Your 2022 SEO Checklist

New websites pop-up every day, and updates are always being rolled out to improve user experience. It’s important to recognize that search engines aim to create the best user experience, so if your site does not fit their criteria, it’ll be less likely to show up during a search. 

Search engines use crawlers to detect viable web pages. They pick up on trending searches and use keywords to find websites to comb through. If the algorithm finds a worthy page, it will be indexed, but that’s only the first part of the process. Other criteria will need to be met to rank where your page will show up during searches. 

There are many ways to enhance your URL, and the following checklist will help you to renew your website for search engine optimization (SEO).

Content

Google uses expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT) to rank web pages, so regardless of the type of content you produce, you want it to be high quality and consistent. Titles should grab audience attention while the content supports and retains their interest while providing adequate and reliable information. 

There are a number of aspects that impact how your content will get you ranked, including length, topic, media type, and more. As you are auditing your content, consider hiring a freelance writer or editor who has a background in SEO. You can expect to pay $25 an hour for a quality freelance writer.

As you develop content, there are a few particulars to keep in mind:

Keywords 

Search engines look for trending topics and pick up on specific words that relate to said topic. Those words are used as keywords in searches. It may be tempting to put in as many keywords as possible, but too many terms will dilute your content and make it less relevant to the search engine. You want words that hone to your niche without being too specific.

Video

Video content has become extremely popular, so you should consider adding it into your content planning. Photo and text-based materials will still have their place, but videos will help you to stay relevant to improve your ranking. 

Linking

Linking within your web pages is vital, so be sure to provide appropriate links that warrant clicks. Choosing to link to an untrustworthy site will tank your credibility and lower your ranking. In addition, you want your page to be linked from other sites, and providing quality information will make your web pages more appealing to link to.

Tidy your website

Fix broken links, renew outdated/low-quality information, increase load speed, and develop mobile compatibility to boost the credibility and usability of your website. Crawlers also pick up on the readability of your pages, so be sure to write and organize pages in a way that is easy to understand.

If your site has enough problems, it may fail to index or be removed from a search engine’s index. Routinely go through your website to keep your site running optimally and consider web optimization tools that will aid you in flagging mistakes. 

Analytics

Use analytics to your advantage. They can help you determine who your audience is and what type of content they will engage with. You can use this information to develop appealing content that will drive users to your site. If your pages become linked, it can help your ranking by increasing your authoritativeness.

Security

If you want a credible and trustworthy website, you need to have robust cybersecurity. A combination of security defenses is the best strategy for cyber protection. Firewalls, VPNs, and proper web browsing habits are just a few of the many ways to protect you and your client’s data. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, a search engine must decide if your URL is worth sharing. Does your website meet the following criteria of quality, reliability, credibility, and relevance? If not, it is time to renovate to guarantee you’ll be able to compete with other sites.

HOW VIV PRIORITIZES SEO

If you are in the market for a website builder, it is vital to choose one that prioritizes SEO so that you can pull traffic to your site. SEO may feel like another thing to add to your plate to worry about, but you will gain numerous benefits like credibility, authentic traffic, assistance in better content creation, and more. VIV’s website builder has many strategies for SEO to help you on your way. 

Get indexed

Trends are a great wave to ride to gain user traffic, but you must be discoverable for that to happen. Search engines can be flooded with content to crawl through, which means your page may be overlooked. VIV supports IndexNow which will ping a search engine that your site has been changed, and the search engine will know to crawl your site and update its index.

Rendering plays another role in indexing speed. The longer it takes your site to render, the longer it will take a crawler to sort through that information. DIYers beware - it may be difficult to sort through code to figure out what is causing the delay in rendering. To avoid this, VIV has optimization built into their program, so you can focus more on your business rather than sorting through long lines of code.

Analytics

VIV allows you to explore a variety of analytics to help you navigate how and what your audience is drawn to. Also, VIV allows for Google Analytics to be integrated into your site, so you can understand how your site is performing. This will help you create content that fits your niche, thus driving traffic to your site. 

Content

Take control over your content. Your site should be as vibrant as you are, and images and videos will help you show that vibrancy. Poor image and video hosting can tank your SEO because they can fumble mobile compatibility and increase loading times. 

Brush up on your image formatting skills to improve load speed and compatibility. VIV also provides resources for media materials, so you can create original, stimulating, and high-ranking content without having to worry whether your photos and videos will decrease your rank. 

Security

The last thing you want to worry about is a data breach and its consequences. Be cautious, because SEO is also vulnerable to cyber threats. Some crawling bots can be malicious and will crawl your URL to replicate it and gain user traffic you would otherwise have. VIV uses enterprise-level security and cloud hosting for protection and to decrease downtime. They use a transparency model where you can check on system operation status to stay informed so you are able to take action if necessary.

Conclusion



A site revision will help your site become more competitive in a saturated online market. VIV provides a multitude of resources to get your URL indexed and ranked higher for SEO. Use these resources to your advantage, generate compelling content, and be on the lookout for suspicious cyber threats.