Recipe 012: Setup the basic SEO technical foundations for your blog
If you've never put a serious effort into on-page SEO, chances are you've got a lot of low-hanging fruit laying around. Get back up to speed with this recipe today.
Last Updated / Reviewed: 03/18/2022
🚀 Goal: To have a solid technical SEO foundation on your website, touching all bases like URL structure, meta tags, robots.txt, sitemap, content, tools, data collection, and more.
🤔 Why this is important: Having the right tools and structure in place will make it much easier for you to rank in search engines. A technically poor website will be harder to rank than an optimized one.
🗓️ When this is done: Usually only once per website/domain. But you can revisit some sections of the recipe every 6 months to make sure everything is still optimal.
👨 Who does this: The person responsible for SEO.
__⚠️Prerequisites or requirements: __Part of this recipe covers how to perform these tasks using WordPress but similar steps can be taken on any other CMS. Many times the SOPs offer these alternatives as well.
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Step 1 - Set up an SEO-friendly Wordpress configuration
Click here to view this SOP 008: Initial WordPress setup (web version)
Outcome: Yoast is installed and configured, and your website is using the ideal permalink and homepage structure.
Special instructions: If your Wordpress blog already has indexed blog posts, skip the “Set Up Permalinks” section and instead replace that section with SOP 050: Migrating an existing WordPress website towards SEO-friendly URLs (web version).
Notes: While this SOP covers how to install Yoast on WordPress, Yoast is also available for platforms like Magento, Drupal, and others.
Step 2 - Set up Google Search Console
Click here to view this SOP 020: Set up Google Search Console (web version)
Outcome: You have verified Google Search Console for your website.
Step 3 - Set up your Robots.txt file
Click here to view this SOP 057: How to Setup the Perfect Robots.txt File (web version)
Outcome: You’ve created and added the perfect robots.txt file to your site, and you’ve validated it in Google Search Console.
Step 4 - Set up your XML Sitemap
Click here to view this SOP 055: How to Setup and Optimize an XML Sitemap (web version)
Outcome: You’ve got a properly structured sitemap on your website and you’ve submitted it to Google Search Console.
Special instructions: If you are using WordPress and Yoast, you will only need to follow that specific section of the SOP.
Step 5 - Create an automated backup of your Google Search Console data
Click here to view this SOP 032: Create an automated search query report (web version)
Outcome: You’ve backed up your search console data for the last 2 months and now have Google Sheets backing up your data every month on auto-pilot.