5 Essential SEO Checks

SEO Checks

When migrating to a new website – these SEO checks will keep your website from experiencing technical problems.

This can avoid problems with Google crawling and indexing your site through to providing a better user experience.

1. 301 redirects

What is this?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that redirects one URL to another. This is essential for SEO checks. When going live with a new website you’ll possibly change the url structure or remove non performing pages. This can be dangerous as consider that Google has indexed all your pages, then you change a structure or remove URLs.

This will then make you’re URLs indexed go to a 404 not found status, unless you apply 301 redirects. It’s best to keep the Url structure the same and make small amends if there’s pages removed.

A 301 redirect will tell google what the replacement page is for the one you’ve replaced, then you will retain the current indexed search positions.
Redirect can be applied to the htaccess file in your root folder.

2. Robots.txt

What is it?

This is a file that instructs search engine bots what to do. The file resides in the root folder of your web space. This is part of a web standards called REP (Robots exclusion protocol). This web standard regulates how robots crawl, index and access content that’s served to users.

When a search engine crawls your site it will first look for a robots.txt file.

What effect can it have

This is a file that can make or break your site. I’ve known scenarios whereby people’s entire sites have been blocked from Google because they didn’t check their robots.txt file. So ensure this is not blocking your live pages.

What’s the code

User-agent: * Disallow: (this will allow everything as nothing is specified to disallow)

User-agent: * Disallow: / (this will disallow everything)

3. Keyword mapping your content

You need to have a plan for your content in ensuring the URLs, content, keywords, titles, meta descriptions follow a common topic for each page. This is important if your starting a new site, this way you’ll be optimising your pages on the outset.

4. Setup your linked services

Ensure your linking your analytics, tracking codes, google search console so the site is measuring traffic on the outset.

5. Accessibility, UI and UX

Are your pages accessible to all people. Do they have variant UI design and provide a better user experience than the previous website?

These SEO checks are essential for any website to be indexed and effective online.

SEO