Your Enterprise SEO Checklist for a Website Redesign

Need to revamp your website while incorporating the latest enterprise SEO best practices? There’s good news for those of you who have mastered SEO 101: Many of the same principles apply whether you’re a multinational corporation looking for global SEO services or an average Joe trying to prove to Google that you really do exist. 

To get the very best results, you’ll want to hire an enterprise SEO company to audit your site. But this checklist — actually, these checklists — will help you stay on top of enterprise search engine optimization as you tackle your website redesign.

Each checklist focuses on one of the major classes of SEO factors and provides a list of related elements to consider. 

Enterprise SEO Checklist: Online Presence

The fight for online presence is a global popularity contest, and an international SEO agency can manage your campaign during your redesign.‌

Basic Principles

Keep these tips in mind when working on your online presence.

Dress for Success: Part of your online presence is how you appear in Google searches, so optimize your page titles and meta descriptions.

Network: Off-page SEO is also important. Establish your network of backlinks, and set up your social media profiles — even if you don’t manage them. 

Be Local: It’s just as vital to claim your company info on Google Maps, Yelp, and Bing. Even if your business spans continents, much of your clientele probably needs goods or services local to them. All of your information should be current for all of your locations.

Your Online Presence Checklist

1. Claim major citations. Manage your business listings on sites such as Google Maps. 
2. Optimize page titles. Edit the page headlines that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs).
3. Optimize meta descriptions. Edit the descriptions of pages that appear under page titles on SERPs.
4. Build backlinks. Earn incoming hyperlinks to your website.
5. Set up social media. Create accounts on major social media platforms.

Enterprise SEO Checklist: Site Authority

Google wants to send its browsers to high-quality websites that provide relevant information and a positive user experience. You must convince the world — bots and humans alike — that your website delivers just that. 

Basic Principles

Become authoritative by following these rules:

Be Meticulous: Track your domain authority, a score that measures your website’s search performance. Bad code and broken links harm your authority, so run an audit and clean up any 404 HTML and CSS errors. You’ll also need to ensure that your site is secure and quick to load.

Pick the Right Keywords: While small businesses should focus on asserting their presence with long-tail keywords, enterprise SEO services have you focus on expanding your keyword reach. Do your research and target keywords for which you rank in striking distance — searches where you appear on the second SERP. 

‌Check Off Fundamentals: Make good use of your homepage’s H1 tag and phone number. The first let people know what you do, and the second tells them where to find you. Put your number on the site in HTML so Google can use it to bring you local traffic.

Your Site Authority Checklist

1. Research current domain authority. Use an enterprise SEO agency or calculate it with an online tool.
2. Optimize homepage H1 tag. Write a clear statement of what you do.
3. Integrate keywords into content. Use words for which you already rank highly or for which you rank on the second page.
4. Audit for 404 HTML errors. Get rid of dead links.
5. Audit for CSS errors. Clean up website code.
6. Maintain site security. Use an SSL certificate.
7. Improve page speed. Ditch redundant or inactive plugins.
8. Add HTML phone number. Avoid phone numbers that search engines can’t crawl.

Enterprise SEO Checklist: Site Structure

One of the major concerns for corporate SEO is site structure. The bigger your site is, the harder it is to crawl.  

Basic Principles

Be search-engine friendly with these tips:

Clarify Content, Business Location, and Site Architecture: Provide an XML map, and check that URLs are easy to read. Make sure that your pages all have internal links that connect them to other parts of your website.

Your address should appear on every page. You can also incorporate location microformats or lines of HTML code that link your address to related content. 

‌Design for Mobile Use: Remember that 56% of internet traffic happens on mobile devices. As you redesign your site, focus on providing the best user experience for people on the go.

Your Site Structure Checklist

1. Take advantage of location microformats. Use Schema.org to link content to location.
2. Create an XML site map. Let search engines know what everything is and where it belongs.
3. Optimize URL structure. Edit URLs to indicate the page topic clearly.
4. Establish geolocation sitewide. Put your physical address in the footer of every page.
5. Optimize for mobile devices. Make sure your website is easy to use on a phone.
6. Establish internal links. Every page should connect to at least one other.

The Single-Item Checklist: Leave It to the Professionals

You can do it all. The question is: Do you want to?

As experts in national SEO services, Motoza is here to answer your questions, audit your websites, or guide you through the redesign process.