Want to know how well your website is optimized for search engines? Even if you are not an SEO specialist, here are a few basic steps to check your site and spot potential problems. Follow this checklist to improve your chances of being visible in search!
Check your site's rankings
Start by analyzing your site's positions in search engines. You can use the rank-tracking service Topvisor for this. Create a project, add the search engines and target regions you need, and enter the queries you want to track. Run the check and see where your site ranks. This will help you understand which pages need optimization to improve their visibility in search.
Check your site's load speed
Speed is one of the key ranking factors. Open PageSpeed Insights and analyze your site's scores. If the score is below 70–80, ask your developer to improve load times. A fast site = happy users and happy search engines.
Make sure the site is responsive
Open your site on a phone or tablet. Is it easy to use? Search engines take the mobile version of a site into account, so it must display correctly on every device.
Check whether titles and meta descriptions are optimized
Titles and descriptions are the first thing users see in search results. The title should be short and informative (50–60 characters), and the description should be catchy and encourage a click (150–160 characters). For a quick check of titles and meta descriptions, free Google Chrome plugins such as SEO META in 1 CLICK or SiteAnalyzer SEO Tools come in handy. They show all of a page's metadata in one click; you can see the results of such a check in the screenshot.
Check for keywords on the page
Keywords help search engines understand what a page is about. Ask yourself: do the headings and text on the page reflect your business's main search queries? Don't overload the page with keywords; keep it natural.
Check for duplicate content
Duplicate content can lower your site's rankings. Use a plagiarism checker such as Text.ru to test your text for uniqueness and find duplicated fragments.
Check the robots.txt file and indexing settings
This file tells search engines which pages of the site should be indexed and which should not. Check that it exists by typing yoursite.com/robots.txt in your browser. Here are a few examples of directives:
Disallow: /—blocks indexing of the entire site. Be careful! This directive completely blocks search engines from all pages.Disallow: /user-profile—hides only the user profile page from indexing.Disallow: /admin—often used to block the site's administrative sections.
Make sure robots.txt blocks only the pages that should not be indexed.
Check the links on the site (external and internal)
Internal links help users and search engines find their way around. Make sure they logically lead to related materials. External links should point to trusted, useful resources and should not open new windows.
Set up an XML sitemap
An XML sitemap helps search engines find every page on the site. Check that it exists at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Most CMSs generate an XML sitemap automatically and let you configure it in the admin panel. In WordPress, for example, you can use plugins such as Yoast SEO to create a sitemap in a couple of clicks. This is an important step toward getting your site fully indexed!
Check navigation and structure (UX/UI)
To evaluate your site's UX/UI, put yourself in a customer's shoes and walk through a typical journey they might take. For example:
- For an online store: try to find several products and add them to the cart. Are the products easy to find? Is checkout convenient?
- For an educational site: try to find a course and learn all the necessary details. Course information should be easy to access and completely clear.
This approach will help you find the bottlenecks that stop users from finding what they need quickly and comfortably.
Analyze user-behavior signals
Assess how users interact with the site: how much time they spend on a page and which pages they leave most often. A web analytics tool such as Yandex Metrica (Yandex's counterpart to Google Analytics) will show you what needs improvement and where users drop off.
Regularly checking your site against these points will help keep your SEO in good shape, even if you are not an expert!
