For every new page that you add to your website, you want to make sure it is optimized for search engines. That’s because your audience may be searching for different things and that landing page you just created is exactly what they need to find.
By having a SEO checklist on hand when you develop that new webpage, you will be able to keep your SEO practices and results consistent, helping to draw more targeted traffic to every page of your site.
Here is a SEO checklist that you can apply to your new webpage and to any page on your website as part of your overall marketing strategy that could benefits from these SEO tips.
Consistent look and feel
You may think that a web crawler is about keywords and relevancy, but other things are weighed when considering ranking. One of these is ensuring that every page that is added follows the same look and feel as the rest of your website so that the bot understands you are adding to an existing site that has already ranked.
Use keyword best practices
Don’t forget to put the SEO best practices to work for the new page. That means mentioning keywords in specific places on the page, including the page title, description, and content. This means the body copy, headlines, and subheads. It also include keywords in the file name of the pictures and videos you upload to that new Web page to further enhance your SEO potential.
Be sure to also mix the type of keywords you use, including generic and specific keywords that can be combined to create a unique way to define your webpage.
This can help search engines realize how you are different from other webpages. Consider adding location to the keywords used for that page. If you are generating different webpages for certain locations or for a localization marketing you'll want localization keywords.
If you are using WordPress for your webpage creation, you can put these keywords in under general settings or use a plugin like Yoast SEO. Having tools like this in place can help you remember all the SEO tactics for keyword placement that optimize the new webpage.
Link to internal pages
With every new webpage that you add to your site, make sure it links to other important pages on your website, including your homepage. Likewise, these other pages should link to your new page.
Use the right permalink structure
Avoid using numbers to identify pages on your site because this is bad for SEO purposes. Instead, use a URL structure that includes keywords in your URLs.
Minimize page loading slowdown
Stay away from adding large images, flash graphics, music players, and plugins to the new page because these will slow your page load time and work against your SEO efforts.
Add other links and encourage others to link to you
Depending on the content or purpose of the page, there are ways to link to other websites that assist with SEO. These websites must have relevant content that aligns with your new webpage. While outbound links help you, they also assist the website you are linking to so consider using them sparingly.
However, you can also ask these websites and others to link to your new page. Let those you know you’ve added new content and consider how you might be able to connect with another website.
Ensure the new page doesn’t have duplicate content
Sometimes when you are trying to create a consist look and feel, you may repurpose some content from another page. It’s important to make sure that you change the content as much as possible so that the search engine doesn’t flag it as duplicate content. Should this happen, you’ll experience a major drop in your rankings.
If you are adding a product description page for a new product within a product line, make sure you alter the placement of some of the description, including using a different color order or sizing information.
You can also use a canonical tag that notes which page is considered original in order to avoid being punished by the search engine for duplicate content.
Track new page results
Don’t forget to review the performance of your new webpage and see how this checklist is working for you. While these are all good tips, there may be additional revisions you will need to make to this new page to improve your results. I helped a friend do this with Sexy Smile Kit. While we were able to half the load time, this small change was able to double conversions. It’s small changes that you track along the way that makes a difference.
What you learn from the results on this page can then be applied to other sections of your website for an overall lift in SEO.
John Rampton is an entrepreneur, investor, online marketing guru, and startup enthusiast. He is the founder of the payments company Due.