SEO Checklist: How to Get More Organic Traffic (Complete Tutorial)

45 Comments

This video walks you through our complete SEO checklist that's helped us get over 300k monthly SEO visitors from Google. Learn how to rank higher in Google and get more traffic.

***************************************
Additional SEO Tutorials and Resources

SEO For Beginners: A Basic Search Engine Optimization Tutorial for Higher Google Rankings ►

How to Learn SEO Fast and Effectively ►

How to Measure Keyword Difficulty and Rank on Google ►

Guest Posting at Scale: Get Tons of High Quality Backlinks ►

Top 10 On Page SEO Techniques ►

How to Get Backlinks By "Stealing" From Low-Quality Pages ►

Broken Link Building in Action (Strategies, Outreach Emails and Stats Revealed) ►

Link Building Tutorial Series ►

***************************************
The categories of search engine optimization spans from keyword research to on-page SEO, technical SEO, link building and more.

Tackling all these pieces at once isn't a good idea because they can lead to confusion and overwhelm. In this video, Sam shares an SEO checklist that will help you stay optimized, organized and sane.

Firstly, you learn how to nail your basic setup by creating a sitemap and checking for a robots.txt file. You'll also find out the essential free SEO tools that you should set up, like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Next we delve straight into keyword research by first finding a primary keyword target for your page and assessing search intent.

Sam then shows you a couple of handy ways to look for related queries to your topic and reveals a technique to find relevant keywords and subtopics for your post. We then look into assessing your chances of ranking in Google.

On-page SEO comes next. Based on some findings from Ahrefs' research, you'll learn the importance of using short, yet descriptive URLs, and the most important thing to optimize for when drafting a compelling title tag and meta description. Sam also shows a nice little bonus tip to find places to add relevant internal and external resources.

Next up on the SEO checklist is to create your content.

You'll learn the importance of writing an engaging introduction and get a few tips to learn how to ensure your content is readable for the vast majority of readers. We then look into how you can ensure your content solves the problems readers are searching for.

Subsequently you'll discover the most important white hat link building strategies and techniques:
– Find prospects who are linking to competing pages
– Expand your list of link prospects using Content Explorer
– Guest posting
– Skyscraper Technique
– Broken link building

Lastly, you'll learn the basics to ensure your technical SEO is up to par.

You'll learn how to run an SEO audit with Ahrefs' Site Audit tool and additional tools to measure and fix page speed issue.

You'll also learn how to check that your site is mobile-friendly as well as fix external and internal broken links.

Breaking SEO down to smaller bite-sized checkpoints can help you get things done effectively and efficiently. This video gives you the complete SEO checklist you need.

Timestamps:

0:37 Start with a basic setup
2:09 Do the keyword research
6:27 Optimize your pages for search
8:49 Create useful content
11:07 Build relevant links
13:49 Don't forget technical SEO

Be sure to subscribe for more actionable marketing and SEO tutorials.

STAY TUNED:
Ahrefs ►
YouTube ►
Facebook ►
Twitter ►

#seo #seochecklist #searchengineoptimization

About us and this blog

We are a digital marketing company with a focus on helping our customers achieve great results across several key areas.

Request a free quote

We offer professional SEO services that help websites increase their organic search score drastically in order to compete for the highest rankings even when it comes to highly competitive keywords.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

More from our blog

See all posts
45 Comments
    • lise Korsedahl
    • July 15, 2022
    Reply

    Like always – a great video! Thank you for the awesome checklist!

      • Ahrefs
      • July 18, 2022
      Reply

      Our pleasure! 🙂
      -Helen

    • Ge Veloso
    • April 15, 2022
    Reply

    Hi Michael. Thank you for all your videos. I have a question for you: As we open Google Search nowadays we have almost just “Ads” on the first page. Before were just 3 now is just a lot. I started thinking that Google is boring and not reliable, as it shows who pays. How can we talk about organic search this days? I felt like if I have to put a lot of work for nothing. Anyways I’ll have to work for “Google” creating content, researching keywords and paying them for showing what I wanna tell / or sell to the world.

    • Adwait Yoga School
    • December 3, 2020
    Reply

    You always add value to SEO professionals.

    Thanx

      • Ahrefs
      • December 3, 2020
      Reply

      My pleasure!

    • Alessandro Cettul
    • August 29, 2020
    Reply

    Hello! I would like to ask you something, do you know if there is a positive correlation between the sites that have the comments enabled with the positioning?

    Thanks

      • Alessandro Cettul
      • August 30, 2020
      Reply

      @Ahrefs Could having articles with comments at the bottom of each article be an SEO factor?
      I was interested to know if there is a correlation between SERP position and the presence of comments on each article.

      • Ahrefs
      • August 30, 2020
      Reply

      What do you mean?
      – SQ

    • michelle marie seno
    • July 9, 2020
    Reply

    Great video! Super helpful and so easy to digest. It made SEO a little bit intimidating because of this tutorial. Thanks so much!

      • Ahrefs
      • July 9, 2020
      Reply

      Great to hear!

    • mostofa Kamal
    • March 21, 2020
    Reply

    Hi Sam Oh,

    You delivered the tecchnic with plesure step by step,
    the processes of more organic traffic generating,
    I spend more time,in study.
    I also feel plesure.
    Thanks a lots .

    Mostofa.

    • Harrys ChPerth
    • February 24, 2020
    Reply

    After thousands of hours on YouTube and totorials I must say that I’ve never seen anyone explaining thinks better. You have a talent in teaching people and we are lucky that your subject is SEO.
    Thanks a lot mate.
    Very hood job!

      • Ahrefs
      • February 25, 2020
      Reply

      Thank you so much for such a kind feedback! We are glad you find these to be easy going and valuable at the same time!
      – Max

    • M D
    • February 21, 2020
    Reply

    Extremely helpful. Thank you so much.

      • Ahrefs
      • February 21, 2020
      Reply

      You are welcome!

    • Brent Truitt
    • November 10, 2019
    Reply

    Thanks Sam! I think your videos are the best tutorials for SEOs – great work!

      • Ahrefs
      • November 11, 2019
      Reply

      Thanks, Brent. Means a lot 🙂
      -Sam

    • Chris Altamirano
    • November 6, 2019
    Reply

    Learned a ton from this tutorial! Thanks for helping me take my SEO knowledge to new levels!

      • Ahrefs
      • November 6, 2019
      Reply

      Glad you found it useful, Chris! Good luck with your SEO journey 😉
      – Max

    • Michael Gordon
    • September 20, 2019
    Reply

    AWESOMENESS. Thank you for taking the time to do this. Bookmarking this for later use!
    Basic setup (screenshot 2:05)
    -create sitemap
    -check robots TXT file
    -set up Google analytics & search console

    Keyword Research (screenshot 6:29)
    -find primary keyword per page
    -assess search intent
    -look at related queries on topic
    -find relevant keywords & subtopics for post
    -assess your chances of ranking in Google

    On Page SEO (screenshot 8:34)
    -short & descriptive URL’s
    -compelling title & description
    -add relevant external & internal resources

    Content Creation (screenshot 11:05)
    -engaging introduction
    -focus on readability
    -solve the searchers query

    Link Building (screenshot 13:47)
    -find prospects linking to competing pages
    -expand your list
    -guest posting
    -skyscraper technique
    -broken link building

    Technical SEO (screenshot 15:51)
    -run audit crawl
    -measure & fix page speed
    -mobile friendly
    -fix broken links

      • Om Khalil
      • September 21, 2021
      Reply

      5

      • Om Khalil
      • September 21, 2021
      Reply

      5

      • Om Khalil
      • September 21, 2021
      Reply

      5

      • Om Khalil
      • September 21, 2021
      Reply

      5

      • Om Khalil
      • September 21, 2021
      Reply

      5

    • Dmitry Kotlyarenko
    • September 2, 2019
    Reply

    Awesome. In my opinion, this is a great SEO checklist that marketers needs at all times!

      • Ahrefs
      • September 2, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you for the kind feedback! Glad you find it valuable!

    • Chilli Crunch
    • September 1, 2019
    Reply

    SAM HO , you are my mentor in SEO . I have not seen such professional and best informative videos any other can create except you . Thanks for your efforts.

      • Ahrefs
      • September 2, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you, my friend😎

    • Reputation Local
    • August 5, 2019
    Reply

    Awesome training and checklist. Every time I watch one of your videos, I realize all the ways I’m not using Ahrefs to full capacity. Thank you!

      • Ahrefs
      • August 5, 2019
      Reply

      Tim, great to know you find new was on how to benefit from Ahrefs tools while watching our tutorials😊

    • J YH
    • July 26, 2019
    Reply

    Another EXCELLENT vid, Sam! Thank you. 🙏

    I really appreciate that you acknowledge that your keyword difficulty metrics are “rough estimates”.

    And… Nice nod to Eric Ward. Sometimes we spend so much time looking ahead that we forget what we can learn from those that came before us.

      • Ahrefs
      • July 26, 2019
      Reply

      Thanks! Much respect for Eric and all that he did. 🙌

    • Lalit Soni
    • July 25, 2019
    Reply

    Complete package for seo, whether you’re a beginner or a pro… Ahrefs 💛

      • Ahrefs
      • July 25, 2019
      Reply

      Exactly😎

    • Kagura TheWindSorcerer
    • July 25, 2019
    Reply

    This video comes at the right time! More than just a checklist, it also serves as a very systematic workflow to implement. Can’t thank you enough, Sam! You really are a true master of SEO! You make boring, complicated-looking SEO so fun to handle! Looking forward to your next videos!

      • Ahrefs
      • July 25, 2019
      Reply

      😉

      • Kagura TheWindSorcerer
      • July 25, 2019
      Reply

      @Ahrefs sure. This is one of channels I should never miss!

      • Ahrefs
      • July 25, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you so much for positive feedback! Feel free to subscribe in order not to miss the next video😉

    • James Scott
    • July 24, 2019
    Reply

    Excellent job Sam and ahrefs team 👍 super useful. Keep up the good work!

      • Ahrefs
      • July 24, 2019
      Reply

      Thank you, James!

    • Skyler Reeves
    • July 24, 2019
    Reply

    Great video Sam. The only thing I would add is perhaps a bit of info in the “on page seo” section about schema and how it can be used to enhance your results in the SERPs.

      • Ahrefs
      • July 24, 2019
      Reply

      Hey, Max is here! We tried to add as much value to the video as possible while keeping it short. But thanks for the advice!

    • Lohith Sp
    • July 24, 2019
    Reply

    Hey Sam! Loved your video as always. I have a question though. Will sub folder level URL will be better or a naked URL for a website with 5 categories. Thanks

      • Ahrefs
      • July 24, 2019
      Reply

      Hey, Max is here! I would say “it depends”. It makes sense to have categories subfolder to have some sort of URL structure for the website. But still, having a custom link for each category might give a better understanding of the page’s content and increase click rate in some cases.

Leave a Comment