On-Page SEO Checklist
Search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t something you can do halfway and expect great results from. Instead, you have to be proactive with your on-page optimization tactics so that search engines can easily understand what your website is about and how your site can help them achieve their goals. Use this on-page SEO checklist to ensure you’re covering all the right bases when optimizing your pages for the best rankings possible!
Set Up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
To rank on the page, you’ll need an On-Page SEO checklist. This is a set of items that can be used on individual web pages or your entire site. These tips will help optimize your website’s use of keywords and phrases and tagging content. First, set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to start with the basics by following the steps below. It is one of the most On-Page SEO Checklists.
To create a profile with Google Search Console:
- Click Manage Account.
- Once inside, go here, click All Products, then Search Console.
- Log in using your Gmail login information, then scroll down the page until you see Sitemaps and add a new sitemap.
Install and Configure an SEO Plugin (If You’re Using WordPress)
On page SEO checklist, step one is to install and configure an SEO plugin. There are many free options, but we recommend Yoast if you’re looking for a premium plugin. Why do you need an SEO plugin? With all the tools that sites like Google and Bing provide for checking your website’s health and ranking quality, your site must run as optimally as possible – which means no errors! An in-depth plugin will monitor what your site does or doesn’t do, from headings on post titles down to headings on articles, images within posts, and even video embeds within posts. So any issues can be fixed immediately. Install and configure an SEO Plugin is one of the most On-Page SEO Checklist.
Generate and Submit a Sitemap
Here are some simple steps to help you optimize your website and improve your search engine rankings. A sitemap is a great way to provide a map of all the pages on your site and helps crawlers better index your content. Plus, it’s one less thing to worry about because once it’s submitted, Google will also ensure the updates are live on their site. Therefore, it should be kept up-to-date whenever a change is made.
Create a Robots.txt File
A Robots.txt file contains instructions telling search engine crawlers what areas of a website they should and shouldn’t access. Creating one is a good way to control who indexes your site, which helps you avoid duplicate content penalties or poorer search rankings due to not having all your pages indexed.
Make Sure That Google Can Index Your Website
If you’re looking to rank in Google, you need to be sure that it can index your website.
-A website address with HTTPS protocol enabled (secure communication)
-A sitemap that you’ve uploaded and verified by visiting the Sitemap URL on the Sitemaps Tool page
-An XML sitemap for sites with a large number of pages. This is necessary if Google crawls your site less often because of its size. However, if you don’t see any change in ranking after updating these settings and keeping a close eye on it every day or two, then they might not be causing much difference in search rankings.
Keyword Research Checklist
– What is your main keyword?
– Where are you competing?
– What are the most relevant key phrases in your industry/niche?
– Who are your competitors, and what do they rank for?
– Do a quick on-page analysis of your website. Does it meet the basics of on-page optimization, such as being indexed in search engines, linked to other pages on the site, and not having duplicate content or broken links?
Improve Your Site Speed
An important aspect of on-page SEO is site speed. Faster web pages provide a better user experience, lead to more conversions, and rank higher on SERPs. One way of speeding up your site is by implementing a CDN like Cloudflare. These services allow faster load times by caching your assets closer to the end user.
Another method that can help you improve your site speed is compressing images via a website like TinyPNG or JPEGmini. This reduces the file size without affecting image quality and will translate into faster load times across the board.
Fix Broken Internal and Outbound Links
Fixing broken links on your webpage will help ensure all the content is accessible and usable. While these might not directly affect how well your website ranks, they will give you a better shot at improving your overall search ranking.
Use an SEO-Friendly URL Structure
A good rule of thumb is that the URL structure should always be as simple as possible. This means using all lowercase letters, dashes, or underscores and avoiding special characters and spaces. What’s more, it’s a good idea to include the type of content on your page (for example, Article: Is Facebook Still Relevant?). This can help increase click-through rates from search engines.
Add Structured Data
Structured data annotate content on your website to be more easily indexed and searched by Google. Here’s a step-by-step guide to understanding how it works and how you can use it for your website. ## An overview of structured data helps improve the understanding of information that’s on web pages. It provides context about what information is on the page, for example, regarding reviews, products, or persons. This makes better sense of all the online content and allows search engines such as Google to return more relevant results. Because they understand more about the things, they are searching through. Structured data takes three formats: RDFa, microdata, and JSON-LD.
Find and Fix Duplicate, Missing, and Truncated Title Tags
- Truncated Title Tags. Whether or not your title tag is truncated (cut off), make sure it’s as descriptive as possible and covers the main keywords you want to rank for, then add a short snippet of text about the page below it. For example, Home Depot doesn’t show its full title tag when someone does a Google search in their mobile browser, but Home Depot shows up at the top of the page on desktop devices. On that page, you’ll see the biggest box store in America.
- Missing Title Tags.
Find and Fix Duplicate and Missing Meta Descriptions
One of the most important things you can do to help with your ranking is ensuring that each webpage has a unique and compelling meta description. A meta description is a short paragraph of text that appears below the page title in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Find and Fix Orphaned Site Pages
To optimize your site’s pages, it’s important to search for orphaned or under-linked pages, which may be unoptimized. Many website owners don’t even know their site has orphaned pages that are not linked. When you find them, edit and optimize the page, so it’s both valuable and accessible to search engines. If you have a WordPress site, the easiest way is just by installing the Yoast plugin or checking if Google can crawl the page. You can also use advanced search queries on Google or Screaming Frog.
#1 – Search for low authority sites with little backlinks/sales conversions. Sometimes, all it takes is an email from someone like yourself asking permission, providing a link from your site to theirs.
