SEO Settings Checklist
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Just launching your website isn't enough to make it SEO-ready. Here's a quick checklist to help you get started with the essentials.
Google Search Console is a free tool that helps you monitor your site's performance in Google Search, understand your organic traffic, and spot potential issues that may impact your rankings.
To get started, go to the Google Search Console welcome page. You'll need to verify your domain so Google knows you own the site.
A sitemap helps search engines like Google understand the structure of your website.
Wegic automatically generates a sitemap for every website you create, listing all your site's pages.
To help Google index your site faster,
Google Analytics helps you understand how visitors interact with your website. Once connected, it allows you to track user behavior—especially those coming from search engines.
To get started, create a Google Analytics account, add your website as a property, and link a data stream by entering your Google tag ID into your site.
For your site to show up in search results, it must be indexed by search engines. The easiest way to check is by doing a site search on Google (e.g., site:yourdomain.com).
If no results appear, your site hasn't been indexed yet. Keep in mind that indexing can take a week or more after submitting your sitemap, and Google won’t index any pages that are password-protected.
On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing individual pages on your website to improve their visibility in search results.
Optimizing each page to rank well takes time and effort—especially since you’re often competing with well-established brands. Use this checklist to make sure your pages are fully optimized.
Heading tags act as the main headline of a page and typically include the page’s primary keywords. Search engines use these tags to understand what the page is about.
Ideally, use just one H1 tag per page. For instance, if your website is called “Visual Studio,” a strong H1 might be “Unleash Your Visual Creativity”—a phrase that appeals to users searching for design service.
Showing up in search results is only half the battle—you also need to get people to click. Title tags, the blue clickable links shown in search engine results, play a key role in this.
To make your title tags more effective:
Write titles that are clear and engaging for real people. Use relevant keywords and make the title interesting.
Keep them under 60 characters. Research from Backlinko shows titles between 40–60 characters have the best click-through rates.
Put your main keyword near the beginning to align with search intent and encourage clicks.
Meta descriptions are the brief text snippets that appear under your title tag in search results. They should describe your page content clearly while encouraging users to click.
Although there’s no strict character limit, Moz research shows many descriptions get cut off after 155–160 characters. Place your most important keywords and attention-grabbing content at the start, and try to stay under 160 characters.
A page’s URL helps both users and search engines understand what it’s about. Include your target keyword and avoid unnecessary filler to keep the URL clean.
Some best practices include:
Use readable URLs ✅ https://yourdomain.com/visual-studio 🛑 https://yourdomain.com/index.php?35821=p39=?
Use hyphens, not underscores ✅ https://yourdomain.com/visual-studio 🛑 https://yourdomain.com/visual_studio
Include the main keyword ✅ https://yourdomain.com/visual-studio 🛑 https://yourdomain.com/visual-code-editor-features
Keep your URL structure clean and simple. However, if your current URLs are already bringing in SEO traffic, avoid changing them just for optimization—doing so may actually hurt your rankings.