Does the content meet user needs, goals, and interests?

Does the content meet business goals?

For how long will the content be useful? When should it expire? Has its usefulness already expired?

Is the content timely and relevant?

Is the content understandable to customers?

Is the content organized logically & coherently?

Is the content correct?

Does the content contain factual errors, typos, or grammatical errors?

Do images, video, and audio meet technical standards, so they are clear?

Does the content use the most appropriate techniques to influence or engage customers?

Does the content execute those techniques effectively?

Does the content use too many or too few techniques for the context?

Does the content include all of the information customers need or might want about a topic?

Does the content include too much or too little information about a topic for the context?

Does the content consistently reflect the editorial or brand voice?

Does its tone adjust appropriately to the context — for example, sales versus customer service?

Does the content convey the appropriate editorial and brand qualities?

Does the content seem to have a style? If so, does the content adhere to it consistently?

Does the content read, look, or sound as though it’s professionally crafted?

Is the content easy to scan or read?

Is the content in a usable format, including headings, bulleted lists, tables, white space, or similar techniques, as appropriate to the content?

Does the content have the appropriate metadata?

Does the content follow search engine optimization (SEO) guidelines — such as using keywords — without sacrificing quality in other areas?

Can customers find the content when searching using relevant keywords?

• Ensure that all pages on the site can be reached by a link from another findable page. The referring link should include either text or, for images, an alt attribute, that is relevant to the target page. Crawlable links are <a> tags with an href attribute.
• Provide a sitemap file with links that point to the important pages on your site. Also provide a page with a human-readable list of links to these pages (sometimes called a site index or site map page).
• Limit the number of links on a page to a reasonable number (a few thousand at most).
• Make sure that your web server correctly supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature directs your web server to tell Google if your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.
• Use the robots.txt file on your web server to manage your crawling budget by preventing crawling of infinite spaces such as search result pages. Keep your robots.txt file up to date. Learn how to manage crawling with the robots.txt file. Test the coverage and syntax of your robots.txt file using the robots.txt Tester.

• ​Ask Google to crawl your pages.
• Make sure that any sites that should know about your pages are aware your site is online.

• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• Ensure that your <title> elements and alt attributes are descriptive, specific, and accurate.
• Design your site to have a clear conceptual page hierarchy.
• Follow our recommended best practices for images, video, and structured data.
• When using a content management system (for example, Wix or WordPress), make sure that it creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.
• To help Google fully understand your site’s contents, allow all site assets that would significantly affect page rendering to be crawled: for example, CSS and JavaScript files that affect the understanding of the pages. The Google indexing system renders a web page as the user would see it, including images, CSS, and JavaScript files. To see which page assets that Googlebot cannot crawl use the URL Inspection tool; to debug directives in your robots.txt file, use the robots.txt Tester tool.
• Allow search bots to crawl your site without session IDs or URL parameters that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
• Make your site’s important content visible by default. Google is able to crawl HTML content hidden inside navigational elements such as tabs or expanding sections, however we consider this content less accessible to users, and believe that you should make your most important information visible in the default page view.
• Make a reasonable effort to ensure that advertisement links on your pages do not affect search engine rankings. For example, use robots.txt, rel="nofollow", or rel="sponsored" to prevent advertisement links from being followed by a crawler.

• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. If you must use images for textual content, use the alt attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.
• Ensure that all links go to live web pages. Use valid HTML.
• Optimize your page loading times. Fast sites make users happy and improve the overall quality of the web (especially for those users with slow Internet connections). Google recommends that you use tools like PageSpeed Insights and Webpagetest.org to test the performance of your page.
• Design your site for all device types and sizes, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Use the Mobile-Friendly Test to test how well your pages work on mobile devices, and get feedback on what needs to be fixed.
• Ensure that your site appears correctly in different browsers.
• If possible, secure your site’s connections with HTTPS. Encrypting interactions between the user and your website is a good practice for communication on the web.
• Ensure that your pages are useful for readers with visual impairments, for example, by testing usability with a screen-reader.

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
• Don’t deceive your users.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you, or to a Google employee. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
• Think about what makes your website unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field.

• ​Automatically generated content​
• Participating in link schemes​
• Creating pages with little or no original content​
• ​Cloaking​
• ​Sneaky redirects​
• ​Hidden text or links​
• ​Doorway pages​
• ​Scraped content​
• Participating in affiliate programs without adding sufficient value​
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords​
• Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware
• Abusing structured data markup
• Sending automated queries to Google

• Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears
• Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site

• Spacing: Is spacing consistent across the site (i.e., did you stick to that 8px grid, or let a rogue 18px in there)? Do all elements have enough breathing room?
• Colors: Have you stuck to a consistent, harmonious color palette? Are all instances of the brand blue actually the brand blue?
• Shadows: If you used drop shadows, is the light source consistent for each and every one? Did you use the same blur, opacity, and spread values?
• Typography: Is your font stack logical and consistent (i.e., is there a reason that element is set in a sans)? Are your heading sizes consistent? Have you used proper (not faux) italics and bolding? Do all text links look right? Is all text both legible and readable?
• Imagery: Do any images look blurry, pixelated, or otherwise funky? Are any images broken or crazily heavy in terms of file size? Do all non-decorative images have alt tags?
• Logo: It’s (usually) just another image, but it’s so important it warrants its own step. Is it the latest version? Is it crisp (not blurry or pixelated)?

• Fonts
• Colors/gradients
• Images
• Logo

• Web forms (check that the forms work and that submitted information goes to the right place)
• Autoresponders
• Marketing emails (MailChimp, Constant Contact, HubSpot, drip campaigns, etc.)
• RSS feeds
• Ecommerce
• CRM
• CMS

• Top navigation links
• Footer links
• Social media links (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• Logo (typically links to the home page)

• h1–h6 (heading tags)
• p (paragraph tags)
• ul/ol (unordered and ordered Lists)

• <article>
• <aside>
• <details>
• <figcaption>
• <figure>
• <footer>
• <header>
• <main>
• <mark>
• <nav>
• <section>
• <summary>
• <time>

• Define the page’s central topic
• Keep it under 70 characters in length (including spaces)
• Use relevant keywords
• Put important keywords in the front of the title

• Include keywords that describe the page
• Don’t go over 160 characters
• Write your description for people, not robots. (Google doesn’t use descriptions in web rankings).