On-page SEO Checklist is a step-by-step guide about ‘How to optimize your Website for search engines.’
Quick Overview
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a ‘Process of knowing search engines that my blog post is related to visitor’s query and request Search engine to drop them on my website’.
Many bloggers write an article on the same keyword, like this your website has so many other substitutes in SERPs.
Then how the search engine will know about your content?
Here SEO works!
SEO is a backend effort that we take to bring our website on rank organically to meet the targeted audience on search engines.
Website Optimization is considered as showing text, coding, and tags to the search engines to crawl your website pages.
Blogger = Website = Content = SEO
Why SEO?
- Helps to attract valuable traffic
- Easy for conversion
- Organic search result
- Cost-effective
Types of SEO:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
Following is an On-Page SEO checklist to optimize your website and to get organic traffic:
On-Page SEO Checklist:
Focus Keyword:
Keyword research is the most important factor to rank posts on search engines.
The focus keyword is the topic of the blog post. If the Focus keyword is a wide search term then you get better chances to rank. Select Focus Keyword related to your niche which has the best reader’s choice.
“Focus Keyword must be in SEO post title”
Use Long Tail Keyword:
Long-tail keywords have low competition as compare to short-tail keywords. Digital Marketing is a very wide term so there are many search results you will see on the same topic that’s why Long Tail Keywords are useful.
E.g. If you are using short keywords like ‘Buy shoes’ which is a very competitive term and here you will get an unrelated n number of searches and very low chances to rank on search engines. But if your keyword is specific and long tail like ‘Buy Nike shoes for men’ then you will get quality visitors who are genuinely interested in your products.
Meta Description:
The focus keyword should be included in the SEO Meta description. The meta description should be informative and succinct. A good written & impressive Meta description is very helpful for users to know what exactly you are providing them.
Focus Keyword in URL:
Use Focus Keyword (Blog Topic/H1) in URL.
Focus Keyword in URL gives results, but not always. But YES, include the Focus keyword in URL is good for your SEO which depends on your Blog Post.
E.g. If you are using a long tail keyword like ‘Best workout tips in 2021’ then only ‘www.yourwebsite.com/workout-tips’ is good enough in the URL.
Keyword Density:
Focus Keyword should appear in the first 10% of the content.
There is no absolute percentage for Keyword density. But 3 times the appearance of Focus Keyword per 100 words is normal.
Keyword density should be Natural.
Content Length:
Ideal content on the website page should not be less than 300 words.
Content should be as long as sufficient for users and Crawlable for search engines. But if somebody is searching for a speedy answer, don’t exhaust the visitor with a super long substance piece.
Image optimization:
Either you have written good content, but images give the best and impactful visual appearance to the blog post.
Alt text images are the source of the traffic.
Image optimization is a great factor in the ‘On-page SEO checklist’. Image optimization refers to reduce the image load time, reduce image size, add a title to the image, add alt text to the image, etc.
For best Image optimization SEO, add Focus Keyword in the featured Image alt text & Title name and write what has shown is the image in the caption & description.
Internal & External links:
Internal links are the best source to navigate & invite traffic within the website on your current blog. Internal link building is a worthy spot to begin assisting your pages with getting found.
External links are the source to get traffic by the quality & relevant visitors from outside. External links use to get traffic through unknown visitors from another website.
Page Loading Speed:
Page Loading Speed is a very important pillar in the On-Page SEO checklist which affects your SEO ranking.
Some Factors affects your page speed-
- Speed Index
- Largest Contentful Paint
- Cumulative Layout Shift
You can reduce errors by Reducing initial server response time, Eliminating render-blocking resources, by Remove unused CSS and unused JavaScript.
You can check your website Page Loading Speed by following links:
Readability:
If the font of your content is too small or without a paragraph then visitors will not able to read and will not engage in your content. If your content is not readable then automatically bounce rate will increase and this affects your SEO ranking.
Long paragraphs scare the visitors, and this will result in SERPs looking for better readable content.
So you can use small paragraphs, decent fonts, quotes, images, etc. to increase your blog’s readability.
You can check your readability score for free.
Headline Tags:
Website and Blog should be in a good heading pattern. Title/Focus Keyword should be in the H1 tag and sub-points should be in H2 & H3 tag.
Use heading pattern H1 to H6 in descending order.
Plagiarism:
Content is a King. But content should be original, duplicate content is a ghost. Content should be copyright-free. There is no penalty but search engines and readers don’t appreciate copyrighted content.
Here you can check either your content is copyright-free or not.
Mobile-Friendly Website:
A mobile-friendly website is an advantage for better ranking. Because we know Mobile users are more than desktop users, so the website should be mobile-friendly. A versatile well-designed site is a solid source for rank.
You can check here if your site is Mobile-Friendly or not.
Social Sharing button:
The Social Sharing button is a readymade sharing tab for visitors. ‘Let’s tweet’, Let’s share’ encourages visitors to share your blog posts.
That’s it!!!
If you follow this ‘On-Page SEO checklist’ your website SEO score will definitely improve.
Bonus Tips:
- ‘Google Analytics’ and ‘Google Search Console’ are free Google tools to see Website overall performance. ‘Google Site Kit’ is all in one Best WordPress plugin with all the above features.
- WordPress users must use Yoast SEO or RankMath plugin. Both are the best plugins to measure your website’s SEO score and to improve more you can buy the PRO version. In this Plugins you get most of the points of this ‘On-Page SEO checklist’ article with your SEO score.
- User Power Words in SEO Meta Title to improve conversion and attract more visitors.
- Most blogger does the common mistake that they only check the speed of the first page. Never repeat this mistake. Check all the pages of the website and measure Page loading Speed and then fix all the errors for better SERPs.
Hope you like this ‘On-Page SEO Checklist’ article.
Later on, I will adjust this article as per the SEO calculation updates.
This Article has clarified each important SEO agenda for new or existing websites and Blog posts.
Yes!!! Now it’s your turn to apply the On-Page SEO checklist to your site.