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SEO Cheat Sheet for Devs

lizziekardon on August 19, 2019

According to Net Market Share, Google is still the search engine leader with 75% of searches made on Google.com. With that in mind, following their...
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ravavyr profile image
Ravavyr

That's a very nice list. Gotta check out some of those links. Thanks!

A few items I would like to add:

  • Every page should have a proper H1 tag
  • The H1 and the Title tag should contain the keywords the page elaborates on
  • The content should contain the longtail versions of the keywords in phrases with links to additional subcontent pages that further elaborate on the content if needed or if you have products, various links with various keywords that link to the same product across your site, increases the appearance of that product on google for the various keywords.
  • Make sure you do not have duplicate H1s and Title tags on the site [this happens a lot on dynamic sites when a dev just forgets to update a template file]
  • Make sure you have 301s for any 404s coming from google.That way google knows to index the new page if the old page is gone. Also old urls may appear on google for a while, especially if other sites still use those links so 301s can definitely save you from a dip in traffic when you push up a new version of the site where the urls change.
  • You linked to a structured data example. I'd like to add that you need to determine what type of structured data is needed for the various types of pages on your site.
  • Test performance. Your site gets penalized heavily for speed especially on mobile. developers.google.com/speed/pagesp... sucks, but it's the stick google measures with [it's also the audit tool in chrome's dev tools], so you need to try to increase that score. Additionally i use gtmetrix.com/ and webpagetest.org/ Use multiple tests because sometimes one will highlight something the others don't. This, I believe, is by far the most important metric to help your site rank after Titles and H1 tags, but I could be wrong.
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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Nice additions!!

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daedtech profile image
Erik Dietrich

Wow, this is a great resource. I've seen a lot of hosting/site migrations where the company could have benefited enormously from taking a pass through this and turning it into a todo list.

Anyway, this is kind of a long shot since you're helping with managed Wordpress, but do you happen to know if any of the Yoast alternatives/SEO plugins offer any kind of non-Wordpress way to analyze text? A lot of our authors like to compose in Markdown editors or Google docs, so they can't get readability/on-page SEO feedback until they paste the finished product into Wordpress. So if you happen to know of an SEO plugin that also has some kind of Google Docs plugin or works in a markdown editor, I'd be very interested to know.

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Thanks for your feedback! Sort of like a Grammarly for SEO? I'll look around. In the meantime maybe dig a little into these 4 and see if any of them have non-wp functionality:
pagely.com/blog/yoast-seo-alternat...

Also there's this for gdocs but I haven't used it personally, sounds like what you're looking for thought: gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/...

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daedtech profile image
Erik Dietrich

"Grammarly for SEO" is actually the perfect way to describe it, I'd say :)

Thanks for the links. Will do some research.

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Let me know if you find something good!

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fabien profile image
Thoux

Great post Lizzie.

Erik, you can use textoptimizer.com/ for analyse your content before publication. But the tool is expensive if you do not use it often (60$ / month). I use their Google Chrome extension and is perfect for me.

Regards

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

nice. looks like you can get 3 months free if you sign up for the yearly -- might be worth it if you're using it a lot.

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daedtech profile image
Erik Dietrich

(I'm not sure if I'm replying to the right message because I don't really understand the no-op "thread" link, but I'm trying to get it right...)

I signed up for a free account to check it out, thanks! I'm personally intrigued by the question keyword suggestions. I currently use ahrefs to generate those.

I think for me the snag would be that I'm not worried about optimizing my writing, but rather dozens of authors that we have writing for us. $60 per month would be no problem, but $60/month/author would start to add up in a hurry for us.

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nverinaud profile image
Nicolas Verinaud
  1. No, no and NO !

For privacy sake, do not install Google Analytics. Prefer an ethical alternative : ethical.net/resources/?resource-ca...

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nverinaud profile image
Nicolas Verinaud

Why ? Because every site using Google Analytics acts as a tracker for Google !

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emilia365 profile image
Emilia Salas

Google analyticis is still a good alternative, I don't see why look for other options if it's free after all...

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nverinaud profile image
Nicolas Verinaud

If it’s free your visitors are the product. That is why you should think about other options.

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kumarcodesai profile image
kumarcodes-ai

definitely totally agree with you on this

it's free + trusted why we will spend for a pro with marketing scheme

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Thanks for sharing -- which one on that list do you like best?

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nverinaud profile image
Nicolas Verinaud

My needs are simple : know which content is successful (page views, unique visitors) & where my visitors come from (referer).

With this context in mind, I chose Fathom.

For more complex needs, I would recommend Matomo.

It really depends on your needs though. :-)

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Nice. I'll check them out!

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thomas43222 profile image
thomas43222

Keep it concise (around 50-60 characters).
Include relevant keywords.
Ensure it accurately reflects the content.
Meta Description:

Write a compelling description (around 150-160 characters).
Include keywords naturally.
Encourage click-through SEO Audit Checklist.
URL Structure:

Use clean and descriptive URLs.
Include target keywords.
Avoid special characters and ID numbers when possible.

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dudakasrikanth profile image
Srikanth

Nice article. It is very detailed post for a small company to promote. I have a Chocolate website I will follow your instructions to improve my SEO. Request to visit my website ChocolateMantra.com

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thomas43222 profile image
thomas43222

Keep it concise (around 50-60 characters).
Include relevant keywords.
Ensure it accurately reflects the content.
Meta Description:

Write a compelling description (around 150-160 characters).
Include keywords naturally.
Encourage click-through SEO Audit Checklist.
URL Structure:

Use clean and descriptive URLs.
Include target keywords.
Avoid special characters and ID numbers when possible.

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goodidea profile image
Joseph Thomas

This is great! I have a bunch of clients and have to look this stuff up every time I dive into SEO. I'll be coming back to this post often :)

Do you have any thoughts or recommendations for websites that are "single page apps" that add their Meta info on the client-side, once the app has rendered? I know it's not "best practice" to do this, and that some crawlers won't render the app - but prerendering or server-side-rendering adds a lot of complexity.

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Mustafa Aydemir

You can monitor your SEO with Screpy. It creates tasks that you should do and motivates you. So you can increase your SEO score easily.
screpy.com

Screpy SEO

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chrisachard profile image
Chris Achard

Thanks for the list - as a dev, I often just focus on the technical bits, and forget about the stuff that actually lets people find my stuff!

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Totally -- keep this on hand, just going down the list will set you up MUCH better than not. Most are easy, quick wins.

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lampewebdev profile image
Michael "lampe" Lazarski

Great article!

I would love to see some in-depth posts and some practical examples!

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Jaime López

Amazing article!!!

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

great to hear, glad I could help!

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areahints profile image
Areahints

Wow! I didn't know how much I needed this till I read it. Thank you so much.

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Glad it's useful!

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leob profile image
leob • Edited

Superb article, great resource, this is pure gold, just what I need for my next little client project where I'll have to optimize SEO !

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Great to hear and truly glad I could help! Let me know how it works out.

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leob profile image
leob

Sure I'll let you know!

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Andrew Smith • Edited

This is the perfect resource for web developers who aren't SEO experts but need to be sure they are crossing all of the T's and dotting all of their i's for their clients.

Thanks!

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Glad I could help!

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momander profile image
Martin Omander

This one article contains more useful information than the last dozen other articles I've read on SEO. It's to the point, actionable, and avoids fluff. Thank you, @lizziekardon !

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

Thanks for saying so @momander !

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w3care profile image
W3care Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Google always remain at the top as there is No competetor in the market, and its Algorithms are also now designed and developed to follow the Artificial Intelligence.

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shandilyaajay profile image
Ajay Sharma • Edited

Cool, that's a very good list.

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alimammiya profile image
Alimam Miya

Deep Learn What is SEO?

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himanshu619619 profile image
Himanshu Thakur

Awesome article

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yilmazer profile image
Yılmaz

Woooow! Great SEO article, thank you Lizzie!

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dudakasrikanth profile image
Srikanth

Nice info for a new and small website launchers to understand the SEO.

Thank you for sharing.

Srikanth from Chocolate Mantra
ChocolateMantra.com

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indrajoko21 profile image
joko warsito

Hi @lizziekardon

If we build website based on headless wordpress, is it possible to fetch any related SEO tags (from Yoast) into header? thank you

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Adam Crockett 🌀

schema.org ?

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skyandsand profile image
Chris C

I understood some of those words ;)

Thanks Lizzie

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

ha! hope it's helpful, Chris!

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stremovsky profile image
Yuli

Hello

You have a great article here!
Can you give recommendations for my website at codeseek.com/ ?

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javatpoint profile image
JavaTpoint

Thanks for Share Best SEO Techniques 2020. Its very helpful for beginners and professionals.

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sitecentre profile image
Brodey Sheppard

Should definitely be more information on schema markup and the values it offers. However, great read, insightful and I'm sure it's helped a lot of people.

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Callum Williams

What a brilliant list! I am definitely going to be using this for an upcoming client site 👍 Thanks Lizzie!

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lizziekardon profile image
lizziekardon

You bet! Thanks for the comment and best of luck with it!