Good SEO starts with a bit of DIY.

Sure, there are loads of experts and agencies out there that specialise in the field, and many of them do a great job.

But there’s actually plenty you can do yourself before you even need to look for an external supplier to help with your SEO.
<h2>Get your SEO checklist</h2>
To get you started on your next SEO DIY project, we’ve put together a top 20 checklist.
<ol>
 	<li><strong>Do your research</strong>—Identify key search terms, words and phrases, and check out competitors’ sites.</li>
 	<li><strong>Work out where you are now</strong>—As soon as possible, keep a regular record of where your site currently ranks in search results, using various words, phrases and questions.</li>
 	<li><strong>Work out where you want to be</strong>—Define your goals early on so you can measure your progress and adjust your strategy as you go along.</li>
 	<li><strong>Make your content relevant</strong>—Search engines provide the most relevant results to a searcher’s query, so write content based on what people might search for.</li>
 	<li><strong>Improve the quality of your content</strong>—Publish helpful, useful articles, videos and other types of media that people will want to engage with.</li>
 	<li><strong>Think about user experience</strong>—Make sure your site is easy to navigate, with plenty of relevant internal links to keep users on your page for longer.</li>
 	<li><strong>Ensure your site is responsive</strong>—Is your website designed to resize for viewing on desktop, tablet and mobile devices? It should be.</li>
 	<li><strong>Include plenty of internal links</strong>—This helps pushes traffic around your site, building higher ‘trust signals’ for Google, and gives your audience more to read.</li>
 	<li><strong>Write meta descriptions</strong>—This short paragraph of text under your page’s URL in search results can really improve the chance of someone clicking on it.</li>
 	<li><strong>Include title tags</strong>—These few key words describing the page and your brand name tell visitors and search engines what your site is about in the most succinct way possible.</li>
 	<li><strong>Tag your images</strong>—Search engines cannot ‘see’ images but they can ‘read’, so it’s important to describe any pictures you upload to your site.</li>
 	<li><strong>Create evergreen content</strong>—More thoughtful and practical advice-based articles can create better results over the long term. Top 20 list, anyone?</li>
 	<li><strong>Consider your domain name</strong>—Having a ‘keyword-rich’ domain name can improve ranking but can also lead to closer scrutiny by search engines.</li>
 	<li><strong>Think about headlines</strong>—Make headlines as snappy, attractive and descriptive as possible, and stay away from clickbait.</li>
 	<li><strong>Turn on comments</strong>—This helps generate a community of engaged users and, whatever their opinion of your content, you’ll know it’s being read.</li>
 	<li><strong>Go social</strong>—By using social media channels as a genuine way to interact with customers, you can help generate interest in your brand and drive traffic to your site.</li>
 	<li><strong>Watch your on-site advertising</strong>—Intrusive ads can destroy the pleasure of viewing your content and also slow your site down (not good for SEO).</li>
 	<li><strong>Avoid keyword stuffing</strong>—Some search engines will actually penalise you for obviously overusing certain keywords on your pages.</li>
 	<li><strong>Be aware of duplicated content</strong>—If two sites publish identical content, search engines will only index one of those pages.</li>
 	<li><strong>Don’t hide links and text</strong>—Doing things like hiding white keyword-stuffed text on a white background or hiding a link in a full stop is likely to be punished by search engines.</li>
</ol>
Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way up the rankings in no time!