Here's a step-by-step SEO checklist for a successful web project. This list covers the top things you should consider when it comes to getting a new site live and into the search index successfully.

Every time you start a new SEO project for a website, you´ll typically find yourself doing the same steps over and over again, in order to lay the foundation for solid on and off page-optimization, I created this SEO Checklist that I change regularly according to the changes constantly made in the SEO world and search engines today.

There are some important things you should keep in mind before embark on your SEO project. As you go through the checklist make sure to give equal importance to both on-page and off-page SEO. 

If you cannot complete all the steps on this list, it will not harm your project. All you need to keep in mind is to make your site as SEO-friendly as possible, but in general, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to do all these things. Good luck and for any questions please don´t hesitate to ask us on our twitter accounts. 

The 2015 SEO 2.0 Checklist

Checklist is Constantantly updating as the SEO is quickly changing

Not all of these may apply to your situation.
Updated: 3/july/2015

Start by synchronised your site with the dominating search engines?

1. Have you setup Gmail filters for your new site, or setup a new email address in Google and Microsoft? 
2. Have you installed Google Analytics? This is not optional!
3.  Have you installed Google Webmaster Tools? Again, not optional.
4.  Have you installed Bing Webmaster Tools? Do this too.

Using Drupal or WordPress?

1. Drupal: Have you installed SEO Checklist and Checklist API? These module will walk you through the important SEO steps.
2. Wordpress: Have you installed Google Analytics for WordPress and SEO for WordPress? These plugins will make your life 10x easier.

Have you checked for any onsite errors?

1. Have you checked Google Webmaster Tools for 404 / 500 errors, duplicate content, missing titles and other technical errors that Google has found? Make sure to keep up with any messages Google is sending you.
2. Have you checked for any technical errors? Have you used Browseo to find even more technical errors?  The most common detrimental errors people tend to make are 302 redirects that should be 301 redirects.
3. Have you checked the broken links on your website? Use Screaming Frog to find broken links, errors, and crawl problems?

Have you analysed the best keyword for your website?

Use Google’s Keyword Research Tool to find and analyse the best keyword competitiveness. Be sure to consider searcher intent and difficulty, pick 1 keyword per page, and you’ll generally want to start with lower-volume keywords first.

Have you looked at competitor link profiles?

This is the easiest way to get started with link building. This way, you can see what kind of anchor text they’re using, as well as how and where they’ve been getting their links. My favorite is Ahrefs – but you can also use Link Diagnosis, Open Site Explorer, and Majestic SEO. Use the tool that suite you best. 

Have you incorporated your primary keyword into your page URL (if possible)?

Adding your primary keyword to the URL give the site that unique boost in the Search engines. For example if the site is about a local dentist in Zurich (Switzerland) have the keyword dentalcliniczurich in the domain name should boost your ranking locally. 

Are all of your title tags ~65 characters or less?

Title tags over this will be truncated in results. Make sure to never exceed the maximum amount of characters.

Are all of your meta description tags ~155 characters or less?

Meta description tags over this will be truncated in results. Make sure to never exceed the maximum amount of characters.

Have you used an H1 tag?

Is your keyword in the tag? Is it before any (H2, H3, H4…) tags? Have your used H1, H2 and when needed H3?

Do you have a healthy amount of search engine-accessible text on your site?

My recommendation is at least 100 words, because you want to give search engines an opportunity to understand what the topic of your page is. You can still rank with less, and you don’t ever want to put unnecessary text on your site, but I recommend not creating a new page unless you have roughly ~100 words worth of content.

Did you use synonyms in your copy? 

Remember: synonyms are great, and using natural language that’s influenced by keyword research (rather than just pure keywords) is highly encouraged.

Do your images have descriptive ALT tags and filenames?

Search engines “see” images by reading the ALT tag and looking at file names, among other factors. Try to be descriptive when you name your images. Don’t overdo it though!

Are you linking to your internal pages in an SEO-friendly way (internal linking)?

Are you describing the page your linking to in the anchor text, so that both users and search engines understand what it’s about? I recommend not using anchor text in your global navigation because it can look like over-optimization. Stick to in-content links instead.

Have you started off-page optimization and began building links? This is the hardest, most important aspect of SEO! 

1. Content Marketing and Guest Blogging

   1. Vertical Guest Blogging – Finding people in your industry, creating great content for them and incorporating a way to naturally include a link back to yourself.

   2. Horizontal Guest Blogging – Finding topics that aren’t in your industry or niche directly, but find a way to relate, incorporate your content and link back to yourself.

2. Now, I’ll target themes where I can work my keyword in:

   1. Study Blogs – An article titled “7 ways to prevent dental loss while studying dentistry”. Include 6 proven issue prevention, and make the 7th tip a few sentences on your new supplement linked to your site.

   2. Video Websites – Create a comprehensive list of 100 foods, drinks, exercises,products supplements and stimulants that improve your immune system and provide you better teeth and smile. Include your service as one of the list items, as well as a link.

   3. Music Blogs – Write a post on 7 musicians and how successful they are due to their beautiful smile. You include a number of tactics, including good food, constant cleaning, and your new service  (with a link of course!)…

3. More great blog content ideas:

   1. Writing a “how-to” walk-through guide

   2. Patch together a number of different strategies into one post (what do you think you’re reading? :) )

   3. Develop a top 7, top 10, top 50, top 100 list

   4. Write something controversial

   5. Debunk a myth! 

4. Great places to find guest blog opportunities:

   1. MyBlogGuest 

   2. Blogger LinkUp

5. Blog Commenting

   Find relevant blogs, contribute to the conversation, place a link back to your site. Don’t worry as much about no-follow/do-follow, just contribute to relevant topics, and mention your site in way that helps the reader! (don’t over-do it!). Here is a list of over 1,000 “do-follow’ blogs: 

   1. iTechCode: List of Enabled Blogs for 2012 – Approximately 200+ blogs

   2. Traffic Generation Cafe: Enabled Blog List – Approximately 150+ blogs

   3. Jamie Northrup: Over 100 Blogs to Comment On – Approximately 100+ blogs

   4. KeywordLuv: A list of Blogs with High PR – Approximately 100+ blogs

   5. ITCSE: 50 Enabled Blogs – Approximately 50+ blogs

   6. Exceptional Blogger: 50+ Enabled Blogs – Approximately 50+ blogs

   7. Exclusive Bloggers: Exclusive List of Enabled Blogs for 2012 – Approximately 50+ blogs

   8. Area 51 Blog: List of 40+ High PR blogs – Approximately 50+ blogs

   9. YoungBlah: List of High PR Blogs – Approximately 25+ blogs

   10. BlogName: 20 High PR Dofollow Enabled Blogs – Approximately 20+ blogs

6. Link Building with Social Media

   Social Media is a factor in search engine rankings because it’s a quality signal.

7. Answering Questions in Q&A Forums

   There are a growing number of Q&A sites that can be great linking opportunities. While not all of them may affect your rankings, (many are no-follow links), they’re a great way to obtain quality, qualified traffic. Here are a few:

   1. Quora

   2. Stack Overflow

   3. Amazon Askville

   4. Wiki Answers

   5. Yahoo Answers

8. Testimonials

   Write down all the products, services or tools you’ve used in the last 3 months that you really liked. Contact them, give them a great review / testimonial , and don’t forget to include a link to your site in it!

9. Linking Out

   Many people seem to be very stingy with their linking, particularly when it’s a competitor that’s creating great content. Creating a “resource” for your users is a great way to link out, as well as a way to signal to major search engines which kind of “link neighborhood” you’re in.

10. Asking Your Customers

    If you have customers you’re close with, talk about link opportunities! Even if you’re not in the exact same vertical, there are always ways to find chances to link to each other. I’m a huge fan of leveraging offline relationships for my link building plans.

11. Create a Widget

    While I won’t go into the technical challenges here, creating a widget is a very scalable way to build links. Try WidgetBox.

12. Advanced Search Parameters for Link Building

    1. Find websites that are asking for guest bloggers

       • Keyword + intitle:“write for us”

       • Keyword + intitle:“contribute to”

       • Keyword + intitle:“submit” + inurl:blog

    2. Find websites that have a large number of guest posters already

       • inpostauthor:guest + keyword

       • inpostauthor:”guest blog” + keyword

       • inpostauthor:”guest post” + keyword

    3. Find college clubs (with .edu domains) for linking opportunities

       • inurl:.edu keyword club

       • inurl:.edu keyword group

       • inurl:.edu keyword organization

    4. Find university resource lists

       • inurl:.edu helpful sites + keyword

       • inurl:.edu keyword + resources

       • inurl:.edu useful sites + keyword

    5. Find non-profits that accept donations (and put links to donors!)

       • inurl:.org donors + keyword

       • inurl:.org supporters + keyword

       • inurl.org contributors + keyword

    6. Find country-specific links “keyword + inurl:cc.tld”

       • Create a contest intitle:submit your contest

Competitive Link Analysis

1. Link Diagnosis – For FireFox only. One of my favorite link analysis tools.
2. Open Site Explorer – The gold standard of link analysis. Free version still gives you great data.
3. Blekko (type in: website.com /inbound) – A search engine with a number of great techniques oriented towards the SEO industry

Even More Resources

1. Link Building Strategies – from Point Blank SEO. Honestly I think this is the best list of link building ideas I’ve ever seen.
2. A List of Link Building Lists – by Peter Attita, another great list
3. 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – Aaron Wall just crushing it as always

Have you made sure your site isn’t creating any duplicate content? 

Utilize 301 redirects, canonical tags or use Google Webmaster Tools to fix any duplicate content that might be indexing and penalizing your site. Are you using absolute URLs in your code? Some CMS platforms give you the option. Use absolute URLs instead of relative ones.

Have you checked your site speed with Pingdom, GTmetrix or Google Page Speed Tools?

Have you created an XML sitemap and submitted it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools? 

Use XML-Sitemaps.com, Drupal XML Sitemaps or the Google XML Sitemaps WordPress Plugin.

Have you created a Robots.txt file and submitted it in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools?

Use Robots module for Drupal or Yoast plugin for Wordpress.

Have you claimed  your business / website username on other major networks for reputation management reasons?

Not only do you want to make sure no one else gets your account name, but you can often “own” all the results on the first page of a search for your brand if you’re a new website or company. Here is the URL structure of some of the major networks:

1. http://www.twitter.com/brand-name
2. http://www.facebook.com/brand-name
3. http://www.yelp.com/biz/brand-name
4. http://www.youtube.com/user/brand-name
5. http://www.linkedin.com/in/brand-name
6. http://brand-name.wordpress.com/
7. http://brand-name.tumblr.com/
8. http://pinterest.com/brand-name/
9. http://www.hulu.com/profiles/brand-name
10. http://technorati.com/people/brand-name
11. http://about.me/brand-name
12. http://brand-name.posterous.com/
13. http://profile.typepad.com/brand-name
14. http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/brand-name
15. http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/brand-name
16. http://www.etsy.com/people/brand-name
17. http://en.gravatar.com/brand-name
18. http://www.scribd.com/brand-name
19. http://brand-name.livejournal.com/
20. http://brand-name.hubpages.com/
21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/brand-name/
22. http://photobucket.com/user/brand-name/profile/

Is your site mobile friendly?

Have you checked it on multiple browsers with BrowserStack?

Is your site social? 

Have you setup social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, tumblr, reddit ? Make sure to share the create pages on your site as much as possible, engage users to share your content in all the social medias possible.

1. Use addthis to implemente sharing tools in a site.
2. Use slacksocial or buffer to schedule your sharing. It both fast and simple. These tool can quickly publish your content on both groups and sites on a social media. So make sure to get good groups with quality engagement first. 

Have you added Authorship Markup to your site?

Authorship markup search snippet images are gone, but you may still want to add it to your site. Use the Authorship Markup Walkthrough.

Have you used the any of the online auditor reports to double-check everything once you’re live? 

here are my 5 Free Website Audit Tools: MySiteAuditor, Screaming Frog, SEO Report Card, WooRank, Marketing Grader.

Have you reviewed all of the free SEO tools at your disposal before completing this audit?

If you don’t understand some of the high-level concepts:

1. Google Analytics: Definitely the most valuable analytics package out there. World-class enterprise grade analytics for free. The first thing you should install.

2. Google Webmaster Tools: This one isn’t optional folks. You have to install Google Webmaster Tools in order to ‘communicate’ with Google about your site.

3. Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing’s version of webmaster tools.

4. Google Adwords Keyword Tool: This is the defacto starting point for your keyword research in SEO. Everything starts here!
   SEOBook SEO Tools (These are both free and paid): Check some of these SEOBook tools out.

5. SEO Site Tools (Google Chrome Plugin): This is a great chrome plugin.

6. Google Trends: Google Trends is a great additional tool to check query volume.

7. BuiltWith: This will show you a number of things going on behind-the-scenes with competitor websites. Server information, CMS systems, frameworks, analytics and tracking, javascript libraries, widgets, aggregation functionality, document information and encoding.

8. Xenu: Find broken links and errors with Xenu.

9. SEM Rush (SEM Data and Organic Ranking Information): Get a better view of the competitive SERP landscape.

10. Browseo.net: See how search engines view your site with Browseo.

11. Internet Marketing Ninjas On-Page Optimization Analysis: An on-page analysis tool to check internal and external links.

12. XML Sitemap Generator: You can create an XML sitemap here.

13. Rich Snippets Testing Tool: Use this tool to check how Google views your structured data markup. It’s particularly useful if you have a G+ profile and you want to verify authorship for your blog posts.

14. Virante Duplicate Content Checker: Use this to determine wether or not you have duplicate content problems.

15. Advanced Link Manager: Manage your links. This tool is awesome.

16. Link Research Tools: Compiles link data from lots of sources into one dashboard.

17. Majestic SEO: One of the best link explorers in the industry.

18. Open Site Explorer: THE best link explorer in the industry.

19. Ahrefs: A great link analysis tool.