SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization. Today most businesses with websites understand that search engines, like Google, are key to reaching customers. In this series, we’re going to start at the beginning and help you solve the mystery of SEO.

In Part II of this series, we dug into Keywords and where to put them on your website. Today we’re going to go through an SEO housekeeping checklist for your company website.

Check your keywords

Keyword research is fun and will help you learn a lot about your industry and the competition out there. We use ubersuggest to explore this fascinating world. And now that you have a good list of your company’s keywords and phrases, you can see how they stack up against your competitors. In Keywords and Keyword Phrases, we gave some basic tips to help you get that list started.

Check your broken links

Broken links can hurt your search engine rankings and your site’s user experience, and possibly you’ll miss a possible sale or contact because the user leaves in a huff. It’s good advice to keep an eye on broken links. There are a few places online where you can type in your domain name and it will show you any broken links on your site. Deadlinkchecker is one of them.

If you maintain your own site, check each link and correct it. Or, you can set up ‘URL Redirects.’ If you belong to the Goodwin Creative Maintenance Club, or have someone else doing your website maintenance, you can send the list to them.

Check your Google Business Page

Every business must have a Google Business Page - even if you don’t have a website! They used to be known as Google Business Pages, then they became Google My Business, and now they are called Google Business Profile. The many changes Google makes to this offering can be frustrating and defeating. However, it’s important to have your business listed on their google maps and profile features.

Check your Manual Internal Links

Make sure you have links on your pages that open up other pages on your website. This creates a web of access for not only the Google bots but for your visitors as well. This works really well in a blog where you can put links in the content to other pages in your site, or other blog posts, or even your FAQ page (you have one now, right?).

Check those spammy backlinks

Backlinks are links from your website to another website. It’s recommended that you put links to authority websites in your blog posts. Authority sites are content-driven websites that are respected and trusted. Such as Canada.ca or CBC.ca. Google gives websites an authority rating and there are ways to check a website’s authority rating. I just linked that to Moz, one of the world’s highest authority websites when it comes to SEO.

But you can also use common sense. Don’t link to any spammy or questionable sites. Even if you publish client articles, give all links a visit and if you’re not sure, check their authority rating.