[RECIPE] Setup the basic technical

SEO foundations for your website

Last Updated / Reviewed: March 18th, 2022

Goal: To have a solid technical SEO foundation on your website, touching all bases like
URL structure, meta tags, robots.txt, sitemap, content, tools, data collection, and more.

Prerequisites or requirements: Part of this recipe covers how to perform these tasks
using WordPress but similar steps can be taken on any other CMS. Many times the
SOPs offer these alternatives as well.

Why this is important: Having the right tools and structure in place will make it much
easier for you to rank in search engines. A technically poor website will be harder to
rank than an optimized one.

When this is done: Usually only once per website/domain. But you can revisit some
sections of the recipe every 6 months to make sure everything is still optimal.

Who does this: The person responsible for SEO.

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❏ Step 1 - Set up an SEO-friendly Wordpress configuration

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Outcome: Yoast is installed and configured, and your website is using the ideal
permalink and homepage structure.

Special instructions: If your Wordpress blog already has indexed blog posts, skip the
“Set Up Permalinks” section and instead replace that section with SOP050- Migrating
an existing WordPress website towards SEO-friendly URLs.

Notes: While this SOP covers how to install Yoast on WordPress, Yoast is also
available for platforms like Magento, Drupal, and others.

❏ Step 2 - Set up Google Search Console

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Outcome: You have verified Google Search Console for your website.

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❏ Step 3 - Set up your Robots.txt file

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Outcome: You’ve created and added the perfect robots.txt file to your site, and you’ve
validated it in Google Search Console.

❏ Step 4 - Set up your XML Sitemap

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Outcome: You’ve got a properly structured sitemap on your website and you’ve
submitted it to Google Search Console.

Special instructions: If you are using WordPress and Yoast, you will only need to
follow that specific section of the SOP.

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❏ Step 5 - Create an automated backup of your Google
Search Console data

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Outcome: You’ve backed up your search console data for the last 2 months and now
have Google Sheets backing up your data every month on auto-pilot.

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