SEO used to have two audiences: readers and Google. Now there’s a third — AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. But most SEO checklists still only cover the first two.
This checklist covers all three.
48 checks, organized by what they actually fix, so you always know what to work on next.
This is the exact process we use at Backlinko to rank for super competitive keywords, like “google ranking factors”:
And it’s driven sustained organic traffic over time:
What to Do With This Checklist
You don’t need to implement everything on this checklist.
Just work through the checks that are most relevant for your site:
Find the pages on your site that bring you the most traffic
See if your traffic is increasing or decreasing (and by how much)
Identify other sites and search engines that send you traffic
Understand your average engagement rate, page views, and time on site
Pro tip: Connect GA4 with GSC. When you do, you’ll see helpful SEO information right inside your GA4 account.
If you haven’t used the tool before, check out our guide to GA4.
4. Set Up an SEO Plugin (WordPress and Shopify)
If you’re on WordPress or Shopify, an SEO plugin handles a lot of technical setup for you — meta tags, sitemaps, robots.txt files — without touching code.
Yoast is a solid default and works on both platforms.
Rank Math is a similar free alternative for WordPress if you want to compare before choosing.
Install one, then run through its guided setup to configure your site’s core SEO settings.
5. Identify Your Project’s KPIs
Before you dive into the rest of this checklist, decide how you’ll measure success.
Pick 1-2 KPIs that matter most for your site, and set up a way to track them from day one. That way you’re not guessing later whether any of this worked.
Common ones to choose from:
Organic traffic: Track in GA4 (Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, filtered to Organic Search)
Keyword rankings: Track in a rank tracker for your 5-10 most important target keywords (more about this in the next check)
Backlink growth: Track referring domains over time in a backlink tool
Conversions from organic traffic: Set up a goal/event in GA4 tied to sign-ups, sales, or leads
If you’re not sure where to start, organic traffic and keyword rankings are the easiest to set up and give you the clearest read on whether your SEO work is paying off.
Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. And in this checklist we’ll show you how to quickly find relevant keywords that your potential customers search for.
8. Identify Your Target Market
Before you can find the right keywords to target, you need to understand who is searching for them. And what they are looking to learn/gain from the content they find (also known as the search intent).
Consider:
Who your ideal customer is: What does the customer profile look like of someone buying your product or service? What language do they use and what kind of content do they consume?
What their pain points are: What problems are they facing? How can you help solve those issues?
What platforms they hang out on: Are they searching for things related to what you sell? Or are they more likely to be active on social media?
What they search for: If they are actively searching for your kinds of products/services/content, what terms do they use?
The next steps will show you how to find these terms.
9. Discover Long Tail Keywords with “Google Suggest”
But don’t press enter. Instead, check out the keywords that Google shows you:
(These are known as “Google Suggest” keywords.)
Because these keywords come straight from Google, you know real people are searching for them.
But Google Suggest doesn’t show search volume or difficulty, and results are personalized to your own search history and location. So treat these as a starting point, not a target list.
Once you have a handful, head to #10 to turn them into a full keyword list with real metrics.
10. Expand Your Keyword List with a Keyword Tool
Once you have a few seed terms, a keyword tool can quickly expand that into a longer list of related keywords, along with metrics like search volume and cost per click.
For more advanced filtering (search intent, keyword difficulty, grouping by topic), a paid tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool or Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer goes further.
11. Tap Into Online Communities
Reddit, Quora, and niche forums are full of people describing their problems in their own words. This often surfaces keyword phrasing you won’t find in a keyword tool.
Here’s how to mine them:
Go to Reddit’s search bar or Google, using site:reddit.com (this limits results to just Reddit) plus your topic and a problem phrase in quotes (quotes tell Google to match that exact wording). For example: digital marketing “how to”.
Sort by “Top” and skim the first 10–15 threads
Note the exact phrases people use to describe their problem, not just the topic. (This is often close to how people phrase questions to AI tools too. You’ll reuse this same research in #42.)
Check the comments. Commenters frequently raise a more specific or different angle than the original post.
Useful search phrases to combine with your topic:
“how to”
“I wish”
“where can I”
12. Find Low-Competition Keywords Worth Targeting
Once you have a list of keyword ideas, narrow it down to the ones that are realistic to rank for, especially if your site doesn’t have much authority yet.
Most keyword tools show you search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click (CPC), and search engine results page (SERP) features for any term you search.
Now it’s time to optimize your content using a handful of tested on-page SEO techniques.
15. Include Your Keyword in Your URL
Your URL helps Google — and AI tools — understand what your page is about.
It also affects clicks. Backlinko’s CTR study found that URLs containing the target keyword get a 45% higher click-through rate (CTR) than URLs without it.
For example, the target keyword for this page is “SEO checklist,” so the URL is backlinko.com/seo-checklist.
16. Keep Your URL Structure Clean
Avoid unnecessary parameters, session IDs, or dates in your URLs.
They make pages harder to read and can create duplicate content issues.
Use hyphens (not underscores) to separate words, and keep everything lowercase.
For example: backlinko.com/seo-checklist is easy to read and understand.
backlinko.com/index.php?id=4829&cat=12 is not.
17. Front-Load Your Keyword in Your Title Tag
Put your keyword at the front of your title tag when it reads naturally.
If it doesn’t, don’t force it. An awkward title tag that puts readers off isn’t worth it for a small placement gain.
Pro tip: Download our free resources to write title tags that work:
Title tag modifiers are words and phrases to add to your title tag to make it more appealing to searchers.
Like:
Best
Top
Checklist
Definitive guide
[current year]
Full review
When you add these, you can stand out from others in the search results. And show searchers why your content is the right page for them.
19. Use Your Keyword within the First 150 Words
Putting your keyword at the start of your post makes sense. Because you want search engines, AI tools and users to quickly understand what the content is about.
This is useful from an SEO perspective. But it also reassures users they’re in the right place.
So that they keep reading.
For example, for our SEO tools post, you can see that we use the term “SEO Tools” right off the bat:
20. Make Your Headings Easy To Scan
Your H2s and H3s should work like a table of contents.
Someone should be able to scan just the headings and understand what the page covers, without reading the body copy.
This helps readers decide what to read, and helps Google and AI tools understand how your content is organized.
21. Optimize Your Images
Search engines and AI tools still rely heavily on your image filenames and alt text to understand what an image shows and why it’s there, even as their own visual recognition improves.
When you save an image, use a filename that briefly describes what it shows, with words separated by hyphens. e.g. spinach-omelette.png.
Then, when you add the image to your page, give it a descriptive alt tag.
22. Include Related Terms Throughout Your Content
Instead of repeating the same keyword over and over (which can look like keyword stuffing), include related terms and natural variations throughout your content.
For example, if you’re targeting “how to start a blog,” you’d mention that exact phrase a few times, along with natural variations like:
How to launch a blog
Starting a blog
How to create a blog
And related terms your content would naturally touch on:
Writing
Website
Content creation
You can find ideas for related terms with a keyword tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.
Related terms like these aren’t a ranking factor on their own. But they help confirm topical relevance for Google, and for AI tools trying to judge whether your page fully covers a topic.
23. Use External Links
Link out to relevant, authoritative sources throughout your content. Such as when you quote a statistic.
Or when you’re using a term you don’t have your own article on already, but you want to provide a useful resource for your readers.
For example, in our article on title tags, we linked to a Pew Research Center study:
This won’t necessarily improve your rankings, but it shows Google and AI tools that your content is well-referenced and trustworthy.
24. Use Internal Links
Whenever you publish a new piece of content, try and link to 2-5 other (relevant) pages on your site.
For example, note how we use the anchor text “on-page SEO” in this internal link:
This tells search engines and users that the page we’re linking to is about on-page SEO.
It helps AI crawlers discover more of your site, and gives Google helpful context on what the linked page is about. It also tells the reader where the linked page will take them.
Pro tip: Use descriptive, relevant anchor text in your internal links, not vague phrases like “click here.”
Content Checklist
Here’s how to structure your content so people, Google, and AI tools actually engage with it:
25. Chunk Your Content to Maximize Readability
No one likes reading giant walls of text:
That’s why we always break our content into easy-to-read chunks, like this:
These chunks keep the bounce rate low. And keep readers on our pages for longer.
So that they can get maximum value from your content.
They also make it easier for AI tools to pull a clean, accurate quote when summarizing your page.
26. Focus on Content Formats That Are Working Right Now
What’s trending in the world of content (like in any industry) is always changing.
Staying on top of what’s working right now is your best chance at creating content people actually want to consume.
For example, with the rise of AI writing tools leading to a lot of low-quality content out there, it’s clear that people value:
For example, a while ago we published this video SEO guide on our site:
We could have published a generic piece of content like “25 Tips for Video SEO” and covered every tip already on the SERP.
Instead, we created a guide that covered everything about that topic, backed by real testing and results.
It also included insights from Brian Dean’s own experience building a successful YouTube channel, something other articles couldn’t replicate.
That kind of depth is a key reason the guide has held a strong ranking for its primary keyword.
28. Use Multimedia
You might notice that this post contains lots of images.
We do this for two main reasons:
First, it just makes for better content. Visuals can enhance what you write about.
Second, images and other forms of multimedia can help content rank better.
So we recommend using these forms of visual content where you can:
Images
Charts
Infographics
Videos
Interactive polls and quizzes
Technical SEO Checklist
Technical SEO can make or break your rankings. Fortunately, fixing technical SEO problems isn’t that hard. Especially if you follow the items on this checklist.
29. Identify Crawling and Indexing Errors
A crawl error means that Google and its search engine bots are having trouble viewing a page on your site.
And if it can’t view your page, it’s not gonna rank for anything.
Indexing errors mean Google can find your content. But it’s not indexing it for some reason.
Which still means no ranking.
You can easily find these errors in GSC’s “Indexing” report:
If you notice Google is having trouble accessing one of your important webpages (for example, robots.txt is blocking search engine crawlers), you’ll want to fix that ASAP.
30. Find Out How Google Views Your Pages
Sometimes users can see everything on your page, but Google can’t.
Again:
If Google can’t fully access your page, it won’t rank.
That’s why we recommend using GSC’s “Inspect URL” feature.
Just enter a page from your site at the top of GSC.
When you do, you’ll see your page from Google’s point of view:
If you see “indexing not allowed,” it usually means the page has a noindex tag telling Google not to index it — sometimes added on purpose, sometimes by mistake during a migration or CMS change.
If you see “different canonical URLs,” Google picked a different “main” version of the page than the one you intended.
If your site isn’t mobile optimized, it’s not going to rank very well.
Here’s how to check:
Go to PageSpeed Insights, paste in your URL, and hit “Analyze.” Make sure you’re on the Mobile tab, which tests your page the way a phone would load it. Check the SEO section too, it flags basics like a missing viewport tag or text that’s too small to read.
32. Fix Broken Links
Broken links are not good for your SEO, or your user experience.
So you definitely want to find any broken links on your site and fix them.
And it can help you land rich snippets in search results — the enhanced results with star ratings, prices, or FAQ dropdowns, instead of just a plain blue link and description.
Use Google’s Rich Results Test to check whether your markup is eligible for rich results.
AI has changed a lot about how people find information. But SEO isn’t dead, despite the headlines.
And links are still one of the clearest signals of authority a site can earn.
Building links isn’t easy, but it’s worth the effort. Here’s how.
36. Contribute Expert Quotes to Media Outlets
Media outlets (from newspapers to blogs) are always looking for sources for stories they’re publishing.
If you’re a subject matter expert, you can be a source for those stories. And in return, you can get a link to your website.
A few platforms connect writers with sources, including HARO, Featured, and MentionMatch (formerly Help a B2B Writer).
You can also run searches like “#journorequest” along with your niche on social media to find potential opportunities.
37. Create Linkable Assets for Journalists (Digital PR)
In a similar vein to becoming a source for a journalist’s article, you can also create content directly for journalists. Or for them to hopefully pick up in their own stories.
This is often called digital PR, and one method is to create linkable assets (or link bait).
These are pieces of content that are super easy to link to. Either because they reveal interesting data, contain original insights and reports, or are otherwise entertaining.
For example, here’s a link report from Semrush of our site:
Some of these links will be nearly impossible to replicate.
(For example, links from sites we have relationships with.)
But many are pretty easy to copy (or at least take inspiration from).
Like links your competitors have in roundup posts. Or from podcast appearances.
39. Become a Podcast Guest
This is a bit like guest posting. But instead of contributing an article, you go on a podcast as a guest.
Podcasts almost always link back to their guests in the show notes, so it’s a natural way to pick up a backlink.
Along with some targeted, engaged visitors who heard you speak.
Pro tip: Before going on a podcast, look up the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to confirm it has real past episodes, and never share your screen or download anything during setup. A known scam sends fake invites — usually a generic-sounding show, a free email address, and an unrealistic payment offer — to steal your accounts during a “tech check” call.
40. Mention Influencers In Your Blog Posts
This process couldn’t be simpler:
First, mention influential bloggers in your content.
Then, let them know you mentioned them.
(Seriously, that’s it.)
For example, when we published our list of SEO tools, we let the founder of each tool know that we featured them:
And, as you can see, they happily shared our content on social media.
It’s not always easy to directly connect with influencers in your space.
But it can be a great way to get them to share your content with their audience. And hopefully link back to you.
AI SEO Checklist
You’ve already built for readers and Google throughout this checklist.
This section is about measuring whether that work is actually showing up in AI answers too.
41. Determine How Your Audience Is Using AI Tools
AI search is not one thing. Your audience might use Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode in Search, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or something else entirely.
You don’t need to optimize for every single one to start seeing results.
Begin by listing the AI tools your audience is most likely to use.
Talk to sales and support, scan customer surveys, and search “[your industry] ChatGPT” on Reddit and X to see which tools people mention by name.
Then pick two or three surfaces to treat as “primary” for now.
Also, make sure AI tools can actually see your site.
Every website has a file called robots.txt that can block certain bots from visiting — sometimes on purpose, sometimes by mistake.
You can check yours by typing yoursite.com/robots.txt into your browser.
Look for “Disallow” next to the retrieval crawlers: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity.
If those are blocked, you can’t show up in those tools no matter how good your content is.
42. Document Relevant Prompts
Use our AI Visibility Tracker template to log your prompts, rank, cited sources, and sentiment — everything you’ll need for #43 through #46 in one place.
Start by filling in your real prompts. Pull phrases from:
Sales and support calls (“What tools do you use alongside us?”)
Product reviews (“I switched from [competitor] because…”)
Reddit, Quora, and niche forums in your industry
Rewrite those into natural AI prompts. For example:
“Best [category] tools for [audience]”
“[Competitor] vs [your brand] for [use case]”
“Is [your brand] legit for [goal]”
Alternatively, you can use Semrush’s Prompt Research tool to see what real, relevant prompts are being used across various AI tools.
These become your baseline prompts for testing AI visibility and for planning content that actually matches how people search in chat tools.
43. Benchmark Your Brand’s AI Visibility
Pick your core prompt list and run each one in your AI visibility tools. For every tool and prompt, log:
Whether your brand is mentioned at all (this should be easy with the right tools)
Whether any of your pages, docs, or videos are used as citations
You can do this manually in a spreadsheet or use Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit to speed things up.
Once you have a baseline, you can see which prompts and models already “understand” your brand and where you are invisible.
Set a recurring reminder to rerun the same prompts monthly. AI answers shift as models update, so a one-time check goes stale fast.
Track your visibility rate (the % of prompts where your brand shows up) as a single number over time, so you can see whether you’re actually gaining ground.
That makes the rest of your AI SEO work much more focused.
44. Log Which Sources AI Tools Cite in Your Category
AI tools pull from a mix of review sites, publishers, documentation, YouTube, Reddit threads, and marketplace listings.
Your job is to figure out which of those sources they seem to trust most in your niche.
As you benchmark prompts, note every domain that appears in citations and group them by type:
Review and comparison sites
Big publishers and niche blogs
Forums and communities
Vendor docs and help centers
Marketplaces or directories
Patterns will show up quickly. Maybe Google AI leans on big publishers while ChatGPT leans on product docs and Reddit threads.
These recurring sites are your “AI favorites” and deserve a spot on your PR, link building, and partnership roadmap.
45. Create AI-Friendly Answer Hubs
Most AI tools like to pull from pages that answer a question cleanly and cover the topic in a way that is easy to quote.
That is where “answer hubs” come in.
The bonus: content built this way tends to satisfy readers and rank well with Google too.
Pick your most important prompt themes, like “what is [category],” “[category] vs [category],” and “best [category] for [audience].”
Build or refine one strong page for each theme that:
Starts with a clear, plain-language definition or answer
Covers key subquestions with scannable H2s and H3s
Includes simple tables, bullet lists, and short summaries that are easy to copy into an AI answer
Backs up claims with data, examples, and up-to-date screenshots
You can think of these hubs as the pages you would want a model to quote when it explains your space to someone.
46. Monitor Brand Sentiment in AI Answers
How these tools describe you matters just as much as whether they mention you.
Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit has a Perception report you can use to quickly see how your brand is being talked about across AI tools.
If you don’t have any AI visibility tracking tools, do this: For the prompts where your brand appears, copy a few key lines that describe your product, pros and cons, or any caveats.
Tag each mention as positive, neutral, or negative, and note what sources the model is using to justify that framing.
Then compare that language with what shows up on:
Review platforms
Reddit and other forums
Third-party blog posts and roundups
If a model keeps repeating an outdated complaint or misses your strongest proof points, that is a signal to improve the upstream sources.
That might mean updating your own documentation, refreshing high-traffic reviews, or pitching new case studies to the publishers and directories that AI tools already love to cite.
A site with lots of low-value pages can hurt your SEO.
But “just delete everything old” isn’t the right instinct either. Not every underperforming page should go.
Before deleting a page, check its GSC data for impressions and clicks.
If a page gets real traffic (even a little), consider improving or consolidating it instead of deleting it.
If it gets genuinely nothing and adds no value, it’s a good candidate to remove or noindex (tell Google not to index the page, without deleting it outright).
Pro tip: To noindex a page, add <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> to the page’s <head>. If you’re on WordPress, you don’t need to touch any code. Most SEO plugins have a simple noindex toggle right in the page’s settings.
Old services pages no longer relevant to your business
48. Update and Relaunch Outdated Content
Old, underperforming blog posts are often one of the fastest wins available. Updating and relaunching them can outperform writing something new from scratch.
Updates generally fall into three tiers:
Optimizations: small tweaks — adding internal links, updating a meta tag, swapping an image
Upgrades: 15-70% changes to the core content — refreshed stats, new sections, better visuals
Rewrites: more than 70% changed — a genuine overhaul of structure, angle, or approach
Most posts only need an optimization or upgrade, not a full rewrite.
For example, after updating our SEO Trends article in April 2025 — refreshed stats, better formatting, new examples — organic traffic to that page grew 70.43%.
Look through your older, underperforming posts for candidates. Even a modest upgrade can deliver outsized results.
Put This SEO Checklist Into Action
You don’t need to check every box today.
Look at which category on the checklist template has the most unchecked boxes.
That’s usually where your biggest opportunity is hiding.
Pick the single item in that category that would make the biggest difference, and do that first.
Ready to take what you’ve learned above a step further?
Check out these guides on some of the most important aspects of any SEO strategy:
Technical SEO: Learn how to master the most important technical elements of your website for higher rankings and more traffic.
On-page SEO: Understand what it takes to optimize a page for search engines and users.
Link building: Discover top strategies to take your SEO to the next level by building high-quality links.
AI Optimization: Get the full rundown on how to appear in AI answers and citations.
Backlinko is owned by Semrush. We’re still obsessed with bringing you world-class SEO insights, backed by hands-on experience. Unless otherwise noted, this content was written by either an employee or paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
