Page 5 - SEO Checklist & Cheat Sheet 2023
P. 5
SEO Checklist - SEO Cheat Sheet Whitepaper (2022-2023 Edition)
5. Make a Robots.txt File
Your robots.txt file is made for search engines. It tells the search engine's
crawlers which pages can and cannot be requested from the website. For
example, you can use your robots.txt file to stop crawlers from indexing a
private page.
Right now, your site should already have a robots.txt file at
https://www.domain.com/robots.txt. If you do not have one already, you can
use a WordPress SEO plugin to make it. For websites with a different content
management system (CMS), you will need to manually make the file in a text
editor. Afterward, you can upload it to your site's root directory.
6. Find Manual Actions in Google Search Console
Sometimes, manual actions can harm your website. A manual action is
basically something that goes against Google's Webmaster Guidelines. For
instance, hidden text and user-generated spam violate Google's guidelines.
Normally, websites do not have a major issue with manual actions. You can
easily check Google Search Action's Manual Actions tab to see if your site is
affected. In the future, Google will send you a notification if there is a manual
action affecting your website.
7. Get Google to Index Your Site
For your site to receive traffic, it must be indexed by Google. Sometimes,
developers leave noindex tags on a site without realizing it. If you are
struggling to get views, you should check out the Site Audit Tool to see if your
site can be indexed by the search engines.
After setting up the Site Audit Tool, you can run an audit of your site. At the
end of the audit, you will get a report that shows how crawlable your website
is. When you look at the report, you should see if your main pages can be
crawled and indexed correctly.
Learn about the SEMNE Digital Marketing Association: SEMNE.org @semneassociation
SEMNE Digital Marketing Association is providing free basic information and is 5
not responsible for any results that are achieved based on the advice contained within this document.
