Here’s a checklist I use to check articles after publication. The checklist is based on actual experience of problems encountered.
I did not specify uniqueness check and AI generation check on purpose, it is assumed that such checks are already passed before publication.
You can add them for your convenience.
I have listed the items step by step. More details on each item can be found in the file.
I use JS bookmarklets to check each item. I’ll do a separate post about it later.
Checklist articles after release
- Title, H1, Description
- URL verification
- Adaptability and cross-browser
- Author
- Headers
- Hreflings and langs
- Internal relinking
- Images
- Microdata
- Content brief implementation.
- Affiliate Links
- Text and content
- Access for scanning and indexing
To understand after publishing (modifying) whether a page is “good” or not, you need to check the following items:
Title, H1, Description
Check the availability of Title, Description, H1, they must be filled out, do not contain spelling errors, correspond to the “Content brief”. Date, month and year, if any, should be up to date.
URL verification
The URL should be human-readable and match the site structure and page type
Adaptability and cross-browser
Visually check the page, see the correctness of fonts, layout of blocks, tables, images. Blocks of text, tables, images should be displayed correctly in popular browsers and devices (Iphone, Android, Mac, Windows, Safari, Chrome)
Author
Check if the author is present on the page. The link to the author’s page should be open for scanning and indexing and should not contain noindex, nofollow, noopener, referrer tags.
Headers
All headings should have a logical, consistent structure. H1 should not have duplicates, there should be no blank headings.
Internal relinking. The page should contain text linking. Anchors and links should correspond to the “Content brief”. Internal links should be open for scanning and indexing and should not contain noindex, nofollow, noopener, referrer tags. If the page contains links to external sources for trust, they should also be open for crawling by the bot.
Hreflings and langs
The tag lang in the header must match the language version of the site. Attributes of hreflengs must be correct, hreflengs must have correct linking.
Internal relinking
The page should contain text linking. Anchors and links should correspond to the “Content brief”. Internal links should be open for scanning and indexing and should not contain noindex, nofollow, noopener, referrer tags. If the page contains links to external sources for trust, they should also be open for crawling by the bot.
Images
All images should contain Alt that should describe the corresponding block and match the text.
Microdata
The page must have micro markup that corresponds to the page type. The code of the microdata must not contain errors or validation warnings.
Content brief implementation
We open the “Content brief” and check the keywords and their number, make sure that there is no overspam, LSI, basic recommendations of the “Content brief”, other requirements.
Affiliate Links
Affiliate links should open in a new tab, contain noindex, nofollow noopener tags, open with a layer, lead to the right BC, the final address should give 200 server response and under each locale contain the correct link. (affiliate links should be checked by sales department or content, not SEO)
Text and content
The text should be informative, should not contain grammatical errors, water, cover the main intent of the user. It should be written for people.
The text should use words emphasizing expertise, for example: based on our research, taking into account the user rating, etc. (also, should be checked not by SEO specialists, but by Content department)
Access for scanning and indexing
Open the page and make sure that it is available for scanning and indexing. Check the indexing status. If the page is not indexed, then send it to Google Search Console for crawling