100 Point Website Checklist

Our 100 point website checklist covers a broad spectrum of different areas from SEO through to Security. Ensuring your website meets this checklist will ensure your website is fast, secure, SEO friendly and easy to use.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Making sure your website is SEO friendly is vital for attaining high rankings on search engines such as Google. With over 250 metrics that go into Google's algorithmn, we've compiled some of the most important items you should be implementing for SEO purposes.

• SEO friendly URLs - Does not contain special characters, underscores, spaces, capital letters or doesn't exceed 100 characters
• Alt tags on images
• Title tags on images
• H1-H6 title tags - Proper headings used throughout the website
• Robots.txt present
• Sitemap present
• Sitemap references inside robots.txt
• Title tag present
• Meta description present
• Meta language present 
• Meta keywords
• Robots index tag
• Structured data markup present
• Mobile responsive - Website works perfectly on all devices
• Google Search Console setup
• Google Analytics installed
• UTM Tracking - Tracking URLs implemented for external properties
• Conversion tracking - Track all form submissions and calls from your website
• Browser compatibility - Check your website works on all browsers
• Error 404 page - Error not found pages present
• Clean code - Your websites source code doesn't contain bloated code and is easy to read for search engines
• HTML generated source code
• Valid HTML5 source code
• Targeting specific keywords 
• Latent semantic indexing - related keywords used throughout
• Content management system (CMS) for managing content
• Featured image for sharing social media thumbnail 
• Indexed URLs on search engines
• Geo-tagged images - metadata included inside images
• WWW redirect - redirect either the www or non-www.
• 301 permanent redirects where needed
• Hreflang tags for e-commerce and international websites
• No broken URLs
• Internal links to other pages
• Good labeling of anchor text for interlinking
• Favicon
• Social Media profiles
• Links to social media properties
• Blog is present and being utilised
• Disavow spammy backlinks
• Unique content

Local SEO

An extension off SEO, this list specifically targets local SEO most commonly used by SMBs wanting to rank on the search engines in local areas. All the previous SEO metrics should be implemented alongside this list that specifically relates to local SEO.

• Google maps embedded with your location
• NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) present
• Registered & verified on Google My Business
• Registered & verified on Bing Businesses
• Location pages for each location served
• Reputation Management -
• Replying to all reviews
• Create local citations / listed on local directories
• An About us page is present
• Tracking progress of keywords

Usability

Usability is a big part of Google's algorithm, so this list could have been combined with SEO but for simplicity, we've decided to split it out. Usability is one of the most important factors, as if your visitors cannot use your website easily, it's likely they'll leave (or bounce) and go to a competitor. Ensuring your user journey is flawless is essential so ensuring you have the following in place will boost usability for your users.

• Screen readers for disabled and visually impaired
• Colour scheme meets expected WCAG guidelines
• No intrusive pop ups
• Contemporary design
• Up to date content
• Attractive imagery
• Using video where possible
• Domain name emails
• Email signature
• Attractive Call to actions
• Don't serve different content to different countries 
• Contact forms
• Cookies
• Breadcrumbs for site navigation
• Domain name is memorable

Page Speed

With visitors expecting a flawless experience on your website, a fast loading website is paramount to ensure this is the case.

40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Don't be one of these websites and make sure your website's page speed is fast by implementing the following:

• Above the content fold within 3 second 
• Fully loaded page speed within 6.4 seconds
• Caching implemented for all possible resources
• Less than 85+ requests from different files
• Compressed images
• Enable gzip compression
• Priorities critical HTML and CSS
• Minify HTML, CSS & JS
• Defer JavaScript
• Expiry headers present
• CDN to serve content faster
• Fast TTFB - Time to First Byte

Security

Cyber attacks can have devastating affects to businesses long term even if these are remedied soon after. A compromise in your website could lead to a loss of SEO rankings, data breaches or worse. Make sure your website is following the security protocols to stay safe and keep hackers out.

• HTTPS
• No mixed content issues
• Latest stable PHP version (7.4)
• DKIM verification for emails
• Weekly or monthly backups
• Updated plugins
• Updated themes
• Remove unnecessary themes
• Enforce strong passwords
• Protect against SQL injection 
• Encrypt passwords
• Use two factor authentication
• Change login URLs
• Protect against cross site scripting
• Don’t use outdated libraries 
• Check console log errors and warnings
• Mitigate against DDoS attacks
• Limit login attempts
• GDPR Compliant
• Privacy policy
• Spam prevention
• Cookies policy
• No use of Flash throughout the website
• No use of iFrames throughout the website

We hope this 100 point checklist gives some insight into how to best look after your website and ensure it is fully optimised across the board. If you think we've missed anything important, feel free to let us know and leave us a message.