1. Google+ Local Page
This should be the first thing you do. Head over to http://www.google.com/+/business/ and create your business page under the “Local Business or Place”.
Fill out all the information that is relevant to your business, place your business in 5 categories, and upload 5 high-quality photos. Verify your business, and make sure your page profile is filled out at 100%, which is showed at the top of your page's dashboard.
Tip: You can put a link to your website in the “About” section and this is a dofollow link.
2. Hosting
You should have some version of dedicated hosting, virtual dedicated hosting or your own server. These types of hosting mean that when the search engine spider hits your site it thinks your site is all alone.
Tip: You want to keep your site on its own IP address. Google has been known to devalue sites based on the company they keep on a server. Don't let hanging out with the bad kids hurt your site.
3. Servers
Caching/Compression make sure your site is loading in quickly and only downloading what is needed. Also make sure your uptime is as close to 100 percent as possible.
Tip: If your site is down less than 24 hours, you are OK.
4. Domain Name Resolution
Check your domain name. Does it resolve to one domain or many? Do you use the www or non-www?
Does your site's www, non-www and homepage name resolve to the same name? For example, a site uses the non-www version of its site domainname.com, but has not created 301 redirects for its www and pagename versions. Google now thinks it has three sites.
Make sure you choose a domain version and redirect the other homepages to it.
Tip: There is no general use case in which you would choose the pagename version.
5. Sitemap
Ask yourself the following:
Does your site have a sitemap.xml that lists all indexable site pages
Do you update it regularly? When you have new content? Ever? Never?
Does your sitemap get uploaded to the server after creation?
Do you let the search engines know you have a new sitemap?
While we are talking sitemaps, if needed, do you have separate ones for your images and on-site videos?
Sitemaps are important to help the search engines locate content on your site that it might miss on a simple crawl.
Tip: If you don't have a sitemap, your site will still get indexed, but this is the guide that tells the spider where all indexable pages are located, so make one (or two).
6. Robots.txt File
Do you use your robots.txt correctly? Do you get odd messages in the SERPs that show the page you thought was hidden from the spider, but shows in the description that it was not?
What you might not know: Robots.txt files don't block your pages from being found. Robots.txt files are meant to prevent crawling and indexing of the site content, not indexing of page information.
What Google says: “While Google won't crawl or index the content of pages blocked by robots.txt, we may still index the URLs if we find them on other pages on the web. As a result, the URL of the page and, potentially, other pubilcly available information such as anchor text in links to the site, or the title from the Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org), can appear in Google search results.”
The issue lies in the fact that if the page is in the robots.txt and you wanted it blocked from the search results the no-index tag cannot be read on the page, so the page URL is indexed with the description that explains the robots.txt blocked it.
Tip: You can fix this by blocking folder level sections in the robots.txt and using the no-index page code on the page level.
7. Page Speed
Are you checking your site's page speed? Do you know what rating you are given with Google's page speed tool? Have you checked your analytics values?
You may have heard that page speed is only helpful to 1 percent of site queries, but we've yet to meet a site that doesn't do better almost immediately by improving their page score to above a 90. Just do it!
Users who don't get their page downloaded in a second or less (3 to 4 is the max), are likely to abandon your site, so it helps you either way.
Tip: You want a 90 and above if you can get it. Make sure you don't go below 85. There is no hard and fast rules on this, just personal experience.
8. Site Crawl
Use a tool, such as Screaming Frog, to run a crawler through your site and complete a site-wide check for the following:
Is your anchor text written properly?
Are your redirects handling properly?
Do you have site crawl issues?
Do you have broken links (coming into your site, going out, or in images)?
Are your meta tags too long, too short, duplicate or non-existent?
Are your title tags too long, too short, duplicate, over-optimized, or non-existent?
Are you using the alt text in your alt attribute correctly?
Tip: Using a large-scale site crawler like Screaming Frog helps you see site-wide issues quickly with one-click shareable reporting.
9. Duplicate Content
When is the last time you checked your site's content for duplicate content in the SERPs?
Your content may be 100 percent original, but that doesn't mean your content hasn't been duplicated somewhere or that someone hasn't scraped your site. You should do regular checks on your site content.
Tip: Use sites like Copyscape to check for scraped content, though you should also do a hand review. Some copy is scraped into Flash and can be read by Google, but not Copyscape.
10. Canonicalization
Speaking of content, have you checked your site to make sure you have properly implemented your canonical tags? Do you have canonical tags?
Canonical tags can tell Google:
That the content you spent all that time writing is yours.
That these N duplicate pages on our site are really copies of an original page.
Tip: Canonicalization is the only way, at this time, to tell Google you own said content. Don't let your site or anything for that matter, leave your site without it (includes syndication).
11. Content
Content is one of the most important parts of your site health and authority. Without great content you might find it difficult to position your site well within its term set and even more difficult to find quality users who want to spent time with your pages – and no one likes to be left alone on a Saturday night.
Is your content informative?
Do you create original, unique, relevant content on a regular schedule?
Do you update content other than just the blog page?
You need fresh, unique, original, relevant content added to your site on a regular basis. While the blog is a great place to do this on a site, you need to add to the site in more places than just the blog.
Tip: Make sure your content is longer than 600-700 words (or at least most content) on your site. "Thin Content" will likely get you penalized and since that just makes for a bad day, don't skimp here, it will just make you sad.
12. Usability
Have you tested your site for usability? Is it easy to use? Can users find their way around simply? Do they know what your site is about in a "blink"?
You have less than 3 milliseconds to establish trust with users.
Your site design should pass the "blink" text. Close your eyes. Open them. You should be able to tell what your site does and where to go in that one second after you open them, if you can't re-examine your homepage and site pages for proper site pathing.
Make sure your site highlights the most important site paths.
Tip: Before you add/change anything on your site pages ask yourself:
Does this make my site functionally better for users?
Does this make my site better for search engines?
Does this help me make money?
Does this inform users?
If the answer to these questions is no, re-examine why you are adding to and/or changing the site. It isn't likely that the add/change will be beneficial to you or the users.
13. Google Analytics
Google Analytics can tell you a lot about your site health in terms of the search engines and users long before other data sources.
How often do you check your site analytics?
If not, do your analytics give you granular data?
Are you comparatively checking your site metrics?
Aside from just your standard visit/page view graph some of the things you can review in your analytics are:
Keyword Queries: Are you being found on the searches you think you should? Now for many this will be hidden in the "not provided", but it can at least give you an idea how you are being found and if that has changed dramatically since the last comparison period. Large changes here can indicate site changes elsewhere. Red flags are often found here.
Organic vs. Non-Organic Searches: How are your organic searches and one what engines? Always check your organics, even when your numbers look OK. Other metrics such as direct, or referral sources could be sending in traffic large enough to hide a downturn in site visits.
Branded vs. Non-Branded Searches: Are your site branded visits down? You might need to see if you have had a change in your offsite marketing or check your SERPs for ads trading off your brand listing. One client was losing 10% of their traffic from a site buying main keyword and branded terms, then displaying the ads for short periods of time over months. Their loss of traffic was due to AdWords, not a change in the algorithm as they had suspected.
Conversion Pages (if you have them): Have your conversions gone up or down? Did you make a change to your site or marketing plan that would account for this variation? Check your conversion metrics. This is the canary in a coal mine, if your conversions are down significantly and it isn't just because it is 4th of July, this is a red flag indicating more review needs to be done.
Tip: There is a wealth of data in your analytics that can inform everything from market strategy to how go glean 100,000+ users off the Google logo on a holiday (true story). Don't just check site visits, they can be misleading and you might be missing out on information that will keep your site away from rocky shores and steaming nicely along.
14. Google Webmaster Tools
Are you using Google Webmaster Tools? And Bing's? If you are, do you know what the data is telling you? Are you paying attention to your messages?
Webmaster tools can provide some fairly immediate and valuable information about your site including:
Messages from Google telling you why it just dropped your site down in the index.
How many pages are being indexed.
How many pages are being crawled, have ever been crawled, been dropped by you and are removed.
What queries are used to find your site.
What links are being used internally.
What links are being pointed at your site (and even if they are redirected through another site).
How Google views your site.
What changes up/down there are to your page position on average.
Tip: Webmaster Tools should be checked every day and thoroughly once a week or more. The data in here can inform marketing strategy, prevent a negative site link attack, help you control how Google crawls your site, and much more.
15. Social Media
Social media is less a direct ROI metric and more the assist to the basket. However, this doesn't make it less meaningful.
Studies show engaged customers make loyal customers and its effect on ROI is often much greater than thought. So make sure you have sat down and talked about your social media plan, how to implement it, what voice you will use and what your strategy will be.
Do you have an integrated social media plan?
Does it support your site goals?
How have you implemented social on your site?
Tip: Make sure you allow users easy methods for sharing your site content, not just follow or like you, across all social media channels. Then use this in your integrated media plan to promote all your channels throughout your marketing activities.
16. Schema.org
Are you using schema tagging? Do you know what schema tagging is?
Schema tags are tags that help the search engines pull data from your site and place it on their pages. In Google, you can see this in the "Knowledge Graph" display on the right side of the SERPs.
Tip: Schema tagging feeds a new type of search in Google's toolbox called entity search. Make sure to implement schema tagging on your site; you risk getting left behind if you don't. The site schema.org has full documentation on how to use schema tagging.
17. Backlinks
When is the last time you ran a link check profile on your site? Do you know what your percentage of good links to bad is? Do you know how negative link SEO works on a site and what to do if it happens to you?
Links are the most scrutinized part of the Google algorithm today. How you acquire them, at what speed, from where and from whom can all affect your site health and yes a competitor can attack your site with negative links.
Not keeping an eye on this part of your site is one of he fastest ways out of the engine at either the keyword, page or site level.
Tip: Many people have been writing that links are dead and just write good content to obtain links.
Links are not dead (and social is not the new link building it is the cranberry sauce to the turkey dinner, nice to have, just not the meat.)
While you should never buy links, you will be waiting years to obtain the links a site needs to position in moderately to highly competitive markets, so you will have to find some method for acquiring them for your business to have visibility in the search engines.
The key to successful link acquisition: it must look natural. If you aren't sure how this works, don't attempt at home. Hire a professional.
18. Geo-targeted Keywords
Make sure your site is optimized for the location you are targeting by placing location based keywords in your title tag, header tags(h1, h2), and throughout the content on your page.
Tip: Don’t keyword stuff your website. This will cause Google to penalize your site. Also, ensure there are no duplicate title tags or header tags.
19. Encourage your customers to leave you reviews.
At the top search results, do you think Google will show results for businesses with reviews, or show a business with no reviews at all. Obviously, Google will show businesses with reviews, particularly higher reviews, in the top search results.
There are pages that rank higher than those without reviews, but most the time, that is not the case.
Tip: you can get your site reviewed on other local directories, and eventually, you should, but to jump start things, get reviews on your Google+ Local Page.
20. Get listed in directories
There’s a few listings to be sure you’re listed in: Bing Local, Yelp, YP, DexKnows, Factual, Infogroup, and Manta just to name a few. It's important you're in these listings because when someone searches for your business to do some research, these are the pages that will pop up with your name on it. This shows that at least your a real business that took the time to get listed in various directories.
Tip: An awesome directory you can get listed in and receive a high authority link is your local chamber of commerce.
21. Make sure your NAP is consistent
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. When you list your business in business directories and on your website, it’s very important you have a consistent NAP.
If you have different information listed on the different directories, this throws around some red flags. NAP doesn’t include your website address, but make sure your website address is listed the same: http://epointdigital.com vs http://www.epointdigital.com. Pick one and stick with it.
Tip: Use the autocomplete feature in your web browser to save all the information you type in to the first directory submission so you won't have to type out everything every time. Also, have a phone ready to verify your business in some of those directories.
22. Make sure your site is mobile friendly
If you’re site is not mobile friendly, stop reading and make it mobile friendly right now.
Here are some statistics for you:
88% of consumers who search for a type of local business on a mobile device call or go to that business within 24 hours. (Google Movement Mobile Study, 2011)
Of the estimated 30 billion annual mobile searches, about 12 billion are local searches. (Search Engine Land)
48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring. (Hubspot)
You see the importance of having a mobile version, or just a responsive version, of your website, so if you are lacking in this department, let’s get that fixed.
Tip: If you use Wordpress, install WPTouch to make this process a lot easier.
23. Place your business information on every page
There’s two places you can add your business information to all the pages.
You can place it in your footer and this is common practice for many sites. This is where I put my business information (marked up with Schema of course).
You can also place it in your header, and I’ll explain why I like this a little better than the footer. Items at the top of the page are deemed more important than items at the bottom. When your business information (marked up with Schema) is at the top of the page, Google sees that information as more important.
Tip: Make sure your business listing in your footer and header match your NAP on the local directories you have submitted your websites to.
Implement Google Authorship
This doesn’t automatically make you rank higher inside the Google algorithm, but when you have your photo next to an article or your website in the search results, people are more likely to click on your website/link for the search query they entered. And that matters in the Google algorithm. Google will see your website relevant and important to that particular search query because users are clicking on your website when they are searching for [enter search query here].
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