The Essential "Yes or No" Website Optimization Checklist

Optimizing a website with inbound marketing in mind is an intricate process.

Ranging from your design and code to your written content and lead generation, it involves a lot of moving pieces that need to be manipulated. 

In this article, you will find a detailed checklist of these pieces (adapted from one shared by Tresnic Media). Before you dive into these areas, however, you must have a thorough understanding of your business, its audience, and its objectives.

More specifically you should:

• have clearly defined buyer personas
• understand their buying behavior and typical decision-making process
• have a well-defined value proposition

Once you have these in line, use the "yes or no" checklist below to ensure that your website is ready for your inbound initiatives.

The Essential "Yes or No" Website Optimization Checklist

Your Design/UX

• Does your homepage have a:
• Clearly stated value proposition?
• Imagery/video that resonates with your buyer persona?
• Do you have a way to contact you at the top of every page (i.e a phone number, call-to-action to a form)?
• Social Proof: Testimonials, Certifications, Awards, Affiliations, Partner Logos, Social Followings
• Do you have clear navigation?
• Can people access the most important parts of your site easily and quickly?
• Is your website’s design mobile-friendly (adapts to tablets, different browsers, and phones, etc.)?
• Is your website design consistent with your brand style guide? (color choices, fonts, etc.)

Your Code

• Is your website’s code technically optimized for SEO? Review the SEO Basics at the end of this chapter then confirm that there’s a targeted keyword in each page’s:
• Page Title?
• Section Header?
• Meta Description?
• Img Alt Tags?
• Page URL?
• Do you have a sitemap? (Type “[your website]/sitemap.xml” into your browser to check)
• Do you have Google Analytics or another tracking code set up?
• Are you tracking goals/conversions within your analytics?

Your Content

• Do you have a blog?
• Do you publish at least one new blog article a month?
• Are you creating and sharing premium content? (i.e. eBooks, infographics, quizzes, tools, etc.)
• Do you have Case Studies or Customer Success Stories published on your website?
• Do you have testimonials from happy customers on your website?

Your Lead Generation

• Are you collecting email contacts?
• Email Subscribers?
• Blog Subscribers?
• Do you have a general contact form?
• Do you have Premium Content/Resources page?
• Do you have page-specific landing pages for each offer?

Your Social Media

• Do you have your social media accounts linked up to your website?

Your Integrations/Management

• Do you have a CMS (Content Management System) with blogging capabilities?
• Do you have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool?
• Do you have an email marketing or marketing automation system integrated with your website?

Website Optimization and SEO 

In order to be fully optimized and help your website rank higher in search results, your focus keyword should appear in all of the following “On-Page” SEO areas: URL, Page Title, Section Header, Section Subheader (if applicable), Main Content, Image ALT Text, and Meta Description.

To illustrate this, let’s say you are creating a new page centered around the keyword: "Organization Optimization”:

• Page Title (H1) (Max. 70 Characters): Organization Optimization Through [Your Company’s Name]
• Section Header (H2): How Can [Your Company]’s Technology Help Your Organization Optimization?
• Page URL: https://www.yourwebsite.com/organization-optimization-technology
• Main Content (Within the first 200 words): “Effective organization optimization can help improve your employee experience, company culture...”
• Image ALT text: organization-optimization-through-technology

• Meta Description (Max. 150 characters): Learn more about how [Your Company]’s technology for organization optimization can benefit your business.

Optimize Image ALT Tags

Every image on your website needs to have an alt tag or alternate tag. These tags provide a description of the image if a user cannot view it for one reason or another (i.e. a slow connection, an error, etc.) These tags can be crawled and indexed, thereby helping your rank for the included keywords, and chances of being found by your buyer personas.

Additional Educational SEO Resources:

• Search Engine Optimization Kit (HubSpot)
• How Do I Rank Higher in Search Engines? (IMPACT)
• Learning SEO from the Experts (HubSpot)
• A Step-By-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO (HubSpot)
• How to Create a Landing Page (HubSpot)

With these areas in line, your website will be fully-equipped to attract, convert, and nurture people into leads that are informed and ready to talk to your sales team.

If your website is not set up to be successfully found, perform like a well-oiled machine, and seamlessly gather contact information and enter them into your database, there will be no leads for your sales team to even begin with.

Keep Going! 

The content above is an excerpt from our guide, The Ultimate Inbound Marketing & Sales Playbook. In the full version, you'll learn:  

• The benefits of inbound marketing
• How to get email marketing right
• The website's role in the sales funnel
• How to approach inbound leads via mail
• Using social media for sales
• Using content to delight & renew customers
• And so much more!

Get your free copy here or simply click the "keep reading" button below to keep learning.