The Buzzquake SEO checklist for WordPress websites

We thought it might be helpful if we shared a list of things we do to improve our customers’ organic search rankings.

The Buzzquake SEO Checklist

Create a Google Analytics account (if you don’t already have one)
Create a Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster) account and link it to your Google Analytics account
Create a Bing Webmaster account
Once your website is complete, submit a sitemap to Bing and Google
Make sure your robots.txt file is crawlable
Create a Google Business Profile account
Create an account with the name of your business on all relevant major platforms (e.g., social media, news outlets, information sharing, forums, etc.) When you comment using your business username, comments should be business-related and ideally should demonstrate your understanding and expertise on industry-related subject matter.

Install Google Analytics tracking code via your theme or a plugin
Generate sitemaps for search engines using a new or already installed plugin
Install WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast
Install a plugin that recommends related posts (some of these plugins can adversely affect your site performance so be sure to do your research)
Create 301 redirects to redirect any URLs that have changed to the appropriate new URL, thus eliminating 404 errors.
Purchase and install an SSL certificate

Create well-written, original content
Avoid plagiarizing
Do keyword research for your topic and industry
Avoid overuse of your keyword.
Use natural language (synonyms) influenced by your keyword research
Include original images or those you have a license to use
Provide an appropriate number of internal links to related content on your website, and external links to popular, reputable content on other sites.
Include headings and subheadings while being sure to use (H tags) correctly

Consider migrating to a web hosting company with servers optimized for WordPress
Check your site’s speed and improve load times.
Install a plugin to
- compress images so they will load faster
- load images only when needed
- compress code (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
- implement caching