You’ve spent the past month learning a system. Now we’re going to find out if your website is actually built for it.
The inbound marketing checklist below is 12 items. Not 47. Not a sprawling audit that takes an afternoon. These 12 things represent the difference between a website that exists and a website that generates leads, builds your email list, and compounds over time. If every item on this list is checked, you have a functional inbound marketing infrastructure. If several are missing, you now know exactly where to focus.
Read through each item with your own website open in another tab. Be honest with yourself. The gaps you acknowledge are the gaps you can fix.
The Foundation (Items 1-3)
1. Your Homepage Has a Single, Clear Value Proposition
A visitor should understand what you offer, who it’s for, and what to do next within 10 seconds of landing on your homepage. No scrolling required.
The test: send a friend (preferably not a close friend who knows your business well) a screenshot of your homepage above the fold. Ask them what they think you do and who you serve. Their answer should match your intended answer.
If it doesn’t, your value proposition needs work before anything else. Everything downstream depends on a visitor understanding why they should stay.
Reference: Thursday’s post in Week 6 covers the WordPress-specific build for this.
2. Your Site Loads in Under 3 Seconds on Mobile
Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights right now. Your mobile performance score should be above 80. Your load time should be under three seconds.
If it’s not, the specific issues will be listed under “Opportunities” in the PageSpeed results. Image compression, plugin cleanup, and caching typically account for 80 percent of mobile performance problems.
Why this matters: Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. A slow site loses visitors before they read a word. A slow site is also penalized in organic search rankings, compounding the problem.
3. HTTPS Is Active
Check your browser address bar. Your site should show a padlock icon. If it shows “Not Secure,” fix this before anything else. HTTPS is a baseline requirement for trust, for search ranking, and for compliance with modern browser security standards.
Most hosting providers enable HTTPS for free through Let’s Encrypt certificates. If yours isn’t active, contact your host.
Lead Capture Infrastructure (Items 4-6)
4. You Have a Specific Lead Magnet Offer (Not Just “Subscribe”)
Your most important opt-in offer should be specific enough that the right person reads the offer and thinks “that’s exactly what I need.”
A checklist, template, guide, or free assessment tied to the problem your audience faces is a lead magnet. “Subscribe to our newsletter” is not.
Reference: The detailed breakdown of what makes a lead magnet specific and effective is in the Week 6 Monday post on the email sequence.
5. You Have a Dedicated Landing Page for Your Lead Magnet
This page has no navigation, no distracting links, no sidebars. Its only job is to convert a visitor into a subscriber. It has a headline, a list of specific benefits, and a form.
If your lead magnet lives in a sidebar widget or a footer form on your homepage, that’s opt-in placement. It is not a landing page. Landing pages convert at dramatically higher rates because there is nothing else to do on the page.
Reference: The Week 7 Monday post covers the full build for WordPress lead capture, including the dedicated landing page structure.
6. Your Top 3 Blog Posts Have In-Line Opt-In Forms
Not sidebar forms. In-line forms, at the end of the post body (or mid-post for longer content), with an offer specifically relevant to the post topic.
If someone reads your entire post on email marketing, offer them an email template. If someone reads your post on lead generation, offer them a lead capture checklist. Context-relevant opt-ins convert 3 to 5 times better than generic forms.
Content System (Items 7-9)
7. You Have at Least One Internal Link in Every Post
Every post you publish should link to at least one other relevant post or page on your site. Every post you’ve published in the past should be reviewed for missing internal links.
Internal links do two things: they keep visitors on your site longer (reducing bounce rate), and they distribute SEO authority from high-ranking pages to lower-ranking ones. A content library without internal links is a collection of content islands.
Reference: Tuesday’s Week 6 flagship post (the content flywheel) explains the architecture behind internal linking in detail.
8. You Have a Clear Cross-Link Structure Between Your Pillar and Cluster Posts
If you’ve written multiple posts on related topics, they should reference and link to each other. A pillar post should be the hub that cluster posts link back to. Cluster posts should link to each other when relevant.
The self-assessment from Week 7 Thursday can help you identify whether your current internal linking structure reflects a pillar-cluster architecture or a random collection of standalone posts.
9. Your Most Recent 5 Posts Were Published With a Target Keyphrase
Before hitting publish on any post, confirm that:
– The target keyphrase appears in the first paragraph
– It appears in at least one H2 subheading
– It appears at least 3 times naturally across the post
– It’s in your meta description and SEO title (via Yoast or equivalent)
If you’re publishing without a target keyphrase, you’re creating content without a search strategy. Not every post needs to rank. But every post in your strategy should know what it’s trying to rank for.
Email System (Items 10-11)
10. New Subscribers Receive an Automated Welcome Sequence of at Least 3 Emails
Not just a single confirmation email. A sequence. Welcome email (delivers the lead magnet, sets expectations), value email (solves a real problem without selling), and offer email (connects your work to their need).
If you don’t have this in place, the subscriber’s peak engagement moment passes without you capturing it.
Reference: The detailed framework for this is in the Week 6 Monday post on the email sequence your small business actually needs.
11. You Have an Ongoing Nurture Sequence (Not Just a Welcome Sequence)
After the welcome sequence ends, something should happen. A regular cadence of teaching emails, story emails, and occasional segmentation emails (covered in Week 8 Monday) keeps subscribers engaged across the months between their initial subscription and their readiness to buy.
An email list with a welcome sequence but no ongoing nurture is a lead list with a short shelf life.
Measurement (Item 12)
12. You Can Answer These Three Questions Without Guessing
This is the last item and arguably the most important.
– Which blog post is currently generating the most email opt-ins?
– Which traffic source is sending the highest-quality visitors (lowest bounce rate, most pages visited)?
– How has your organic traffic changed over the last 90 days compared to the previous 90?
If you can’t answer these questions, you’re flying blind. Google Analytics (free) and Google Search Console (free) give you all three answers. If they’re not installed, install them today. Not next week.
Your Score and What It Means
12 out of 12: your inbound marketing infrastructure is solid. Focus now on optimization, not construction.
9 to 11: you’re close. The missing items are specific, fixable gaps. Prioritize Items 4-6 (lead capture) if any of those are missing.
6 to 8: you have a foundation but gaps that are costing you leads and subscribers daily. Work through the missing items in the order listed above.
Under 6: start with Items 1-3, then 4-6. Don’t worry about the content system or email system until the foundation is solid and lead capture is in place.
This Is Not the Ceiling
This checklist represents the floor, not the ceiling. A website that checks all 12 items is ready to start compounding. What comes next is optimization: improving conversion rates on your best-performing landing pages, deepening your content library around your highest-traffic topics, expanding your email sequence, testing subject lines.
Thursday’s post wraps up the entire month with a retrospective on what 30 days of data-driven content revealed about what’s actually working. Subscribe to the email list to receive it, or join the TDE CE course waitlist to learn this full system in a structured environment.
For the technical implementation of these checklist items, the Week 6 and 7 posts from this month are the best references. For the strategic rationale, see Moz’s complete guide to SEO{target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”} and HubSpot’s inbound marketing certification resources{target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”}.
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