The Ultimate Website Checklist: What Every Website Needs

Have you ever wondered how other people have successful websites? What do they do that makes their website different from everyone else? Well, we’ve spent a lot of time researching how people build successful websites in various niches and what features are most important for any successful website. We’ve found the essential factors and created the ultimate website checklist for any website.

There’s a lot to think about when designing a new website. Not only do you have to ensure it’s beautiful, but you also need to make sure that it works as expected and can scale up to handle the traffic you plan to bring. It’s a list of everything that you need to think about when launching a new website. This checklist aims to help you determine what your website needs to be successful.

These strategies can be applied to any website, which is listed below:

Make a great first impression

Flawless user experience

A flawless user experience is a must to succeed in any business website. You must keep in mind the following requirements when running a website and want to enrich with customers.

Fast load speed

Customers always want the first loading speed on any website. Statistics say that 47% of customers expect websites to load in 2 seconds, and 40% abandon a page that takes three or more seconds. You can follow these strategies to have a first-load speed on your website.

Use a good website host

A good website host is the backbone of any web presence. If you want to see your website live and available online, you should choose a reliable web hosting service that will provide you with all the support and tools you need to create, manage and maintain your site.

Reduce server response time

It’s vital to reduce server response time to develop a good website. One of the fastest ways to boost a website is to reduce the time it takes for a DNS lookup. If your DNS lookup takes too long, it can slow down the loading of the rest of your page.

Optimise images

Image can play a vital role in your website speed. The optimising image could have a significant impact on how long a webpage takes to load. To optimise images, you can crop images to the correct size or compress those using different tools.

Reduce the number of plugins & scripts

You can reduce the number of plugins & scripts running on your website by simply configuring them properly. When you have too many plugins & scripts running, you can slow down your site. It is advisable to keep your plugins & scripts to a minimum. There’s no point in using them if they won’t help you to perform tasks more efficiently.

Enable browser caching

To ensure that your web pages load fast for visitors, you can enable browser caching on your website. Caching involves storing information about a page on the computer’s hard drive rather than downloading it every time a visitor accesses your page. It speeds up the process by keeping it so that the next time the same page is requested, the web server already has the information saved from the previous visit and sends it back to the visitor instantly.

Enable compression (Gzip)

Compressing files is one of the best ways to make a website load faster. By compressing the files, you can reduce the amount of data that must be downloaded and sent over the Internet to your visitors.

Minify resources

Minify resources mean combining your files into one. You should incorporate your JavaScript and CSS files, for example. The best way to reduce the size of your files is to minimise them.

Use CSS instead of images where possible

CSS is an excellent way to code web pages. It is more flexible than using images and allows you to change the style of any element on the page. It also reduces the number of requests to the server.

Combine multiple style sheets in one

You can combine multiple style sheets in one by creating a single stylesheet and then adding individual style sheets to it.

Monitor your speed over time

Monitoring your site speed can help you to achieve your goals. Once you know your page load times, you can set new goals to keep improving your site’s speed. It is one of the best ideas to hold an eye on your load times. Monitoring speed will help you to catch any issues early on.

Design

Web design best practices ensure that your audience perceives your brand in a positive light. Designing a website that is easy to navigate, clean, and visually appealing is essential.

Visually appealing

Visualisation is a core thing for website designing. Visually appealing design can connect with the audience within moments and helps express your thoughts as you want to show them.

Responsive design

Your web design should be as responsive as one can connect to the website from any devices. A responsive design helps to attract the targeted audience and get more traffic to a website.

Add a favicon

A favicon is the identity of your website. It helps brand a website, and people can easily find a website among the numerous sites with the help of the favicon. So what you can do is add a well-designed favicon to your website and make it more appealing to your visitors.

Stick to a colour palette

Color combination should be the primary concern when you are thinking of designing the best-fitted website.

Leave plenty of white space between elements

White space is the space around an element. It is essential to leave white space around parts so they don’t run into each other. If you don’t leave enough space, the page will be too crowded, and the user will have difficulty reading.

Incorporate human faces

Designing a website with human faces is an excellent idea to connect people with the site, and it also can quickly grab visitors’ attention to the website.

Other

• Remove sliders and carousels.
• Avoid an overloaded menu.
• A user with this email address is found.
• A user with this email address is not found. An invitation will be sent to this email.

Tip
User experience is an implicit ranking factor only on mobile devices, but it plays a major role in the natural shares and distribution (think backlinks!) of your content will get.

Content presentation

Easy to read

To build up a successful website, you also need to focus on the presentation of its content. Always try to keep the content accessible so thus general people can understand what you want to tell them through the content. Meet all these criteria, and your content will automatically be an easy-to-read version.

Unobtrusive background

The website content should have a background that does not distract the reader’s attention.

Appropriate font types and sizes

Fonts play an essential role in the presentation of text. Text is not only used to convey information but can also serve as a means of communication between people. A good font can be easily read by people of all ages and all cultures. There is no standard font that fits everyone.

High contrast between the front and background

High contrast between font and background should be maintained. It helps to clear the concept through the content quickly.

Links visually stand out

Links are usually easy to follow. You can link your content words with related information. Thus people can acquire the proper knowledge according.

Embrace the line break

Many websites are cluttered and difficult to read. If your content is easy to read, you can make it so by using white space. You can easily add white space in most programs by hitting Enter. This inserts a new line. In addition to white space, you should ensure that you don’t use too many lines.

Add relevant and helpful links

Adding valuable links to your content can increase traffic and improve your search engine optimization. Internal links make it easier for visitors to navigate from one page to another. This will help them to read your content more efficiently.

Get straight to the point

Your readers are lazy, or at least 75% are, and they don’t care too much for pictorial language. So it will be a good decision to get straight to the point.

Post text is well-formatted & scannable

Place your text in content well formatted and scannable thus; the reader can get your thought at one glance. You can make your content well-formatted following these strategies.

Use strong headlines

A headline is a small window that describes your thoughts using some leading word. If you can make headlines stronger, you’ve already improved the chance of people reading your content. Strong headlines tell readers more than just why they can read from content.

Break up your content with compelling subheads

Subheads are the perfect way to divide your content into logical sections. Use subheads to summarize important information and highlight key points. These headings will help your reader to scan your article so that they can get the key attributes. You can use subheads to show the structure and emphasize essential elements in your text.

Use bullets and numbered lists

Adding bullet points and numbered lists is the best way to make your content more engaging.

• They are a visual break that attracts your reader’s attention.
• The best thing about using bullet points and numbered lists is that they make your content easier to read and scan.
• Bullet points and numbered lists are not only easy to understand, but they are also visually appealing.

Keep sentences & paragraphs short

Short paragraphs and sentences are easy to read. It also helps hold the reader’s attention toward any content.

Keep line width short, too

If the line wide remains too long, it will take time to read. A good rule of thumb is 40 to 50 characters per line.

Use charts and tables

Charts and tables are one of the best ways to convey lots of information in a short space. They also help break up blocks of text in the content.

Use visuals

Images

To be able to attract more visitor to your website, it is essential to make sure that your website has some visual elements. These images should be high-quality ones.

Videos

Videos have become an essential part of modern strategies. To have a great website, you must ensure you use suitable videos. Videos can provide you with great ideas for your website.

Slide share, etc.

Slide sharing can make your website presentation realistic and easy to understand for visitors.

Infographics

Infographics are excellent for drawing upon complex data and statistics and collating them into a compelling, easily intelligible visual display.

Screenshots

Make sure that you have a high-resolution screenshot ready to go. If your website design does not allow for large screenshots, you need to ensure that your content is small enough to fit into the plan.

Tip
Don’t overdo it. Too many images, paragraphs of highlighted text or endless bullet point lists achieve the opposite and make your visitors leave.

Content quality

Relevant & Engaging

To hold up your content quality, you must provide relevant and engaging information for the audience. You can do so using the following steps.

Grab attention from the start

The start of your content should be a knockout; thus reader says wow and gets excited to keep reading your content.

Deliver what you promised in your title

Stay on topic and focus on your title. Deliver relevant descriptions according to a title to hold up content quality.

Solve problems of your target audience

Develop your content focused on the target audience and keep solving their problems with current information from reliable resources.

Avoid jargon

Jargon can create confusion. So try to avoid it and write your content in plain language to make your content easy to understand by a general audience.

Show your personality

Words represent one’s personality. Choose your words according to the website that you want to convey.

Use correct grammar & spelling

Using correct grammar and spelling in content creation is a must. You can use available tools to ensure your content is in the right form of grammar and there is no spelling mistake.

Use precise and powerful language

You must use precise language and powerful words to keep your content short and relevant.

Include thought-provoking questions and quotes

Quotes are a great first sentence or subheading to connect with readers. You can also ask questions to involve your audience.

Support claims with evidence

When you claim something in your content, make sure you have the evidence to support the claim. You can take help with these three concepts.

Research

Never publish content without doing complete research on it. You can claim with evidence with a good source of related content.

Examples

Examples are the best part of the content that helps you to describe your thoughts in words.

Expert quotes

You can add quotes from famous authors, humanitarians and celebrities relevant to your content.

Tip
Supporting claims with evidence will make you sound authoritative, even if no one knows you (yet).

Get people to know, like and trust you

Reinforce great first impression

Homepage

The homepage of your website needs to introduce in such a manner that it takes only a couple of seconds to catch a good impression from visitors.

Should answer the following questions:

Who are you?

The first question that comes to the audience’s mind after visiting a website is what this is. They want to understand the website clearly at first from the home page.

What do you do?

The home page should also answer about their band information and offers.

For whom?

People also want to know from the website home page whether the product or service is truly for them or not.

How does it work?

After having these answers, people want to know how the website works for the customer.

How much does it cost?

If you can keep your visitors attention this far, the next thing they will want to know is the cost of your service.

Why should I trust this? Why is this credible?

We are always more comfortable and reassured with a particular website when we see proof that other people have found it helpful. So homepage should reassure visitors that the company knows what it is doing and can trust the website.

How are you better than your competitor?

The customer always wants to pick the best service so that they will compare your website with other competitors. Your website should be expressive with reviews and describable how you are better than your competitor.

Should include the following elements

A website needs to include these elements to give fulfilment it.

Logo

The first thing visitor should see on your website is the logo. Please put it on the top left of your website.

Headline

A website needs to tell the visitor which service or product they offer with the headline. It should be clear and in simple words, and it should clear the concept of the website within 3 seconds.

Call to action

The main goal of a website homepage is to help visitors to dig deeper into your website, and including a call to action can make your task easy.

Photo of you/your team

Include a photo of you and your team on your home page; thus, your website seems more trustable to the visitors.

Navigation

Make the navigation manure visible at the top of the homepage and organise the links in a hierarchical structure.

Supporting image

Most people like visuals. Make sure to use an image or short video indicating your website’s offers. In terms of dropshipping ecommerce websites without displaying great supporting images, you even can’t think of a single customer.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a necessary form of social proof that helps to increase conversion rates. To build a compelling website, start with testimonials.

Client logos

Client logos should be shown on the website homepage to help seek the actual user’s attention to your company.

Certifications

Certifications are proven on any website. Showing certificates on your website homepage is a must to give clear information to visitors.

Awards

You can present the company’s awards on the home page. Your visitors will find it valuable, and they will trust you.

Portfolio

If your website is for delivering products or services that can be showcased via images, descriptions and case studies, then your portfolio might be the things visitors want to see.

Blog

Blogs are the best part of a website. Visitors can be attracted to your website when they find useful blogs at your website related to their needs.

Search function

It’s wise to offer a search function on your homepage. Thus, your visitor can quickly discover anything they need.

Footer

The website footer describes choosing what to add to meet goals and help visitors. Things that should include in the footer are:

Copyright

If your website footer has only one element, it should be the copyright symbol, which is easy protection against website plagiarism.

Navigation to the main pages

This can be the second most common element in the footer. Here is where your webpage can rescue falling visitors through the footer.

Privacy policy

The privacy policy in the footer typically links to a page describing the information the website collects.

Terms of use

Terms of use are a little bit different from the privacy policy. They mainly explain what the visitors agree to by visiting the website.

Contact

Visitors mainly expect to find the contact in the bottom right or centre of the footer.

Postal address

A postal address is something visitors expect to find in the footer, and it is also a way to tell Google about your location.

Link to map

Linking to a map in the footer is a fruitful way to help visitors find you and to grab local customers.

Phone and fax numbers

Like address, phone, and fax number with local area code added in the footer is evidence to Google that you are an authentic local business.

Social icons

The footer is the place to add social icons and scoop visitors over social networks. Statistics show that 72% of websites have social media icons in the footer.

About Page

The about page section of your website should include the website’s mission, purpose and who’s on the team. There are some guidelines to help you build a perfect one.

Quick intro

It would be best if you gave a quick intro on the about page of the website using simple words that introduce you to your visitors in a clear concept.

Show your personality

The about page is about showing and representing your personality to the visitor of your website. Tell them who you are as a person or as a team.

Establish a mission statement

Your about page can be more comprehensive with a single mission statement.

Outline your company story

Every company has its own story to tell. You need to outline your company’s origin. Talk about how you started and where you are today.

Describe your values

Describing personal values on the about page is a good idea. Because customers need to be treated like human beings, they can attach themselves to simile value.

Team member profiles

Team members’ profile helps show the visitors your ability to execute teamwork and remember that your future employee is also the secondary audience of your about page. It will encourage them.

Credibility enhancers

Awards

Sharing information about awards can help you to enhance your website’s credibility.

Testimonials

Testimonials are practical certificates you can get from customers who actually benefit from your service or product.

Work samples

Work samples are the game changer that works unbelievably to enhance credibility.

Tip
Don’t make a separate Testimonials page but use testimonials in context on other pages.

Encourage to discover more content

Blog

A blog is a staple for driving new users to your website who seek answers and related knowledge to their questions. The following insights will to discover content enriched with knowledge.

Link in the navigation menu

Link blog in the navigation menu is a possible way to make your visitor find and digest your content.

“Related posts” section

The related post section is the most effective section of the blog, where readers can find their needed posts related to their field of interest and go deeper into the website.

Internal links to other posts/pages

Internal links in your blogs to other related posts and pages can enrich your blog with the more required information.

Keeping your blog’s grid small

You can keep your blog’s grid small as it helps improve reading and content absorption.

Large, beautiful featured images

You can use large, beautiful, featured images to make your blog’s most effective.

Put your best content forward

Show visitors your best content on top of the blog list. You can do so by putting your best content forward.

Make social sharing accessible on all devices

Social sharing links are the easiest way to encourage people to distribute your content for your website.

Strategically placed lead magnets

A lead magnet resonates with the target audience and attracts qualified leads to your website.

Add a short author bio

Adding a teeny tiny paragraph about the Author’s bio at the end of the article helps to make the blog post more engaging on the website.

Links to author’s social profiles

Linking the social profiles to the Author’s bio makes the article more trustable to the readers.

Write in the third person

The general practice for writing an author’s bio is to write in the third person. Try to replace the pronoun of the bio with the Author’s name to improve the flow.

Add a CTA

The CTA or call to action is a powerful force in Author’s bio in this marketing world.

Navigation

Navigation can make or break one website’s overall performance. Robust site navigation makes it easy for visitors to find the information that is effective for them.

Descriptive

Your navigation should be descriptive; thus, visitors can easily assume the insights of the navigation where they want to click.

Intuitive

Intuitive navigation helps to design your website so that visitors get to know where to find the information they are looking for.

Courser changes on clickable links

Courser changes on clickable links help traffic identify and build up links about your website.

Make the most valuable links visible

Most valuable links in your navigation should be visually defined, even in subcategories.

Make all navigation elements clickable links

All heading elements should be clickable links when using multiple categorical divisions in navigation.

Use accurate navigation titles

Use accurate text to the navigation title of the page so visitors can know what they will get into it.

Clear

Your website should clearly clear its content and navigation title and focus on connecting directly with visitors.

About

About navigation, it works like your name and address. So clearly mention navigation on your webpage; thus, no one needs to spend more than a second to find out the about section.

Services

After knowing your intro, the visitor will find the section of service details navigation on the home page.

Pricing

When customers want to take services from you, they will definitely search your pricing section. It’s important to clear your exchange price of service on the website.

Blog

Navigation of the blog should be mentioned after pricing, where visitors can learn about the realities of articles they need to know.

Books/Courses

If your webpage is related to an institution of your company that is about to sell courses, then a section for courses or book details is a must in the navigation.

Contact

After knowing all the details, your visitor will find the contact info, and there is no chance of making mistakes in this navigation. Make it bold in different from other navigation to catch the eye.

Email Subscription

Set up an email sequence

Setting up an email sequence is one of the important options to focus on as it helps increase website traffic.

Opt-in form

The success of the website email opt-in form is directly connected to list building strategy. You need to follow these key facts to improve your strategy:

On every page

Maintain email sequence with an opt-in form on every page of the website.

Set expectations

The best practice for maintaining an opt-in form is setting expectations first.

Highlight benefits

Highlighting benefits can engage more subscribers to opt-in forms.

Minimize the number of fields

Avoid using more than three opt-in forms.

Avoid too many fields on your opt-in form

Research shows that the less space used in an opt-in form field, the more subscribers.

Provide an offer

You can offer intensive to grow your list quickly.

Say something more enticing than “newsletter”

Don’t bring boring “newsletter” tags to your website email marketing. Do it so that your readers are eager to open your newsletters.

Email newsletter

People delete most mailouts instantly. Here is how to design an email newsletter people want to read:

Regular

Keep maintaining the regularity of your newsletter, and people will start to expect and look forward to it at certain times.

Relevant

Always remain relevant stuff to include in the newsletter.

Proper “form” name

The most important thing you have to maintain is the proper form of name to get attention with the newsletter.

Proper “reply to” address

Where communication is the main purpose, proper reply-to-address is a must.

Enticing subject line

Avoid bringing boring newsletters. Add something enticing to the subject line.

Focus on helping, not selling

Keep your focus tight on your goal. A newsletter is mainly for helping your customer, not selling your product or service.

Looks good on mobile

As mobile is handy and most people use mobile to see newsletters, it should be designed with a vision to make it look good on mobile.

Add social links

Add social links to the newsletter; thus, people can also find your website on social media.

Include a footer

Footer in the newsletter is as important as on a website. It’s where the reader expects to find the contact details, share option, and unsubscribe link.

Give your email some personality

Keep your newsletter simple and make a design of your newsletter that reflects your thoughts and the company’s message.

Encourage feedback

Digital newsletters are a great way to get people involved with their feedback.

Tip
Before sending your newsletter, check your spam score on mail-tester.com.

Make a sale

Service/Product Page

Service or product should be the main focus of any website. Considering the following suggestion you can achieve an engaging service or product page.

Text

The text of the service and product page should consider the following tips:

Grab the reader’s attention

The text should be synchronised to grab the reader’s attention as a first impression.

Get to the point quickly

Outlining the product page based on the main focus can help the readers get to the point quickly.

Answer frequently asked questions

Answering frequently asked questions with text can help to build communications with customers.

Address & eliminate possible objections

When running a website, it’s normal to make mistakes, but address and eliminate objections as soon as possible.

Use short sentences whenever possible

Short sentences are easy to read and more effective in connecting with a targeted audience.

Avoid jargon

Avoiding jargon in the text means keeping the language as simple as possible.

Seduce with sensory words

Learn about and use sensory words related to your website to help seduce your targeted audience.

Tempt with social proof

Social proof is a great tool that can tempt potential customers.

Make your description scannable

Scannable descriptions help customers to get your point of view within moments.

Unique value proposition

A unique value proposition is a visual tool where customers get to know your objective as an organisation and your mission statement details.

Expose reader’s need

Value proposition canvas should be designed in such a way that can conduct expose of reader’s need.

Demonstrate importance

Demonstrating the importance of your website on value proposition can attract the target audience and also helps to make your work trustable.

Tell what’s in for them

Tell your customer through a value proposition canvas about what is on the website for them.

Focus on benefits, not features

When working on the value proposition, you should remember that it should focus on benefits, not features.

Justify conversion

Always try to justify your conversion. It’s one of the best ways to build a unique value proposition for your website.

Differentiate yourself as the preferred provider of this value

If you can differentiate yourself as the preferred provider of this value in customers’ eyes, you can easily make them trust your service.

Testimonials

A testimonial is an honest endorsement of a product or service usually from the benefited customer. It comes in different formats, but a testimonial should hold a few distinct qualities like as follows:

Believable

An authentic testimonial helps to increase potential customers.

Using full names and images

Using full names and images in testimonial help a website reaches more customers’ eyes.

Reinforcing unique value proposition

Reinforcing unique value proposition in testimonials help them be more specific than ambiguous.

Using data behind the value service/product delivers

If data behind the value service are used in testimonials, people can understand your struggle to give the best service.

Addresses fears & explains how they were eliminated

Explaining the journey of addressing fear and eliminating them in the testimonial can give it a good quality.

Visual presentation

Visual presentation is one of the essential parts of a service or product page. People want to see what they are offered. Specially online ecommerce stote are much more concerned about it. When visually presenting the product or service page, you should keep in mind:

What’s important is prominent

Try to give importance to visualising prominent sights of your products or services through your page.

Logically related elements and also visually related

Think logically and use visually related elements to show the world about your product.

Clearly defined page areas

No one has much time to spend on any task. Everyone is in a hurry. So clearly define your product or service page area thus people can find it easily.

Clickable elements are obvious

Try to set up clickable elements in visual presentation; thus, you can have the idea easily about engaging people.

Minimise distractions

Make sure that there is no distraction on your product or service page. You can lose a prominent customer for this.

Call to action

What will be your page call to action? It depends on the target of the page. When you are thinking of designing your call to action, you should think about the following:

One per page

Avoid using more than one CTA per page. It’s a standard number for any design.

Clear

CTA should be designed thus people can easily understand.

Visually prominent

Visually prominent calls to action always increase the engagement of customers.

Compelling

A call to action or CTA must be compelling to improve audience engagement with the website.

Easy to find

Make sure that call to action on your page is easy to find; otherwise, it won’t stand out from other links.

Above the fold

Try to fit the call to action above the fold; thus, people can find the button at first glance without scrolling down.

Use brief, action-oriented words

Always remember that less is more. Try to keep the call to action within five words.

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency will help you to trigger people to act now. It can be a sale or off for a short time.

Use button copy for value proposition

A specific word like ‘free’ in the button copy enhances your offer’s value proposition. Consider this when working on the call to action button.

Conversion process

Easy to buy

To increase conversion and sales, it is essential to ensure an easy buying process for customers. You can follow these tips to make sure an easy purchasing process:

Minimize the number of steps to reach the goal

Minimize the number of steps as much as possible to reach the goal. Otherwise, you have a chance to lose customers.

Prominent link to contact/Services Page

Share prominent links to the contact or services page. It helps to make the buying process easy for the customer.

Secure your site with HTTPS

Whenever a customer’s personal information is involved, try to secure your site with HTTPS.

Provide several payment methods

Provide several payment methods to customers; thus, they can choose according to their advantages.

Allow payments without requiring an account

Allow payment without requiring an account to make potential customer life more manageable.

Make errors easy to fix

Please point out the error and fix it within moments. You can have a save option for the customer information to make payment handier to them.

Ask for essential information only

Filling out a form with a bunch of information has a chance to kill conversion. Make sure you are asking only for essential information.

Provide reassurances on security and privacy

You need to reassure and give focus to secure their data from any hacker. Make sure your security credential badges are displayed.

Keep distractions to a minimum

Avoid putting advertisements when the customer is on the way to completing the buying process with checkout.

Form

When considering serving your customer an easy buying process, you must take the form format on your account. You can follow these tips to help with an enriched and complete form for your prominent buyers:

Easy to use

The form should be designed and developed in such a way that customers can use it easily without any hassle.

Ask only for relevant information

Enrich your form with relevant information; thus, customers can fill it out without losing patience and don’t have to spend more time filling it out.

Easy to contact you

Help your customer to reach you easily without any hesitation or hassle.

Use the contact form instead of an email address

You can use the contact form instead of an email address to ensure easy contact for your targeted audience.

Link to contact Page in the navigation

Sometimes customer gets difficulties finding the contact page. You can avoid this problem by linking the contact page in the navigation.

Link to contact Page from the footer

Linking the contact page from the footer is another best way to share your contact info with customers.

Phone number

Always give a phone number that is always reachable, and you can make sure to respond without any delay with customers.

Tip
According to research, over 80% of users would abandon a purchase if a site isn’t using HTTPS. Plus, sites with HTTPS are given preference in search rankings.

Get visitors to your website

Organic search

Keyword optimisation

Achieving SEO success on a website has no rule of thumb, but you can do one thing optimisation with keywords.

• Target only one keyword per page.
• Use words that are semantically related to the main keyword.

Use the keyword in

URL, Subheadings, Title tags, Image file names, Meta description, Image titles, Beginning of the post, ALT tags of images, Naturally within the text

Local SEO

Local SEO is the process of increasing search engine visibility for a local website. It can advance organic search from searches performed by nearby customers. You can take help from the following strategies:

Create/Claim your Google My Business listing

Creating and claiming a Google My Business page for your website can be the fast and foremost way to local SEO.

Have consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone Consistency) details

You have to set your website NAP to make it easy for local people to find you.

Check listings on all major directories

Check listings on all major directories thus can determine that information about your website is correct and can show it in the search result.

Create and optimise {keyword} + {city} pages

Create and optimise keywords for SEO related to your business and locality.

Use structured data markup

Structured data markup always works convincingly for local SEO.

Backlinks

Building backlinks is one of the most popular and effective ways to improve SEO ranking and traffic. There are some easy and innovative ways that you can follow to build backlinks:

Guest posts

Guest posting refers to the practice of posting free content to a website and adding a link back to your site.

Outreach

Try to reach all of the targeted population who can use and extend your website.

Contact journalists and influential bloggers

Journalists and bloggers who are already skilled in this field can help you with your website so that you can contact them.

Link building with social sharing sites

Social sharing sites are top-rated for link building to improve local SEO.

Link building with question-based sites

Link building with question-based sites increases prominent viewers to a targeted website and search for the answer.

Public relations

Public relation also refers to backlink your website to an article in some prominent publications.

Compile a resource

You can search for ways to compile relevant resources and other information user-friendly.

Find competitors’ backlinks and “steal” them

You can find related backlinks and use them for your link-building.

Use infographics

Infographics can engage a broader audience with their visual story.

URL

URL is the essential and most crucial part of a website that can be used in various ways to improve your local SEO:

Use keyword in URL

It’s the best idea to include keywords in your URL. It gives a huge opportunity to optimise the URL in every post you publish.

Easy to read

Make sure to build in easy to read and user-friendly URL.

Use lowercase letters

When working on a URL, remember that you need to use lowercase letters only.

Use a max two folders per URL

Try to keep the URL short. Don’t use more than two folders per URL.

Avoid keyword repetition

Keep in mind avoiding keyword repetition in mind when you are working on your website URL.

Use “-” not “”

It would be best if you used “-“instead of “” in the page part of the URL.

Headline

A compelling headline can convince the audience to read the content. Some tips can help you to make so:

Keep it short, simple, and to the point

Always keep words short, simple and to the point in the headline to get in good focus.

Use specific numbers & data in your headline

The headline’s use of specific numbers and data has proven clickbait or linkbait for many years.

Include your main keyword

The main keyword included in the headline is a traditional way to make it compelling.

Add title modifiers

Adding title modifiers in the heading can make readers curious about your content.

Create a sense of urgency

Creating a sense of urgency using sensational words like “offer” or “free” can be an excellent trick for headlines.

Leave an air of mystery

Use related keywords but never reveal your primary content information in the headline.

Use call-to-action words

When writing a headline, keep in mind that Call-to-action words like ‘free download’ or ‘pdf download’ always work to attract viewers’ eyes to the site.

SEO Don’ts

There is some common SEO mistake you need to avoid:

Choosing keywords without research

Research is the first requirement for SEO. You can’t choose a keyword without researching your topic.

Stuffing your website with keyword

One of the biggest mistakes you must avoid is stuffing your website with keywords.

Ignore user experience

Some factors can affect your website if you ignore user experience. They are- speed, mobile support, safety, flash etc.

Using an automated link-building system

It would be best to build links manually instead of using an automated link-building system.

Anchor text over-optimisation

If your website content becomes over-optimised with the anchor test, you might be in danger of receiving a google penalty.

PBN & link networks

Privet Blog Networks (PBN) refers to a network of websites with many links to another website.

Duplicate content

Be sure the content you upload to your website is original and unique.

Tip
You have a chance to rank on page #1 if your domain authority is between the highest & the lowest page authority of pages that are already ranking for that keyword.

Social

Social media profiles

A complete social media profile of your website can enable visitors to interact with your website, and it also can be a communication tool.

Fill in every field of your bio (with engaging copy)

The social media profile of any website should be filled with every filled of its bio. Thus, people can have an overall idea of the profile about the website’s goals and doings.

Link to your other social media profiles

One social media profile linking with others helps build a communication net for the visitors.

Showcase your best content with pinned posts

Pinned post option is the best part of your social media profile which can help you showcase your best content to visitors.

Specify your location and hours

Specifying your service location and hours in social media profile is a great way to tell your customer about your business website details.

Visually consistent across all social networks

Maintaining visual consistency over social networks can assure you of the best presentation of your website through social media.

Listen to your Audience

Your priority in your website social profile should be to listen to your audience to whom you want to give your service.

Participate and collaborate

Try to participate and collaborate with more social activities; thus, more people can learn about your website.

Content easy to share

When people find difficulties in sharing content from your website profile, they might change their minds. So follow these tips to keep content sharing easy:

Share buttons on posts

Keep a one-click way to share content from your website profile.

Make quotable statements stand out

Ensure that your article’s interesting statistics and quotable statements stand out on your page as highlighted text.

Help your readers by suggesting a hashtag

You can help to increase sharing of original posts by suggesting hashtags to your readers.

Use tools

Using social sharing tools like Buffer and Hootsuite, pull in the title along with its link every time it is being shared.

Tip
Take time to interact with others to build relationships & grow a loyal following.

Paid traffic

You can use paid traffic to establish a good website as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, etc.

So these are the essential features of any website. Of course, these features will work differently depending on the website types and products or services you want to introduce. You can ignore some features from here and can add new wants according to your business category. Nevertheless, this is a standard website checklist any website should have.