.
To find your website sitemap:
Manually enter these search variations into Google’s search bar:
- Yourwebsiteurl/sitemap_index.xml
My site’s sitemap looks like this.
Or
- Yourwebsiteurl/sitemap.xml
Next, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console’s “Sitemaps” section, Bing Webmaster tools, and robots.txt file.
Configure robots.txt
A robots.txt file is a plain text file placed in the root of your website that tells search engine crawlers which pages they can and can’t crawl.
It differs from an XML sitemap because this file instructs crawlers which pages to crawl and which to avoid, while a sitemap only has all the essential URLs on a website.
Search “yourwebsiteURL/robots.txt” in Google search bar to see your robots.txt file. For example, we have “https://intellar.agency/robots.txt”
Here’s what the robots.txt file above means:
- All user agents aren’t allowed to crawl any URL that starts with “https://intellar.agency/wp-admin/”
- User agents can crawl any URL that begins with “https://intellar.agency/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php”
Note that the sitemap is also in the robots.txt file. Search engines demand that you add your sitemap to your robots.txt file.
To do that, insert this line “Sitemap: https://yourwebsiteurl/my_sitemap.xml” anywhere in your robots.txt file.
If you don’t have a robots.txt file, you can follow Google’s basic guidelines for creating one.
Make Sure You’re Using HTTPS
Google settled the debate on HTTPS being a ranking signal long ago.
HTTPS is still a crucial ranking signal today.
Check the padlock icon in your browser’s address bar to confirm your site is HTTPS.
If you just launched your website, ensure your web developer sets it up with HTTPs immediately to avoid future issues.
Identify Crawling and Indexing Errors
A crawl error means search engine bots cannot crawl a page on your site. This error prevents such a page from being crawled, indexed and ranked on search results.
An index error means Google bots have crawled a page but can’t index it for a reason, which still means such a page can’t rank in search results.
You can discover these errors quickly on Google Search Console’s “Indexing” section.
Go to the “Indexing” tab and click “Pages.”
Click “Not indexed” to see pages that aren’t indexed and the reasons. Check the errors and fix them appropriately.
Optimise Your Site Speed
No one wants to years waiting for a page that takes too long to load. In fact, Google stated that as a page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds, 53% of users leave the site without interacting with it. That’s why you need to work on your site speed.
Google introduced the Core Web Vitals metrics in 2020 to measure a site’s page speed. This set of metrics measures your site’s loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. If you are new to Core Web Vitals, here’s a breakdown of its metrics:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Measures: Loading performance
Goal: LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load
What it tracks: When the main content (like a hero image or headline) finishes loading
First Input Delay (FID) (now replaced by Interaction to Next Paint)
Measures: Interactivity
Goal: FID should be less than 100 milliseconds
What it tracks: How fast your site responds when a user first interacts (e.g., clicks a button)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Measures: Visual stability
Goal: CLS score should be less than 0.1
What it tracks: How much content “jumps around” while the page is loading (e.g., buttons shifting unexpectedly)
Your site speed will automatically improve as you achieve good Core Web Vitals. The PageSpeed Insights tool can check your site’s Core Web Vitals for mobile and desktop devices for free and automatically show your page speed.
Enter your website URL in the tool’s search bar and click “Analyse.”
The tool also recommends tips for improving your page speed and overall Core Web Vitals.
Find and Fix Broken Links
Broken links don’t take users to their desired pages, affecting your site’s user experience. Broken link pages often show the 404 page not found error.
Other codes, like 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden, and 400 Bad Request, also indicate a problem with a link.
To find these links on your site, you can use Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, or SEO tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and more.
Here’s how to use Google Analytics 4 to find broken links:
- Log in to your account and go to the “Report” section.
- Once there, navigate to “Engagement” and click “Pages and screens” from the drop-down menu.
- Next, you should change the primary dimension. Click the drop-down below the search bar and select “Page title and screen class.”
- Click the little + icon beside “Page title and screen class” to add a new dimension.
- In the search bar, type “Page path and screen class” and select it. This action allows you to see the exact URL visitors are landing on.
- Then, type your 404 message in the search bar. You can type “page not found,” “404,” or any error message. Click enter, and GA4 will pull out all the pages with the error code.
Here’s how to use Google Search Console to find broken links:
- Log in to your GSC account and go to the “Indexing” section.
- Click “Pages” to see indexed and unindexed pages.
- Click “Not indexed.” You will see pages not indexed and why they aren’t indexed. Next, click “Not Found (404)” to see all your pages returning 404 errors.
- Hover over any page and click the search icon to inspect the URL. Google will explain why the page shows a 404 error and how to fix it.
If you discover broken links on your site, here are my three tips for fixing them:
- Update the links
- Remove the links
- Insert 301 redirects
Ensure mobile-friendliness
Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it uses the mobile version of your site’s content for indexing and crawling.
Here are some tips to make your site mobile-friendly:
- Use a responsive design – Make sure your design layout automatically adapts to mobile screen sizes
- Ensure that the text is readable without zooming and that the buttons are large enough to tap easily
- Avoid pop-ups
- Compress and resize your images for faster mobile load times
Use Schema Markup
Implementing schema Markup (or structured data) is not compulsory but recommended to help search engines better understand and present your content in search results. It’s the code you add to your webpage to make search engines understand what your content is about.
Most importantly, it can help you win featured and rich snippets on search results.
See how a Schema Markup in Google SERPSs looks like:
I recommend using structured data testing tools to avoid the technicalities associated with manual Schema Markup implementation.
You can read Google’s documentation on structured data to understand the Schema Markup better.
Ensure You Don’t Have Duplicate Versions of Your Site
Your website domain can appear in several versions based on protocol and subdomain structure.
You can have:
http://www.example.com
http://example.com
Search engines treat some of these URLs as separate URLs. To avoid duplicate pages, crawling, and indexing issues, 301 redirect all duplicate URLs to your primary domain.
Identify and Fix Keyword CannibaliSation
Keyword cannibalisation happens when multiple pages on your website target the same or very similar keywords and satisfy similar search intent. As a result, they end up competing with each other in search engine rankings.
To fix this issues:
- Use Google’s site search operator – “site: Your domain+keyword”
- Check Google Search Console Performance tab. Read this keyword cannibalisation guide to learn how to do it.
- Use an SEO tool with a keyword cannibalization checker. Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, and Oncrawl have cool features for this purpose.
So how do you fix keyword cannibalization issues found on your site?
- Consolidate and redirect cannibalized pages
- Use canonical tags to tell search engines the page to be indexed and ranked on search results
- Target different search intents for the cannibalized pages
- Build quality links to your preferred page
After fixing your technical SEO issues, what else?
Keyword Research Checklist
Keyword research is a crucial SEO pillar. Here are some keywords you should have in your keyword list and how to find them:
Find Your Seed Keywords
Seed keywords are the core, foundational keywords representing the main topic or niche of your website, product, or service. They are the search queries that describe who you are and what you do.
They are also used as a starting point for keyword research to discover more specific, long-tail keyword opportunities.
For example, I run a full-service SEO agency for SMBs and enterprises. My seed keywords are SEO services, content marketing, digital marketing agency, local SEO, and more.
Answer these questions to find yours:
- What product, service, or content do I offer?
- Who is my target audience, and what are they searching for?
- What problems do I solve?
- What topics do I consistently talk or write about?
- Which keywords are my competitors targeting?
Discover Your Long-Tail Keywords
Seed keywords are usually short-tail keywords and could be difficult to rank for. You can target long-tail keywords that are specific and have lower search volumes.
Here are some ways to find your long-tail keywords:
Start with Google Autosuggest
Enter your keyword into Google search bar but don’t press ENTER. Google will automatically generate a list of long-tail keywords.
Check Google’s PAA and Related Searches Sections
Check Google’s People Also Ask and Related Searches sections for more long-tail keywords.
Use Keyword Research Tools
Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, Moz, or any keyword research tool can help you find more long-tail keywords. These tools feature filters that tailor your result to only low-competitive long-tail keywords.
Note: Don’t ignore zero-volume keywords with high-conversion potential.
Find Your Question Keywords
Use AnswerthePublic or AlsoAsked to find your question keywords. You can use these search queries in your blog posts or landing pages.
Identify Your Low-Hanging Fruits
Low-hanging fruits are your keywords that require minimal improvement but can deliver quick wins. Examples are your keywords ranking on Google’s page two or pages with high impressions but low clicks in Google Search Console.
You can find these keywords on Google Search Console:
- Log in to your GSC dashboard and go to the “Performance” tab.
- Set the date range to the last 3-6 months to see a broader trend of your site’s performance.
- Look for keywords where your site’s average position is between 5 and 20
- Also, note search queries with high impressions but low click-through rates (CTR)
Identify Your Competitors’ Keywords
Research keywords driving traffic to your competitors but you aren’t ranking for or have poor rankings.
To do this, perform a keyword gap analysis compared to your SERP competitors with any keyword gap analysis tool. In the result page, search for your missing and weak keywords.
Discover Your Customer-Focused Keywords
Customer-focused keywords are your audience’s pain points in different use cases. Although they might have low search volumes, if well optimized, they have the potential to drive conversions.
Here are a few ways to find these keywords:
- Speak to your customer service team about your customers’ pain points in different use cases
- Interview 5-7 customers
- If you run a SaaS brand, you can add a simple question on your sign-up flows
- Analyze your competitors’ positive and negative reviews on review platforms
- Check online forums like Reddit and Quora for questions about your product or service.
How do you turn these keywords into a treasure chest that keeps giving?
Content Creation Checklist
Follow this checklist to create content your readers can bookmark and share.
Understand the Topic Search Intent
You can’t create great content if you don’t know why searchers type the search query into Google. I mean understanding what they’re looking to achieve with that search.
The search intent could fall into any of these categories:
Informational – The user wants to learn something. E.g., “What is SEO”
Navigational – The user wants to go to a specific website or brand. E.g., “YouTube login”
Transactional – The user is ready to take action or make a purchase. E.g., “buy wireless earbuds”
Commercial – The user is researching before buying. E.g., “best CRM for small business”
How then can you discover your topic or keyword search intent?
- Google the keyword and analyse the SERP. Look at the top-ranking pages and check for SERP features.
- Check the keyword modifiers. Certain words are strong indicators of intent.
- Informational: what, how, guide, tips, learn, tutorial
- Navigational: brand names, login, homepage, contact
- Transactional: buy, discount, coupon, deal, order, free trial
- Commercial Investigation: best, top, vs, reviews, alternatives
- Use SEO tools
Tailor Your Outline to the Search Intent
Only include subtopics relevant to the search intent.
Don’t stuff your content with “What is,” “Why it’s important,” “Benefits,” and a thousand other sections that distract users from finding the answer they need (if not necessary).
Use a Short and Highly-Relevant Intro
Your intro isn’t the place to flex your writing muscle.
Instead, briefly explain why the reader is in the right place and prove you know enough to satisfy their search intent.
You could also relate a story to illustrate the reader’s problem and sell your approach to solving it.
Lily Ugbaja explains three steps to selling your approach in your intro in her LinkedIn post:
Make the Body of Your Content a Solution Walk-Through
Research the topic like a trained detective and provide value that outclasses current ranking pages.
Most importantly, write as if you were having a coffee chat with your readers and leading them from their problems to solutions.
Don’t forget to use short paragraphs to improve readability. No one likes a wall of text.
Bonus tips:
- Interview and quote subject matter experts for unique insights
- Include case studies relevant to the topic
- Use examples to back up your points
- You can invite your audience to contribute their ideas
- Add your personal stories
- Research idea gaps in competitors’ pages and build your points with them.
Read Google’s helpful content checklist to evaluate if you’re creating content that would benefit people.
Improve Content Readability with Visuals
Visuals add life.
Use relevant images, videos, infographics, memes, and more to keep your readers glued to their screens till the end.
Regularly Update Your Content
Strategies change. New things are unveiled daily. Your content should match these ever-evolving changes.
You can set a 3-6 month content update timeframe to keep your content continually fresh and helpful.
For more context about SEO content writing, read my detailed guide on creating content that ranks.
Let’s move on to optimising your content for better ranking.
On-Page SEO Checklist
On-page SEO helps search engines understand the purpose and relevance of your pages so they can rank it for the right keywords and deliver it to the right audience.
Use these tips to optimizse your content:
Include Your Primary Keyword in Your URL
When search engine bots first crawl a new page, the primary keyword in the URL provides a minor signal about its content.
John Mueller made a similar statement. He said,
“We use the words in a URL as a very very lightweight factor. And from what I recall, this is primarily something we would consider when we haven’t had access to the content yet.
So, if this is the first time we see this URL and don’t know how to classify its content, we might use the words in the URL to help us rank better.”
More so, including your keyword in your pages’ URLs can increase their click-through rates.
Further Reading: URL Best Practices
Use Your Primary Keyword in Your Title Tag and Meta Description
Optimize your title tag and meta description with your primary keyword. This practice increases your page relevance to the keyword and the click-through rate.
You can also naturally use your primary keyword at the front of your title tag. If that’s impossible, don’t do it because Google frowns against keyword stuffing.
Research and Optimize Synonyms and LSI Keywords
I created an article on SEO content writing tips. Rather than stuffing the content with the primary keyword, I optimized synonyms like:
- How to optimize website content for SEO
- How to write SEO content
- Optimize content for SEO
I also used LSI keywords to improve the content relevance. LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing keywords) are search terms that are contextually related to your primary keyword.
I naturally used LSI search terms like:
- Content readability
- Writing flow
- Keyword placement
- User intent
OptimiSe Your Headers With Your Keyword
Use your primary keyword in your H1, as it tells search engines and users what your content is about. You can also include your primary keyword naturally across other header tags (H2s, H3s, and more) to strengthen your page relevance.
You should also optimise your H2s and H3s with synonyms and LSI keywords. These keywords help you avoid keyword stuffing.
OptimiSe Your Images
Image optimisation helps you rank in image searches.
Firstly, use descriptive image alt tags and file names. This practice helps search engines understand your images.
You should also optimise your alt tags with your keywords to improve your image relevance to the target keyword. Although, make it natural.
Secondly, compress your images to improve your website’s speed and overall user experience. Faster-loading images reduce bounce rates and help pages load quickly on mobile devices.
Read my detailed guide on image optimisation for more tips on optimizing your images without sacrificing quality.
Use Internal Links
John Mueller said in one of the SEO office-hours sessions that internal linking is one of the biggest things you can do on a website to guide Google and visitors to your most important pages.
Always link to other relevant pages on your site. There is no standard number of internal links per page, but you can link to as many relevant pages as possible.
Note: Use keyword-relevant and descriptive anchor text in your internal links. This tells users and search engines the context of the page you are linking to.
Use External Links
Link to relevant external sites to improve your user experience.
Suppose you want to provide more context about a term but don’t have a page for it. In that case, you can link to authoritative resources that provide more information about it, just as I did in this article by linking to Google documentation on specific topics.
Note: Don’t link to your competitors’ pages. That will cause more harm than good.
Off-Page SEO Checklist
Off-page SEO focuses on external ranking signals like backlinks and social media. Follow this checklist to learn how to get quality links and implement social media for better visibility.
Build Quality Backlinks
Get this right — backlinks are still a crucial ranking factor today.
They help search engines measure website quality and establish authority. But it could be challenging to get quality links. Here are a few ways I get links from authoritative sites for my clients and my website:
- Create link-worthy content assets. Link-worthy content is content other sites would love to link to because of the data, unique insights, or relevant information that can’t be found elsewhere.
My local SEO stats for 2025 blog post is a good example. It covers different local SEO statistics across several local SEO aspects. Other examples are infographics, expert roundups like my post on expert opinions on the impact of AI overview, case studies, surveys, detailed guides, and more.
- Guest post on relevant sites. Sites that accept guest posts provide a do-follow link to the author’s site.
- Check your competitors’ link profiles. Use SEO tools to find sites linking to your competitors and contact them for backlinks.
- Contribute to expert insight platforms. Contribute expert quotes to platforms like Connectively, Helpab2bwriter, and more, and get a link in return. You can also use the hashtag (#journorequest + your niche) on Twitter to find journalists looking for expert insights.
- Find unlinked mentions and turn them into links. Some site owners can mention your brand and not link to it. You can look for these unlinked brand mentions and request a link. Read this guidde to learn how to find these unlinked mentions.
- Build relationships with content managers. Relationships can bring you more link opportunities than you expect. Connect with content marketing managers, build quality relationships with them, and then request a link to your site.
- Implement the broken link strategy. Look for broken links on other sites, contact their content managers about the issue, and request a link to a similar page on your site.
Leverage Social Media
Social signals aren’t a ranking factor, but they can make a landmark impact on your site.
Social media is one of the strategies Google uses to vet your E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness), among other things.
Add social media as one of your marketing flywheels to amplify your content and attract people to your site.
You can repurpose your blog posts into text-based posts, infographics for LinkedIn and Twitter, and videos for YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
AI SEO Checklist
Google introduced AI overviews in 2024, which have built a real estate on SERPs. Here are ways to win a spot in AI overviews and appear in LLMs search results:
Optimise for AI Overviews and LLMs
Google says there’s nothing special to do to appear on AI overviews aside from following the guidelines stated in its Search Essentials.
Let’s see some tips to follow according to the Search Essentials to win a spot in Google AI overviews and LLMs search results:
- Identify the topic search intent and provide a clear and concise answer early
- Organize your information for easy reading. Use bullet points, headings, and short paragraphs.
- Cover the topic in-depth. If you can’t create a perfect guide, have the best explanation for a specific aspect of the topic.
- Build your brand’s authority.
Use AI Tools for SEO Tasks
Several SEO tools, like Semrush and Ahrefs, track AI overviews. These tools show you keywords that trigger AI overviews and also track your rankings on AI overviews.
You can also use these tools for other SEO tasks.
Local SEO Checklist
Follow this local SEO strategy to rank your business on local search results and maps.
Set Up Google Business Profile
If you own a local business or run local SEO campaigns for local clients, set up GBP to appear in Google Search and Maps. That’s the foundation for a successful local SEO campaign.
Also, fill in the information correctly, including your business description, photo, video, NAP, and more.
Follow this guide to set up and verify your Google Business Profile.
Further Reading: Google Business Profile – Live Video Verification Tips
A Guide to Google Business Justifications (2025)
Set Up Bing Places for Businesses
Bing Places for Business is the Microsoft version of GBP.
Here’s what it looks like:
Follow Bing’s guide to set up and verify your Bing Places for Business so that it appears on Bing Search and Maps.
If you already have your Google Business Profile, you can set up a Bing Places for Business listing by syncing from your GBP. This strategy is more effective than the manual setup.
Build Local Citations
Local citations are mentions of your business information, especially the name, address, and phone number online.
Oftentimes, you need to submit your business information to business directories to get listed. But here are some ways to build quality citations:
- Claim, submit, and manage your business listings with data aggregators. Data aggregators collect business information and distribute it to other sites. Examples are Data Axle, Neustar Localeze, Factual, and more.
- Submit your business information to authoritative local citation sources like Yelp, Foursquare, TellowPages, Apple Maps, etc. You can review this comprehensive list of local citation sources.
- Submit to popular sites based on your industry. You can check this list for the top business listing sites by industry.
Manage Your Online Reviews
Follow this Semrush local review management checklist to manage your reviews online.
Add & Maintain Consistent NAP Information
Add your business name, address, and phone number to your GBP, Bing Places for Business, website, and local citations.
Most importantly, maintain consistent NAP information across your citations to prevent confusion.
Add Local Business Schema Markup to Your Site
Local business schema markup is structured data that you add to your website’s HTML to help search engines better understand information about your business.
To add this Schema Markup, enter your URL into Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, select a data (local business), and click “Start Tagging.”
Next, tag your business name, address, and phone number. You can also tag other information, such as Opening hours, Reviews, and more.
After tagging, click “Create HTML.” Google will create the structured data for you to add to your website.
Final Thoughts
SEO is like the ocean’s waves—rising, falling, and dancing to a rhythm no one can predict. But this checklist will make your site as immovable as a mountain.
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Further Reading: 8 Tips for Better SEO
