Our on-page SEO service is dedicated to optimising for all essential Google ranking factors.
We offer comprehensive technical SEO on a page-by-page basis, ensuring your pages surpass the competition. Additionally, we create fully optimised content, incorporating relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and entity keywords throughout your body text, H1 to H6 headers, image alt text, and more.
We analyse your on-site factors against those of your competitors, aiming to meet and exceed their efforts, so you can achieve higher rankings for your target keywords.
The Ultimate On-Page and On-Site SEO Checklist
Technical SEO is divided into two main categories: off-page SEO (generally associated with link building) and on-page SEO.
While there are thousands of factors to consider for both off-page and on-page SEO, we have previously highlighted the 200 most statistically significant Google ranking factors.
Our SEO audit service offers a comprehensive on-page SEO checklist, covering the top 200 factors to help rank your page for a specific keyword, along with crucial feedback on why your site may not be ranking as well as your competitors.
The following is a DIY guide to improving your rankings with on-page SEO, focusing on the key factors that might be preventing your webpage from achieving higher positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
THE BASICS OF ON-PAGE SEO
On-page SEO encompasses all the structures, techniques, and strategies that need to be implemented on your website, including each of your individual landing pages. In contrast, off-page SEO pertains to activities outside your website, such as external links pointing to your site, social media interactions involving your brand and users, guest posts, and so on.
This guide focuses exclusively on on-page SEO, targeting areas where you have more direct control. We discuss off-page SEO in a separate guide. Here, I will outline the importance of on-page SEO, what you need to do to succeed, and how SEO.co’s SEO service can be strategically valuable for you.
As mentioned earlier, on-page SEO involves actions taken directly on your site. It can be broken down into various tactics that collectively enhance your site’s visibility in search engines. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as flipping a switch or adopting a single new habit—numerous tactics need to be employed across different areas.
ON-PAGE SEO IS ITERATIVE
Some on-page SEO tactics need to be done just once. Once you make the change, you generally don’t need to worry about it again unless something changes or breaks. However, other tactics require ongoing attention. Some are structural, affecting the design and layout of your site, while others are qualitative, involving the subjective evaluation of specific elements. At the end of this article, I’ll provide a quick-reference checklist of all the on-page SEO factors to consider. But because these tactics vary widely, it’s important to understand the theory behind them as well as their practical implementation. This guide is divided into three main categories:
Page Indexation Indexation is crucial because it ensures your site is visible to Google. If Google can’t index your site, or if it isn’t indexed correctly, your web pages won’t appear in search results, or they may appear incorrectly.
Page Categorisation Visibility is essential, but it’s equally important that your site is understood correctly. Including the right content, such as page titles, descriptions, and body copy, helps ensure Google accurately categorises your site and presents it for relevant searches.
Page Functionality How your site functions, displays, and how users interact with it are also key considerations. Google and other search engines prefer to rank sites with high performance levels, so ensure your website is functioning properly. Let’s delve into each of these on-site SEO categories individually.
PROPER INDEXATION
Think of Google as a vast library filled with books on a myriad of topics. The first step to ensuring your book is found is making sure it’s on the shelf—let’s get it there. Fortunately, we’ve created a comprehensive guide on Google indexation. However, there is a significant difference between being indexed by Google and ranking on Google. Websites that better align with search intent generally perform better for their target keywords.
Crawler Accessible
Your initial task for optimising your on-page SEO is to ensure that Google’s web crawlers can access your site. These bots act as scouts for Google, scouring the web to index information. If these crawlers can’t see or access your site, Google won’t be able to index it. Several reasons might cause this issue:
- There’s a server-side error preventing bots from reaching your site.
- Your site is down or otherwise inaccessible to users.
- You’ve accidentally blocked web crawlers in your robots.txt file (more on this below).
It’s also important to note that there are multiple web crawlers out there—several specific to Google, and others belonging to major search engines and tech companies like Bing and Apple. Here are some of Google’s most relevant ones:
Unless there’s something inherently wrong with your site or server, your site should be crawlable. It’s actually more challenging to stop Googlebot (and other search engine bots) from finding your site. If your site is new, it might take a few days to a few weeks to appear in Google’s index, so don’t be alarmed if you don’t immediately show up in search results.
robots.txt
Your robots.txt file is like an instruction manual you provide to search engine bots in your top-level directory. It tells them which pages to crawl and index, and which ones to avoid. By default, web crawlers index your entire site, but there may be specific pages you don’t want indexed (e.g., pages with duplicate content). Before doing anything on your site, a bot will check the reference: www.yoursite.com/robots.txt. This file will specify a User-agent and specific pages with a Disallow tag.
With the User-agent specification, you can exclude specific bots (see table in the previous section) or reference all bots. The Disallow feature will then allow you to exclude any pages you don’t want indexed. As a general rule, you only need to worry about this if you have canonical issues to resolve or if there’s a web page that might interfere with your primary on-page SEO goals. Otherwise, you can leave your robots.txt file blank.
Regardless, double-check your work to ensure you haven’t accidentally blocked all search bots from accessing your entire site—this happens more often than you might think. A word of advice: don’t try to be sneaky by hiding bad or damaging material. Robots.txt instructions are publicly available information. You can see ours at SEO.co here:
If you’re concerned about the formatting or function of your robots.txt file, you can use Google’s free tester to check it for possible errors.
URL Structure
Your URL structure can significantly influence your on-page SEO, including how your site is perceived and how your pages are evaluated. Google favours sites with clear, straightforward URLs that make it easier for users to navigate, along with descriptive text that tells Google what the web page is about.
- Avoid dynamic URLs. This makes it confusing for Google’s index and could indicate deceptive practices.
- Avoid special characters or long numerical sequences, like “&$%^*” or “321987662090.”
- Include a “breadcrumbs” trail, showing the location of each page within subpages and categories. For example: Domain.com/first-category/secondary-category/final-page.
- Separate words with dashes “-“ rather than underscores “_”.
- Keep your URLs as concise as possible.
- Include clear, descriptive text at the end of each URL, preferably including your target keywords.
SITEMAP PROVISION
There are two types of sitemaps you can create for your website, and both play a crucial role in SEO. The exact importance of sitemaps is debated, but creating them is almost certainly worth the effort.
HTML Sitemaps: These are intended for both users and search engine crawlers and are usually found in the footer of a website. It’s beneficial to ensure every page links to this sitemap, making the footer an ideal location.
XML Sitemaps: These are more technical and can be uploaded directly to Google through Google Search Console. Simply navigate to the “Sitemaps” section and click “add/test sitemap” in the upper-right corner.
Google will notify you of any specific issues with your sitemap. For more information on XML sitemaps, Sitemaps.org is a valuable resource.
Remember, your site is always evolving as you add, remove, or change pages. Keep your sitemaps up to date.
For additional help, popular site crawlers like Screaming Frog are available online and are free for up to 500 URLs.
PAGE CONTENT LOADING & SITE SPEED
All your content should load properly on any device, with any browser, and on any internet connection. Content should load directly from HTML, and not rely heavily on AJAX or iFrames, ensuring no errors occur when accessed by users.
Google aims to deliver actual content, not blank spaces. Even if site speed wasn’t a ranking factor, it’s crucial for user experience and matching search intent, so don’t neglect it.
MICRO FORMATTING, STRUCTURED DATA & SCHEMA MARKUP
Structured data can appear in the knowledge graph, as featured snippets, or even in the coveted position zero in search results. If you’ve done significant searching recently, you may have encountered rich answers, part of Google’s Knowledge Graph.
For webmasters, this is a valuable ranking opportunity. Structured data, or microformatting, is a coding format used to tell Google how to read information like events, people, organizations, actions, reviews, and other archetypes. For detailed information on implementing structured data, Schema.org is a leading authority.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS AND GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE
Signing up for Google Analytics and Google Search Console is essential for gaining insights into your site, responding to issues, and evaluating your strategies. Google Analytics requires a tracking script in your code, and Google Search Console needs ownership verification through a script or webmaster’s email address.
These tools offer on-page SEO insights such as site crawling, sitemap submission, scouting for duplicate content, and evaluating metadata and meta descriptions. There are many more features for on-page SEO analysis to explore.
OPTIMISING INDIVIDUAL PAGES
Once your site is properly indexed, work on optimising individual pages. Apply these changes to each page, including new pages.
On Page SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions: Page titles and descriptions are crucial for telling Google what your content is about and forming users’ first impressions in search listings. Ensure they are unique, concise, descriptive, include relevant keywords naturally, and are compelling.
Header Tags: Numbered in sequence (H1, H2, H3, etc.), header tags indicate main points of your content and help search engines understand and index it.
KEYWORD DENSITY (TARGET, ENTITY, AND LSI KEYWORDS)
Keyword density is a significant ranking factor. Focus on:
- Exact Match Keywords
- Partial Match Keywords
- Entity Keywords
- LSI (latent semantic indexing) Keywords
Exact match keywords should hit 7-12% density, while entity and LSI keywords should be in the 3-7% range. Avoid keyword stuffing.
URL STRUCTURES
Each page should have a properly formatted URL, preferably under 90 characters. This is crucial for on-page SEO.
ON PAGE SEO CONTENT
On-page content should be at least 100 words of highly descriptive material. It shows you care about your audience, helps showcase more keywords, and can earn links.
A NOTE ON DUPLICATE CONTENT
All content should be unique and not marked as duplicate by tools like Copyscape. Alternative URL forms can cause duplicate content, which is detrimental. Google Search Console can help identify duplicate content instances.
IMAGES
Include images on your site to convey authority and relevance. Optimise images with contextually relevant titles and descriptive alt tags. Ensure images are in proper formats and are quick to download.
INTERNAL LINKS AND EXTERNAL LINKS
Internal links establish connections within your site, making it easier for users to navigate. External links show credibility by citing outside authorities. Anchor text should be accurate and descriptive.
SITE PERFORMANCE
Site performance influences rankings. Important factors include mobile optimisation, site speed, uptime, and handling 404 errors.
Mobile Optimisation: Ensure your site loads quickly and offers a thumb-friendly design on mobile devices.
Site Speed: Faster loading times improve user experience and rankings. Reduce image sizes, delete unnecessary plugins, use caching, and enable compression.
SITE SECURITY
While site security may not directly boost rankings, SSL encryption (indicated by “https”) enhances user trust. It may grow in importance as a ranking signal.
A NOTE ON CMSS
Most modern CMSs, including WordPress, offer built-in SEO features. However, don’t rely solely on them. Perform tests yourself and dig into the code to ensure proper optimisation.
YOUR ULTIMATE ON PAGE SEO CHECKLIST
Sitewide On Page SEO Checklist:
- Ensure your robots.txt file is uploaded and search engines index your site properly.
- Check for server errors that could prevent indexation.
- Keep URLs static, logically organised with a breadcrumb trail, and minimal characters.
- Use and update HTML and XML sitemaps.
- Ensure content loads properly on all devices and browsers.
- Use microformatting for structured information.
- Include internal and external links with descriptive anchor text.
- Ensure images have unique descriptions and alt tags.
- Maximise site speed.
- Ensure site security with SSL encryption.
Individual On Page SEO Checklist:
- Ensure page title tags are under 70 characters, unique, descriptive, and include a target keyword.
- Meta descriptions should be under 160 characters, unique, descriptive, and include a target keyword.
- Use proper header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) for all articles.
- Keep URL slugs under 90 characters, with descriptive text and no strange characters.
- Include a few hundred words of descriptive, unique content on every page, focusing on user search intent.