Awesome checklist for SEO

Technical factors

• Correct robots.txt:
  • Whether the main mirror for “Yandex” (Host directive) is set correctly. Frequent error: the main mirror specified in Host directive does not match the actual one.
  • Unnecessary and service sections are closed from indexing (site search results, registration and authorization pages, filters and sorting, administrative sections, page cache, logs, print versions, etc.).
  • Specified separate User-Agent for Yandex and Google robots.

• Correct sitemap.xml:
  • A link to the xml-version of the site map is given in robots.txt.
  • Yandex Webmaster or Google Search Console shows no errors.
  • c. Page priorities (priority element) and last page refresh dates (lastmod element) are set correctly.
  • Excluded already indexed pages to direct robot to new ones (for sites with many pages).
  • Does not contain pages that are not allowed to be indexed.
  • The protocol of addresses in sitemap corresponds to the real one (it happens that when you move to https in sitemap there is a URL with http protocol).

• No technical double pages. Popular reasons for such takes:
  • The 301 redirect with www (or vice versa) is not configured for a site to be accessible via only one protocol.
  • The homepage is available from index.php, index.html at the end.
  • Addresses without a slash at the end are not redirected to a similar URL with a slash (or vice versa).

• Canonical pages are set, i.e. on pages with parameters in the URL there is rel=canonical attribute with the preferred address. This is how search engines will understand that only the canonical page should be indexed. All references and behavioral factors from noncanonical pages are taken into account for this page.
  
• Pagination pages are marked with rel=prev rel=next attributes. This will help to understand the relationship between pages (in the case of Google). For “Yandex” it is better to use rel=canonical (if the content of pages is not very different from each other) or to specify the ordinal number of a page in title (if the content is unique, for example, in the news section listing). 
  
• Among the excluded pages there are no promoted ones. It often happens that pages are excluded from “Yandex” because they have no useful content. The reason may be insufficient quality of the page or just it will be considered a double of another page. For example, cards of different goods are considered as takes. Another example – pages from different sections of the site contain some content in the body of the page and are not indexed as duplicates of each other because of the same content in the cap and footer.
  
• The same number of pages is indexed in “Yandex” and Google. If the difference is more than 10%, then analyze which pages are in the index of one search and the other is missing.
  
• There are no broken links on the site:
  • No internal links to non-existing pages.
  • Nonexistent page gives the server code 404.
  • In counters visit of 404 pages is tracked and redirects for external links to non-existing pages of your site are set.

• There are no cyclic links, i.e. pages do not refer to themselves. You should deactivate such links or close them for robots via <span data-href>.
  
• No unnecessary redirects. This situation is often encountered – an internal link leads to a page that redirects to another page. But it is possible to put the right link at once without forcing robots to go through the “padding”. This will save the crawling budget, i.e. the number of pages that the robot allocates to bypass your site over a certain period.
  
• The Last Modified and If-Modified-Since headers are configured to let the search robot know if the page has changed since its last visit. If not, the robot will receive a recommendation not to visit it. This will improve the indexing of the site in Google, as the crawling budget will be spent on new or changed pages. In “Yandex” it may not work, because his robot perceives the headings as a recommendation rather than a mandatory instruction.
  
• No mixed content. If any page of a site with HTTPS protocol contains content transmitted via HTTP protocol, the page is considered only partially encrypted.
  
•  Configured friendly URLs:
  • URLs use words, not numeric-letter identifiers.
  • The length of the URL is preferably no more than 110 characters.
    Example:
    – a bad URL – example.com/index.php?id_catalog=88&page_id=14;
    – good URL – example.com/smart-watches

• Capital letters are not used in URLs. Due to engine configuration errors or at the discretion of the optimizer, it happens that addresses on the site contain capital letters. For example, example.com/Smart-Watches. But the same page will be available at example.com/smart-watches. And the problem is that for search engines it is two different addresses and duplicates of each other. Therefore it is better to stick lowercase letters in the URL. An address with uppercase letters may still appear in the index (for example, if someone puts a link to you like that) – in this case, set the redirect to the main address.
  
• No server errors. No 5XX status pages when site is being crawled. Otherwise there are errors related to .htaccess file or server. Possible causes may be hanging scripts or large number of server accesses. In either case, 5XX errors are a reason to contact your programmer and find a possible problem.
  
• There are no errors in the layout. Most sites do not have a perfectly valid html, but it is worth checking yours for gross errors and the correct order of elements. Search engines understand that invalid code is not equal to a bad site, but it is easier for them to process documents, layout of which meets the standards. 
  
• Micro markup has been introduced. Special semantic markup makes it easier for search engines to process information, promotes the appearance of an attractive snippet on the search, and in the case of similar product cards will improve their uniqueness. Markup is possible:
  • “breadcrumbs”;
  • contact information;
  • reviews;
  • product cards;
  • media content, etc.

• Open Graph markup has been implemented. Implementation of this markup will allow you to specify the title, description, photo and several other parameters that will be displayed in the snippet of the page when it is shed in social networks. Yandex” instructions on markup – link.
  
• The site is quickly loaded. Not every user who goes to your resource from search will wait until it is loaded. To speed up your site, do the following:
  • Enable GZIP compression.
  • Put the scripts and styles into separate files.
  • Shorten server response time.
  • Reduce HTML.
  • Use the browser cache.
  • Reduce the weight of images (but without losing quality).

• Adaptive design, mobile version or dynamic layout. The site should display correctly on any device – computer, tablet or phone. Search engines understand this too.
  
• The rel=alternate attribute is used for sites with mobile version, located on a separate domain or subdomain. For search engines to understand that these are two versions of the same site, it is necessary that on each page of the desktop version there is a link tag, indicating the corresponding mobile version of the page. For page example.com/folder-1 it’s looks like:
  <link rel=”alternate” media=”only screen and (max-width: 640px)” href=”http://m.example.com/folder-1″ >
  Google also recommends that you place rel=canonical attribute on your mobile page, indicating a similar desktop page. 
  
• The site is displayed correctly in different browsers. When changing the browser layout of the site should not “fall apart” and readability of materials should not become worse. Tools for checking: BrowserShots.
   
• The server withstands the load, otherwise in robots.txt the Crawl-delay directive is set, recommending the robot the optimal interval between page loads (in seconds).
  
• Markup of localized pages. On pages with different language versions, it is desirable to specify addresses of all language versions with rel=”alternate” attribute hreflang=”x”.
  
• There are no viruses or malicious code on the site. If your site may threaten the security of the user, it may be lowered in search results. 
  
• There are no site copies in the index. It happens that developers forget to close test domains from indexing, and the owner of the site gets a full copy of it in the index. There is no guarantee that the position of the main domain will not take the test.
  
• Documents weigh no more than 10 MB. PDF files or other documents posted on the site are also ranked in search, but if the file size exceeds 10 MB, Yandex will not be able to index it. Google also claims in its instructions that a large document size may be a hindrance to indexing, but does not name a specific size.
  
• Goals are set in analytics systems. Setting goals will help assess the effectiveness of the site. You can track orders, abandoned baskets, visits to certain pages and other events. With a multi-stage registration or order system, you can see which step users stop at most and simplify this step. Setting goals is also a good way to show search engines the usefulness of the site. Ordering goods, downloading files or other events that will be recorded in the systems of Yandex and Google analytics, indicate the interest of users to your business or site.

Internal optimization

This includes optimization of tags, meta tags, texts and pictures, internal links of the site. Internal optimization is the basis of a successful resource. And often good optimization is enough to get to the top (especially in regions).

• Optimize Title tag. A good page header – 30% success. What we check in Title:
  • Contains key phrases.
  • The keywords are closer to the beginning.
  • Corresponds to the content of the page.
  • Unique for each page.
  • Written attractively, not just keywords across the comma.
  • The same key is not repeated more than twice.

• Optimization of the Description meta-tag. Several SEO-specialists do not attach importance to this meta-tag. If you are not one of them, check it out:
  • Readable and attractive (can be displayed in the snippet on the search).
  • Up to 200 characters.
  • Should not copy the Title tag.
  • Unique on each page of the site.
  • Contains a key phrase.
  • You can also add emoji to draw attention to the issue.

• Filling Keywords tag. Conflicting point. Some specialists do not fill in this tag. Some other small part just can’t get enough of keywords. I’m for the golden mean – one key that matches the content of the page.
  • Should not contain +100500 characters of keyword entries.
  • Unique for each page.

• Optimization of H1 header. It is desirable that it is attractive to the user and contains a key phrase. Let’s check the following:
  • Is on each page and in the singular.
  • Contained in a blank tag without classes or other markup.
  • Located at the beginning of the page, not somewhere in the middle after H2-H3 tags (as it is sometimes can be found).

• Distribution of reference weight in favor of important pages. Increasing the weight of the page directly affects the result. Make sure that the maximum weight is on the home and promoted pages. Make sure there are no important pages that lose static weight. If an unpromoted page (for example, “Contacts”) gets into the number of pages leading by weight, then close with the script internal links to it.
  
• There are no “hanging nodes” – links that cause the static weight to leak out:
  • Lidogeneration buttons.
  • Active buttons for communication (phone, Skype, e-mail).
  • Links to unprotected documents and pdf-files. Weight is transferred from the page depending on the number of links on it.

• The site implemented “breadcrumbs”, which affect the formation of the navigation chain in the snippet and distribution of reference weight, as well as make navigation on the site more convenient for the user. We also check that the last element of “breadcrumbs” was inactive (otherwise – cyclic link).
  
• Internal links. On the site should be implemented blocks “Similar goods/Similar articles”, “Popular” and similar, relevant hyperlinks in the texts. At a minimum, the implementation of this item increases the value of the article and improves behavioral factors on the site. Another plus of hyperlinks is that it is possible to transfer weight to the pages being promoted and set the necessary anchors. As you know, the text of an anchor is as if added to the page text, so if it was not possible to include some important key in the document, you can add it in a hyperlink to that document. 
  
• Lack of hidden text. There should be no text that is not visible to visitors, but available for search robots. For example, it may be a list of key phrases in white font on a white background, text hidden under the scroll, or displayed off the screen using CSS. In “Yandex.Webmaster” will be an indication of the problem, if it is on your site.
  
• Fast links are formed in “Yandex.Webmaster”. For the first three search results “Yandex” can show additional links.  They cannot be set manually (“Yandex” forms them itself), but you can edit them. For example, you can remove a section from these links or select another name for a link. And it is also worth checking them out because if quick links for your site are not formed, it may indicate inconvenient navigation on the site or incomprehensible content of pages for search engines. Read the instructions from “Yandex”. Google also shows fast links, but you cannot influence them. We can only assume that their formation also requires an understandable and convenient structure of the site. 

• Optimization of images. To improve the ranking of the site pictures, sign them or place them as close as possible to the fragment of text they illustrate. In addition, the file name should be meaningful and correspond to the content of the image. For example, “flowers.jpg” rather than “2.jpg”.
  And don’t forget to make sure that the site photos are indexed by each of the search engines. A common error is that indexing of photos is blocked in robots.txt.
  
• ALT attribute in images. For all images must be filled alt attribute. There is not only a ranking in the image search, but also the possibility to write a relevant key phrase on the image placement page. 

Semantic kernel 

Properly selected key phrases are the key to success. Incorrect semantic kernel may cause absence of traffic on a project. It should cover as many user requests and their problems as possible. 

• Requests from all possible sources are collected. Popular mistake of novice optimizers is to collect from the left column of Yandex Wordstat. Where else to look for requests:
  • Right column in Wordstat.
  • Section “Search queries” in “Yandex.Webmaster” and report “Search phrases” in “Yandex.Metrics”.
  • Databases with SERP.
  • Websites of competitors.
  • Google Keywordplanner and the section “Analysis of search queries” in Google Search Console.

• Collected tips in “Yandex” and Google. Search hints are a good way to expand the semantic core. They are formed in two ways – from real user requests and automatic filling. For example, the hint “with beer” for “order pizza” query is generated based on real requests. But it happens that the hint is generated by an autocomplet.
  When hints are collected, it is important to separate real possible user requests from automatically generated hints. 
  
• Frequency jargon, errors, abbreviations or possible name variants are taken into account. Mikhail Slivinsky, in 2014, showed a good example with the search for a laptop snsv (so reads the logo ASUS upside down). The base frequency of the query “laptop snsv” more than a hundred.
  
• The semantic core is relevant. To check the relevance of semantics does not interfere, if it is collected long enough, and it is desirable to do it with a certain periodicity. Also double-check it within a month after the end of the seasonal peak.
  
• Non-targeted requests are excluded. These can be phrases with irrelevant toponyms, with inappropriate words (free of charge, abstract, download, independently, etc.) or related to other demand. For example, on request, “Ural” may look for a truck, motorcycle, mountains or region.

If you have an order with all this – define requests from the kernel, whose occurrences are not on the pages of the site or in the anchor list. It is possible that a new work front will appear here. 

Content

Approach correctly not only the formation of content, but also its design.

• Blog/articles. Information traffic can also be converted. Articles are not only additional traffic, but also a solution to a user’s problem, a demonstration of expertise and, as a result, increased confidence in the company. If it is expensive for you, see the next item. 
  
• FAQ section. This is a fast and inexpensive way to catch up with traffic. To do this, prepare answers to queries from the “how, why, how much, why” series and create a separate page for each of them to be able to set title and description. Most often these will be low-frequency queries, which will quickly get to the top.
  
• Tagged pages. These are sections-lists of goods/articles/announcements united by a common feature. For example, on the information resource about construction, it may be a section with all articles relating to the construction of a bath. In the online store of bags, it may be a section containing bags only black. 

What to check:
– The presence of tagged partitions in principle.
– SEO attributes of these sections – the ability to specify unique title and H1, meta tags, text, if necessary, friendly URLs.
– The presence of internal links to these sections.

• Examples of works. The section with examples of implementation of your products or services is an opportunity to show yourself from the best side and increase your trust, provide answers to possible questions of the user, increase the number of potential points of entry to the site. For a site with construction services, this may be a demonstration of the construction of a particular house. For a site that offers measuring instruments for quality control – a case for the implementation of equipment in a particular production.
  
• Regular publication of content. New publications on the site are both the creation of additional entry points, and a signal to search engines that the site is not abandoned, and increasing the trust of users. You should agree that when you enter the site in December, and the last material is posted in May, there are doubts, and whether the company is still functioning.
  
• Content formating. Maximize the user’s perception of the text. So you need:
  • Lists and markers where appropriate.
  • Highlight quotes or important moments with a background of a different color or frame.
  • Highlighting important passages in bold and italics rather than keywords.
  • Meaningful titles and subtitles.
  • Titles differ in font and size from the body text.
  • Indents between paragraphs.
  • Integration of posts from social networks, not similar screenshots.

• Use of photos and infographics in content. Until now, there are optimizers that do not understand the advantages of having pictures on the pages. This:
  • The ability to prescribe ALT with the entry of a key phrase.
  • Visual improvement in content and, as a consequence, behavioral factors.
  • If the page has a picture, it can be picked up in the snippet in the mobile Yandex.

• No grammatical or spelling mistakes. Errors in the texts reduce the loyalty of not only visitors, but also “trust” search engines.
  
• Unique texts. Check the content for theft and take action (I personally met only one hosting, which refused assistance in removing stolen content). Also help search engines to identify the original source with the tool “Original texts” and posting in the social network after the publication of the material. 
  
• Ability to add a page to bookmarks and share it.  Give the visitor the opportunity to save the page in bookmarks, so that he can return to it when it is convenient. Add clearing buttons to social networks and an appeal/request to share with friends. Tangible advantages:
  • Increase bookmark traffic and returns to the site.
  • Additional traffic from the visitor’s profile.
  • A signal to search engines about the interest in your site, its benefits.

Commercial factors

First of all, the factors characterizing the reliability of a company or a store are considered commercial. The effect of their development will not only improve the ranking, but also increase confidence in the organization. The check-list includes both those declared by Yandex and other additional “chips” inherent in commercial sites. If any of the following points are implemented on the sites of your competitors, as well as in the niche leaders – do the same. And better – do more than they have.

• Information about the company. This is not a section starting with the words “we are a dynamically growing company”. Make sure you have the following information on your contact page:
  • Full postal address of the office.
  • Interactive map with a mark of the office.
  • Company hours of operation.
  • Photos of the building and office from the inside.
  • Photos of employees.

• Description of delivery and payment. The more delivery options and payment methods are available, the better. Check if there is a page dedicated to this information and how fully the options are described. 
  
• Customer support. Is it easy for a user to contact you when they have questions? It is desirable to give as many ways of communication as possible. Let a potential buyer contact you in a convenient way.
  • Phone in the header of the site (or in the first screen).
  • The phone is indicated with the city code (8-800 for regions).
  • A callback order form.
  • All kinds of communication methods (Skype, Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber).
  • Online consultant.
  • Feedback and the ability to add them.
  • Answers to frequently asked questions.
  • Description of the order procedure.
  • Cost and delivery calculators.

• Social networks. Availability of active (exactly such accounts, not abandoned a couple of months ago) accounts in social networks is not only a commercial factor of ranking, but also an increase in potential points of contact with customers.
  
• Promotions. If possible, start a page with promotions or sales, make discounts on goods, offer a loyalty program. 
  
• Credit. Tell buyers about the possibility of buying goods on credit or by installment.
  
• Warranties and refunds. Describe on a separate page the possibility of returning the goods and warranty terms, tell about after-sales service.
  
• Absence of advertising on third-party sites. In particular, you should pay attention to the business owners who have fully entrusted the promotion to third parties. Control all changes on the site. Sometimes you can find not just advertising, but links to competitors.
  
• Large assortment. Catalog pages that offer more products are considered to be of higher quality and can get priority in search results. 
  
• Product card. Check how the product card is designed and compare it with the sites in the top. Why compare your site with the top sites? For example, to understand the big picture. If 80% of sites in the product cards have the opportunity to buy in 1 click, then your card without it will lose in this component, ie, considered less quality.
  
  There are still stores that do not even have a product picture. Not to mention the following:
  • Price.
  • Text description.
  • Video (good opportunity to uniqueize the product card, if there are no unique descriptions).
  • Information about the product status.
  • Characteristics.
  • Feedback and evaluation.
  • Variety of order options (basket + fast order).
  • Delivery, payment and warranty information (in the form of links to the relevant pages, or better, directly on the card).
  • Brand/producer information.
  • Question-answer about the product.
  • Ability to add the product to “wishes” or share it in social networks.

• Convenience of using the site. Is the design clear, is the structure logical? Are there any difficulties in interaction between the buyer and the site?
  • Easy navigation, hints.
  • Ability to filter the assortment.
  • Comparison of goods.
  • Search on the site.

• Ability to go to the shopping cart from any page. Give visitors the opportunity to look in the shopping cart at any time surfing the site. 
  
• Legal details and licenses/certificates. Place them, show the client that he is dealing with a serious organization, which can be checked in the Uniform State Register of Legal Entities, and not with a schoolboy who riveted the site in an emergency. By the way, the instructions of legal details on the site requires legislation, not just common sense.
  
• Registration through social networks. Simplify the order process. Make it possible to place an order without registering on the site or provide authorization through social networks.
  
• The presence of https-protocol (signed SSL certificate) when accepting payments through the site. Let the clients be sure in the safety of their payment details. And the mark “Reliable” in the address bar will add credibility to the site. 
  
• Ability to choose a city (for multi-regional sites). 
  
• E-mail on your own domain. 

And at the end of the memo for business leaders, as this factor does not really depend on the SEO-specialist. It’s about the speed of order processing and quality of service. If someone thinks that “Yandex” will not know about your “sins”, then go to the service “Yandex.Toloka”. The most profitable task there is a test purchase of goods on “Yandex.Market” with its subsequent return. 

External factors

Sometimes a good internal optimization is enough to get to the top. If the site is not growing, the work to increase the reference mass can give the desired result. And, of course, when auditing the site in any case, check the link profile of your domain.

• Lack of ban and explicit SEO links. Hardly a good signal for search engines is that you are referenced by a filtered site (especially if the filter is for selling links). Google has a special tool for rejecting links. For Yandex, you will have to negotiate the removal of a link directly with the site owners, and most likely it will be for a fee. Also, study the donors for a clear difference on the subject – perhaps there are SEO-links.
  
• Display all links in search console tools. Download the list of donor pages in Ahrefs and LinkPad, as well as external incoming links from webmasters. Can all links be seen by search engines? If not, try to find the reason and fix it if possible. 
  
• Indexing of referring pages. Check if the pages that contain links to your resource are indexed.
  
• No spam in the anchor list. It is difficult to call a natural reference profile, 90% of which consists of the phrase “buy a wallet” and the resulting phrases.
  • Key phrases in the anchors are diverse, there is no obvious prevalence of one key.
  • Among the references, there are also those without anchors.

• The reference mass is not worse than that of competitors. Analyze the link profile of sites from the top of your topic. If they have common donors, analyze them. This is probably some popular resource of your subject and it is worth to get the link there.
  
• Lack of links from sites on prohibited topics or with suspicious anchors. There should be no links from porn sites, casinos, etc., anchors with the entry of phrases on prohibited topics.
  
• Lack of external links to non-existing pages. Make sure there are no 404 pages among acceptors on your site. If there are any, set up redirects to valid addresses.
  
• Using free ways to get links. There is no need to ignore the links, which will not be difficult to get and will not take much time. This:
  • Question and answer services.
  • Unsampled directories.
  • Links from Wikipedia.
  • Job sites and the like.
  • Links from YouTube video descriptions, Pinterest and “Yandex.Collections” photos, etc.
  • Links from company pages on thematic resources (for example, companies of autothematics can create a page on the portal drive2.ru).

• Feeding with social signals and crowd marketing. Motivate visitors to scatter your materials in social networks, get links to thematic forums. Ways to get links from forums:
  • Use the services of special services (low quality of work).
  • Hire a special employee in the staff (best option).
  • Ask for loyal customers who are sure to sit on forums of your topic, put in a good word and leave a link in a suitable topic.

• Mention of the brand on the Internet, even without a link, Google has a positive opinion.
  • Ask customers to write about you on all kinds of feedback aggregators.
  • Keep track of brand mentions on the Internet and try to get the link where you were mentioned.
  • On forums with strict moderation, organically write about your company without providing a link.
  • Guest posts with active link to the author.

• Lack of links and hidden links on the site. Check that among the outgoing external links only relevant and useful to the visitor. It happens that sites crack and discreetly place a document containing 100500 external links. Such “dumps” are easy to find and remove.

Regional promotion

Everything is clear with “monoregional” sites, but if a company needs to be promoted in many regions, it is better to create additional regional sites or subdomains for promotion in Yandex (at least it is possible to bind a region in a web workshop). The project budget does not always allow you to do this, but within one site you can successfully work with geodependent requests.

• Binding through “Yandex.Webmaster”. Two popular mistakes of regional sites are region extension (for example, indication “Moscow and region” instead of “Moscow”) and absence of binding to any region at all. For multi-regional sites, it is just possible to avoid linking or specify the most priority city.
  
• Availability in the directory “Yandex” and “Google My Business”. Check the availability of the main office and all branches in these services. This will improve your position in the regions, as well as to receive additional traffic from the maps. 
  
• Availability in “Yandex.Catalogue”. Placing in the catalog will allow linking up to 7 regions to the site. An important point is the availability of own offices in these regions. If the site contains addresses of dealers or points of self-delivery, it is not possible to link the region.
  
• Availability of pages for the robot regardless of its IP. If geolocation is configured on the site, different versions of content are shown depending on the user’s region. If the robot entered the site from a Moscow IP address, it may not index content for Novosibirsk. It is necessary to make all the content available for search robots. Read the help on recognition of robots Yandex and Google.
  
• Geositemap. For Google you can generate a special file in KML format, which will indicate the exact location of your branches. The ready-made file should be placed in the root folder of the site, and in sitemap.xml you should specify a link to it.
  
• Availability of regional pages. For each region there should be a page with the description of activities, main services/goods and contacts. Enhance the toponym (geographical object name) in the meta tags and URL.
  
• Reviews or cases of your customers indicating the village. Individual pages with your customers’ reviews or success stories will help rank your toponymic queries.
  
• Links from regional sites. If there are no such sites, you should at least add office addresses to the regional directories (2gis, zoon, spravker and others).

Behavioral factors

The ranking of the site is also affected by user behavior on the site, as well as click factors on the issue page. Behavioral factors include:

• bounce rate;
• the number of pages visited by the user per session;
• time spent on the site;
• CTR on search;
• returns to search and returns to the site from search;
• sharings to social networks.

• Login pages correspond to the request. It happens that certain requests do not rank exactly the pages we have optimized for them. Check if there are any on your site.
  
• Determined input points with high bounce rate for target requests. If the site has pages with frequent refusals when navigating through target requests, it is obvious that something is wrong. Estimate the content through the user’s eyes, whether he gets all the necessary information, whether the page load speed is high enough.
  Bounce rate in “Yandex.Metrika” and Google Analytics are considered differently. If for the first one it means browsing one page and staying on the site less than 15 seconds, then for GA any visit with visiting only one page will be considered a refusal.
  To reduce the failure rate in Google Analytics, you can set up event tracking, such as watching videos. And if a visitor interacted with a video on a page and then left the site, this will not be considered a failure.

• Time on the site is not less than that of competitors. If the time to visit the sites of your competitors is much longer than yours, it is a bad sign, which improvement is worth working on. The same is true for the “pages viewed / session” ratio. Think about how you can keep the user:
  • Detailed menu.
  • Context linking.
  • Banners and links to relevant materials in side columns;
  • Visual attractiveness of the page.
  • Video materials.
  • Navigation chains.
  • Gamification and surveys.

• Attractive snippets. Will the user notice your site in the search engine output? Does he want to click on it? First of all, make sure that title and description are written attractively. In addition, snippets can be extended by using special markup or uploading a YML file to the site (in the “Yandex”). 
  How you can stand out from the search:
  • Page Rating.
  • Date of publication.
  • The price and information about delivery or self-delivery.
  • Visible favicon.
  • Navigation circuit.
  • Emoji in title and description.

Filter availability

A sharp drop in traffic/positions, lack of growth with active and regular work on the site may indicate (though not always) pessimism on the part of search engines.

Punish can be for the overall low quality of the resource, a large number of outgoing SEO-links, active link buying, twisting behavioral factors, adult content, the power of keywords in the texts, aggressive advertising on the site.

• There are no warnings in web workshops. The first thing worth checking is alerts in webmaster services. In severe cases, you will see a mark there.
  
• No affiliate sites. If two sites belong to the same company, then “Yandex” will not show them by one request. But it happens that the sites of different owners are considered affiliates.
  
• Texts are not backfilled. Check for keyword saturation and nauseous texts. Also in special services you can evaluate the possibility of reoptimization for specific requests. 
  
• There is no hidden redirection on mobile devices. For example, in search results on the computer and on the mobile device there is the same address. In the first case the user gets on it and in the second case the user is redirected to an external site. It can happen in case of breaking the site or because of an element or a script responsible for displaying advertising provided by the third-party advertiser.
  
• There is no “adult” content. Sites with adult content will not be ranked by “not adult” requests. It happens that on quite harmless sites photos of women’s breasts are placed (and at least as an illustration to an article on health). However, the instructions for assessors say that images of naked nipples should be classified as p0rn.
  
• No or little advertising. Assessors also evaluate the advertisement of sites, and “Yandex” punishes for excess advertising with the filter. Judging by the instruction, advertising should not occupy more than a third of the first screen and more than two thirds of the rest of the site.

A few words about usability

During the audit, I try to pay attention to usability as well. But only at the simplest level – convenience and ease of filling out forms, font size, etc. I think that usability should be assessed by the appropriate specialists. Or another good option is to check the convenience of the site on real users from Central Asia (AskUsersConditionally).

Of course, not all of the listed items can have a decisive influence on the ranking, but I did not specifically distinguish possible optimization errors by the degree of importance. Work on the site comprehensively. At a minimum, keep up with your competitors. Or better disperse them, without dividing the factors into important and not so. In Google there are 200 ranking factors, in “Yandex” more than a thousand and the value of each of them can always change.