SEO in 2024: A Beginner's Guide

Even in 2024, there's still some mystery surrounding search traffic and SEO. There's no doubt that search engines use machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to crawl, index, and serve relevant content to users. But how do we know which are the most important on-page factors for ranking higher in the search results?

In this article, we'll cover the most important factors to consider when optimizing your website for search engine optimization. Plus, we have an SEO checklist for everything that you won't want to miss.

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Of course, before we get into the meat and potatoes of this article, we first must define what SEO actually is and what it means. Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy.

It takes a healthy combination of expertise in several areas of search marketing in order to successfully implement an SEO strategy effectively. If you want to identify opportunities in your marketing strategy, having an SEO checklist is a good place to start!

Besides, search engine optimization has been around for a while, but as digital marketing became more relevant, so did the need to rank consistently on Google's first page.

What is SEO?

One way to make sure your site is indexed successfully and served in the search results is to create SEO friendly content that answers the user's search query. However, that's not all there is to it. What about when a page has the answer but isn't configured properly?

SEO is most effective when optimized for maximum crawlability and indexability, as well. Doing this ultimately helps search engines rank your website higher, and in some cases, even above competitors with a higher domain authority! But the real question is - how can it really help you rank higher in the search engine results page? Keep reading to find out more.

Getting Started With SEO in 2024

Over the last 10 years, SEO has evolved dramatically. The emphasis on search intent over the years has created an entire industry around organic traffic and search performance. With key metrics like search volume, search traffic, and keyword difficulty being the driving forces in competitive spaces, it's easy to see how quickly SEO evolved into what it is today.

Luckily, I've put together this handy SEO checklist, along with a technical checklist (and some seo basics) that should help identify opportunities in your SEO strategy.

>> Read more about SEO-friendly strategies.

Before implementing an SEO strategy, it would be wise to have a basic marketing plan in place. It's important to know your audience first in order to find the right target keywords to optimize your site with. Your target audience is usually a segmented portion of your broader target market. Before you do your keyword research, know your audience.

Consider Where To Include Your Primary Keyword

When googlebots crawl your site, they crawl everything! Your title tag and meta description is a prime location for your primary keyword. When your website is served in the search results, it will look like this:

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The title tags are highlighted in blue with the meta descriptions just below them. This is a good place to consider optimizing for your target keyword. Each page should be optimized for a different keyword.
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Note: The primary keyword should always be placed in the front of the title tag since it will help search engines understand the context of the page.

Keyword Research Checklist

Each page on your site should optimally target a different keyword. The last thing you want is to compete with the other pages on your site. In fact, according to a survey by Surfer SEO, intent was regarded as one of the most important page factors to consider when identifying keyword opportunities.

If you're targeting several audiences, you'll need to scale your keyword research to accommodate several keywords. Once you have determined the keyword to implement on-page, it's a good idea to ask yourself these questions:

1. Is your target audience broad or niche?
   This will greatly influence which type of keyword you'll want to optimize for search engines. Long-tail keywords are good for niche, lower-volume spaces, whereas broader keywords are almost necessary for highly competitive spaces.
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2. Are you targeting a local or global audience?
   Usually, the more local and niche your target audience is, the more likelihood it is you'll need to target long-tail keywords. This is because specificity is important when it comes to reaching your audience. Deciding which keywords to target early on can save an immense amount of time.
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3. Match User Search Intent
   The best way to determine search intent is to look at the top-ranking pages and see what is already ranking well. If the top 4 out of 5 search results are blogs posts, then it wouldn't make much sense trying to rank an E-commerce page for that keyword. Matching user search intent is one of the most often, but usually most important, page factors to consider. Make sure the keywords match intent, otherwise you aren't steering towards conversion, but rather away.

SEO Optimizations To Increase Site Crawl and Index in Search Engines

Check For Broken Links and Duplicate Content

Once your website is mobile-friendly and your blog posts are gaining organic traffic, you may want to spend some time going over your website. Check every page to make sure that each page has a purpose and is following your link structure. After publishing a lot of content, it can be easy to forget about a page that no longer exists. Don't let that happen.

Check Your Website For Thin Content

In August of 2022, Google released the Helpful Content Update which affected pretty much every website on the internet. People scrambled. Organic traffic tanked everywhere, and people were left wondering - what happened?

Google is constantly fighting spam in the search engines, irrelevant websites, low-quality content, and much more. In an effort to fight this, Google released this update to eliminate the advantage AI-generated content gained recently in the past few years.

So, it's important to go back and check all of your pages that host content to ensure the quality is there.

Check The Website Link Architecture

Using a program like Screaming Frog can help you keep an eye on the link architecture of your web pages, ensuring that you always know what's going on. Screaming frog is a program used to crawl your website and report on the technical aspects, including link profile, javascript errors, and more.

Some other things you may want to check for:

Page Title

Also known as the meta title, the page title is the title you see over the meta description on the search results page. It's important to keep the page title under 56 characters, or it will be cut off in the SERP preview. Always include your primary keyword in the page title, too.

Alt Tag

Alternative text is important for images on every page of your site that add value to the content. If it's for purely decorative purposes, no alt tag is needed. However, if the image relates to the blog post in a valuable way, it's a good idea to add an on-page SEO friendly alternative description. Alt tags also help search engines deliver accessibility to users. That's probably one of the reasons Google considers it an important page ranking factor.

Header Tags

Header tags, also known as heading tags, are the titles and subtitles that separate chunks of content on a web page. Luckily, there is an hierarchy to follow, and I'll break it down in simplest terms.

H1 - The Main Heading Tag

The H1 tag is the essential to optimize if you want to rank your page well on the search engines. The search engines use the H1 to assess the content of your page, so it's important to optimize your H1 tag to incorporate your target keywords. Nevertheless, always optimize for the primary keyword that page is targeting, as well as any supporting relevant keywords on the page.

H2 - The Second (Cough) Main Heading

Google doesn't really care how many H1's or H2's you have on the page. There has been a lot of controversy around this topic, but Google's John Mueller clears this up in an SEO Office Hours hangout.

John Mueller states:

“You can use H1 tags as often as you want on a page. There’s no limit, neither upper or lower bound.

Your site is going to rank perfectly fine with no H1 tags or with five H1 tags.

H3 - The Subtitle's Subtitle

It's all about hierarchy - the content below each header tag relates to that tag. So as long as you follow that pattern, it's pretty easy to understand how H3-H6 are used. If the content calls for a header tag, use it. If not, don't bother.

Internal Link

Internal linking is an important part of page optimization. The internal links on the page tell the crawler bots which pages are relevant to the existing page, so it's crucial to optimize these to support your link structure. One way to do this is by using keywords to link pages together.

Links are an important component of crawling a site and should never be overlooked. Besides having a site map, internal linking pretty much connects the rest of the site together in a contextual way that crawl bots can interpret.

Just don't completely forget about user experience when setting up your internal linking structure. Internal links should point to pages that link in a contextually relevant way that improve user experience and allow search engines to index and serve relevant content.

Anchor Text

One of the most important parts of an SEO checklist is anchor text. When you see a link, the highlighted part is considered the "anchor text". In other words, the link is anchored in a tag called an "a href" that points to another page URL.

Search engines read this anchor text and if it's relevant, a signal is applied to that link connection, ultimately strengthening its link authority. Every page is an opportunity to strengthen internal links, as long as they're contextually relevant.

Title Tag

Title tags, also known as page titles, describe to Google what the page is about. Don't forget to use the primary keyword in the title tag of each page. This is essential for any page that you want indexed. For pages that you tag noindex, you'll still want to optimize the title tags to make sure if a visitor does end up on that page, they easily understand which page they're on.

Meta Description

The meta description is the little paragraph underneath the meta title. It's not a page ranking factor, per se, but it's a good idea to optimize it. If the meta description is catchy enough, more people will click on it. It's also a good idea to match the tone of the title tag. Don't forget to utilize keywords in the meta descriptions.

Schema Markup and Structured Data

There's a long history behind structured data itself, so I won't get into that in this article. But TLDR; schema markup was developed by Google and other major search engines to allow webmasters one vocabulary in which they could label portions of the HTML with schema markup that would allow the search engines to display rich text snippets or, in some cases, improve the user experience.

Every search engine is different and may not support rich text snippets, schema markup, or structured data on every page.

>> Read more about structured data.

Technical SEO Checklist For 2023

Although not many people like delving into technical issues, it's a necessary step to ensure your website's visibility in the search engines results page (SERP). Yoast is an SEO plugin that will do some of that grunt work for you. Assigning redirects was never easier!

On the other hand, if you're more advanced in SEO, using the free platforms offered by Google will accomplish everything you need. Third-party SEO plugins just take the hard work out of it, especially for beginners. One SEO plugin I will recommend, though, is Surfer SEO. I personally use this and I can say it's worth the price. [Not a paid endorsement.]

Set Up Google Analytics

There are a lot of SEO tools out there for analyzing page traffic and tracking conversions, but at the bare minimum, you'll at least need to set up Google Analytics.

Google offers a host of platforms for developing, monitoring, and improving your marketing strategy, whether it's by yourself or with an enterprise team. These free platforms allow an enormous amount of flexibility with integration into other platforms, as well as customizing your own data pipeline.

Google Documentation For Beginners

If you're just getting started in SEO, I would recommend checking out Google's literature covering everything you need to know about their services and products. Of course, you'll want to scroll down to the Workplace apps to find an SEO plugin and extension.

Another honorable mention would be Bing Webmaster Tools. If you're actively running campaigns on social media, I would recommend optimizing your website's SEO for Bing, too. They love social signals.

Set up Google Search Console

Google Analytics is good way to monitor web traffic and set conversion goals on each page to track, but Google Search Console is far more superior for diving deep into understanding how your website's SEO is performing. A few things it allows you to track are:

• queries (the search queries people are using to find your website)
• internal links (internal linking provides relevance between pages)
• outbound links (pass authority to outbound websites (usually sources cited in an article)
• indexability (which pages are indexed and which ones aren't)
• crawlability (monitor errors in crawls so you can fix broken links or redirects)

Configure Google Search Console

With Google Search Console, you can monitor which queries people are using to find your website. You can also check which page has the most internal links, so if you have an orphan page, this is a good way to find it!

There are too many features about Google Search Console to list here, but I would recommend starting with this platform as early on as possible.

I'll create a guide all about Search Console soon, so subscribe if you haven't already and check back often for new articles.

Create A Robots.txt File

Creating a robots.txt file will allow you to tell the crawlers which files on your website you want crawled and which ones to ignore. Google covers robots.txt files in extensive detail. Basically, you'll only need to implement this if you're using a sitemap. Otherwise, if you're using a CMS and your website is relatively small, you probably won't need to create one. As always, refer to official Google documentation if you have any concerns.

Broken Internal and External Links

If your website has any broken links, you'll want to identify and correct them as soon as possible. Find broken links and fix them to avoid content from being de-indexed. Remember, you'll have to wait after resubmitting an index request to Google, so staying ahead of this delay is crucial as an SEO.

Broken Outbound Links

Like internal links, outbound links pass some authority, so it's important to fix any broken links as soon as they're discovered. Check every page and every link. It's not a glamorous job, but somebody's gotta do it. There are plenty of SEO tools to streamline this process.

Pro Tip: If you're experiencing higher-than-usual bounce rate, I would start by checking all of your pages for dead links.

That's why it's also important to audit the outbound links on every page of your website because some of those links could be returning errors. This would create a bad user experience for anyone that happened to land on those pages. Ensure your website's pages are updated with the latest URLs at all times.

Building an Effective Off-page SEO Strategy

Not much is discussed when it comes to off-page SEO techniques and strategies. I think this is mostly because a lot of SEO terminology is used interchangeably. In fact, if you try hard enough, you can pretty much relate any aspect of a website to SEO performance - or least I've heard.

All jokes aside, ranking on Google's first page is all about strategizing for search intent. Identifying opportunities relies heavily on understanding the connection between on-page, off-page, and technical SEO and how they can support the intent of the user.

Link Building

There's a lot of mixed signals in the SEO community surrounding link building. However, some of the confusion lies around the acquisition or intent of the acquisition when it comes to link building. Let's dig in.

Link Building And Outreach - Why Blog Placements Are not recommended

The purpose of creating a high quality article to submit for blog post placement would be to get a juicy backlink. However, Google has stated that implicitly gaining backlinks for the intent of ranking a website is not recommended.

They do, however, understand the economic value around buying and selling links for advertising and marketing purposes. I know - I was shocked! The catch is - you have to tag the link with "no follow" and "sponsored" in order for it be compliant. Read more about what Google thinks about links.

AI and Duplicate Content

With the advent of AI, the internet has been victim to an enormous amount of web page scraping. Unfortunately, most of the AI tools out there promise authentic content, but the reality is the content produced by these tools is compiled from data found from web pages on the internet, so it's technically not authentic. And this is Google's biggest grief with AI writing tools.

The potential for more duplicate content out there now, simply because more people are using the same tools to produce content. However, based on the amount of updates Google released in 2022, I believe they are determined to curb that trend.

Backlinks And Citations

Backlinks and citations are usually overlooked in the beginning and that is unfortunate, because the truth is - it takes longer for Google to find and crawl your backlink profile, even after your page has been indexed in the search results.

Start as soon as possible in building an established backlink profile. Don't focus too much on it, though. Doing outreach to similar websites in your niche is plenty to take on at first. Once you're more established in your workflow, it will be easier to add more things like HARO placements and such.

The easiest way to get the first few backlinks is by networking with other people you know that own a website.

Attract Your Traffic With A Target Keyword

Circling back to keyword optimization, I think it's important to stress the fact that even once you've established a solid keyword strategy, you'll still need to review your website once every quarter to determine if you need to pivot keyword optimization on your site somewhere else.

This means that any change in your primary target keyword will require going back on your site to optimize your title tags, H1, meta descriptions, alt tags, heading tags, and any part of the page that is relevant to the primary keyword.

Keyword Cannibalization

Using the same keyword strategy on multiple pages can result in keyword cannibalization. This is basically when you're competing with your other pages for keyword relevance. Consolidate those pages or consider optimizing for a different keyword. Don't forget to check blog posts for related keywords, as they are often the culprit.

Keyword Difficulty

When you're first starting out, it's a good idea to target low difficulty keywords. If you target the higher-difficulty keywords right away, you'll be competing in a competitive space with no domain authority. Ultimately, this is not sustainable at all, and you'll need to change your keywords eventually if you want to stand a chance.

Mobile-First Indexing

For the longest time, Google has always prioritized desktop versions of a website to be indexed first. However, with the rise of mobile users over the years, the search engine has changed its stance to prioritize mobile indexing instead.

This means that pretty soon, a lot of website owners who refused to embrace mobile-first web design are going to be left scrambling. Don't be one of them. No one likes a scrambler.

Ensure your site is mobile friendly and ready to deliver an optimal experience.

Page Experience

Page experience is an important metric to optimize for in order to retain users and lower bounce rate. Google determines Page Experience from several signals that measure the interactivity a user has during a visit to the website.

If a user visits a page and immediately leaves (bounce rate), then Google understands that as a signal that maybe the page didn't serve the user intent and, therefore, de-prioritized in organic search ranking.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are the speed signals that Google uses to determine user experience, including signals related to load speed, overall resource load, and visual stability. Besides the informational value of a website, Google wants to ensure the user has a smooth and pleasant experience, as well. This is why Core Web Vitals are an important ranking factor.

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Bonus Tips For Your SEO Checklist

• When you're doing keyword research, check the search volume before committing to a strategy. You don't want to waste time with low-volume keywords unless you're building topical authority in a small niche.
• Domain authority is a relative measurement and isn't exact. Don't concentrate too much on this metric. Instead focus on creating high-quality content that serves a user's search intent in an expert, authoritative, and trustworthy way. If you can commit to that, you'll have no trouble ranking your site number one consistently.
• The search engine is made up of algorithms that apply signals based on optimization factors. It's really that simple. The hardest part in SEO is figuring out how to connect that all cohesively.
• Structured data is evolving so, if you haven't started to learn about it - start now!
• If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe and check back often for new articles on SEO, content marketing, and all things Search.

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