The Ultimate On Page SEO Checklist To Boost Rankings

Not getting enough traffic on your website?

There can be many reasons for this and one of them is your “Rankings”

Your ranking on search engines defines how well optimized your website is.

If your website is not SEO friendly then obviously you will be found down in the search results.

Want to know how to boost your rankings on Google?

In this blog,

I will provide you with an on page SEO checklist that can be used to boost your rankings on Google.

So let’s begin:

If you want your website to rank on top results, then you have to make sure that your website appears good.

To make your website appealing, you should focus on the SEO on page optimization ” of your website

So, now let’s move on to those elements of the On Page SEO checklist

On Page SEO Checklist To Boost Rankings 

On-Page SEO strategy is conducted following the elements mentioned in the On-Page optimization checklist

This On Page SEO Checklist includes every element which should be kept in mind while constructing your website.

Let’s discuss each element of the website SEO checklist…

Optimize Your Page Title

The first element of this on page SEO checklist is the “Title Tag” or the “Page Title”.

A title tag is one of many crucial elements for any website’s ranking.

It is not only that you can rank your website by optimizing the title

But, it is useful for your website to be appealing and make the target audience come to your website.

Therefore, the page title should be clear so that it perfectly fits the webpage.

Optimizing the Titles includes:

 Keyword Research

Keyword research is a very crucial part of On page SEO. 

Think about it…

Your target audience is looking for something and finds out your website is on the top rank of Google for the query.

There is a high chance that the audience will click on your website’s link.

Why?

This is because the keywords injected by you into your website’s title are the best suitable when searched on Google.

This is why

Knowing the specifics of any user makes it easy for you to deliver efficiently… 

For this, keyword research is to be efficient for your website.

Read more: Tweaks For Page Title & Meta Description That’ll Boost Your SEO Traffic & CTR

Unique And Relevant Tags

Google bots can easily determine duplicate title tags.

Giving the same title to every webpage can make it difficult for Google to crawl and rank your page.

This can affect your SERPs in ranking.

You can track such faults with the help of some site crawling tools such as my favorite Screaming Frog.

Be ready to answer all the questions put by the target audience.

Your title should contain enough words which could easily fulfill the needs, and desires of the users.

That is, by just seeing the title, the user finds the relevant knowledge about his query and further clicks on that blue link.

Your title should contain 55-60 characters, as the users will not see anything after that limit.

Optimize Your Meta Description

Meta Description is an element that includes a summary of content provided on a page.

It is displayed in the snippet.

Which is meant to give the user an idea about the content in the webpage and how it is related to the user.

Quick question:

Does Meta Description affect search ranking?

The answer can be both YES or NO.

This is because meta description has an indirect link to boosting the rankings of a webpage.

The description of a webpage makes the user click on the blue link of the website.

Which directly impacts the “CTR( Click Through Rate)” and has a positive impact on the website’s rankings.

So, it is very important to have a good meta description.

Your website’s meta description should be compelling enough to make the user click on the link provided.

This means it should naturally include the target keywords.

So that the users can easily find the relevant content related to their query.

Same as the case of title,

Your web pages should have unique meta descriptions.

For Example,

See the image below,

Here, as you can see different pages have the same meta description.

To make sure this doesn’t happen…

There should be a dynamic way to create a unique meta description for each webpage.

Otherwise, it can affect your website’s SERPs results.

Using double quotation marks in any description could not be useful.

Because Google finds it as a signal to truncate the description from that particular point.

So to prevent this fault,

Simply make use of alphanumerics in your meta description.

All in all:

To boost your rankings your website’s meta description should be appealing enough to drive organic traffic.

Check For Your Brand Name On Google

Let’s say,

You have listed your website on Google.

But how will you get to know whether your website is ranking or even driving any traffic?

So, to check for your brand on Google, you have to analyze your website’s performance.

Your website’s performance is based upon some factors like-

i. Current Search Rankings– Measure your rankings and identify the target keywords used by the users.

ii. Website Traffic– analyze the organic traffic visiting your website.

iii. Lead Generation–  measure how many people are interested in getting your services.

iv. Visitors Conversion Rate– keep a check on the client’s conversion rates.

v. Sales Revenue–  calculate total sales revenue after applying the On-Page SEO strategy.

You should always have a track of these factors and be a well-optimized SEO platform.

By having a check on your performance you can easily measure the changes your website needs.

Apply suitable on page SEO strategies on your web pages to increase your rankings.

Optimize Your Website For Google Sitelinks

Sitelinks are used to make it simple for the visitors to jump on the desired content.

They appear just below the search results.

Sitelinks removes one step of the whole long process of visiting the website and finding the desired content.

Let me show you an example of our blog only,

The highlighted part shows the Sitelinks.

Here as you can see In our blog- What Are SEO Services & What’s Included in SEO Services Provided by Digital Marketing Agencies?

There are three site links provided by Google under the main link.

This means if visitors do not want to go through the whole process,

They just click on the site links and directly land on the desired webpage.

You have to build more internal links to achieve this.

This is because webpages that are pointed to have more internal links tend to appear as site links.

For this, you have to place the suitable text in a good way so that you can easily interlink another webpage.

So, if you want that google place site links to your website.

Then you have to make your website optimized enough.

Check And Optimize The H1 Tag For All The Pages (Including The Home Page)

H1 or Heading 1 should describe the content of the webpage.

That’s the reason, optimizing H1s is the most valuable element of any On page SEO strategy.

Keep in notice how your H1s are looking on each webpage.

H1’s should be noticeable and catchy enough to make your audience click on your website’s link.

Generally,  people get confused between ‘Title Tags’ and ’heading 1’

But the thing is that Both are similar to each other but there are a few differences.

Coming back to H1,

You can see  the image below,

This is one of our blogs that provides you with information about the tools for mobile SEO.

As you can see on the right side, the arrow is pointing to the H1 of that blog

That is, “13 Must-Have Mobile SEO Tools (Free And Paid)”

By just looking at Heading 1 you can easily get what will be the content in this blog.

This is why,

Your H1 should be noticeable and clear about what all content will be there inside it.

Also, to boost your rankings your H1 should be well optimized.

For this, you should use only one H1 for each webpage 

Make use of focused long-tailed keywords.

Your H1 should describe the intent of the content.

Read More: How To Create Perfect SEO Title Tags

Check And Optimize Your Page Headings

Your headings show how well-managed content is there in your blog or article.

There are mainly 4 headers, but sometimes it can go further to 6.

Your content should be optimized enough to make it into the top rankings.

This means H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 should be well constructed to make your content perfect and easy to understand by the audience,

All the headers should need to prioritize your information in a proper hierarchy.

That is, h2 should contain the most high-priority content as compared to h4.

Have a look at this example,

See how simple it is, you can easily recognize what is h1, h2, h3, and h4.

For this, your headings have to be well optimized.

You can easily optimize your headings by following these tips:

1. There should be only one heading 1.

2. H2-H4 should contain the main content of your webpage with a proper structure of explanation.

3. Make use of the most searched keywords in your headings.

4. Use proper fonts and text sizes to enhance the visibility of your content.

5. Use secondary keywords in H2 and LSI keywords in your explanations.

All in all:

It is all about the reader’s perspective

Your content is to be informative as well as appealing to the readers.

You should have the right balance between readability and SEO effectiveness in your content.

Making your headings SEO effective can make a huge impact on your content quality and ultimately boost your rankings.

Make Sure Your Target Keyword Is Added In The Opening Of The Paragraph

It is very important to know how to correctly use the keywords in your content so that there are more chances for your webpage to be found and ranked.

Before going on how to use these keywords…

Let me tell you the three types of keywords.

• Primary Keywords

• Secondary Keywords 

• LSI Keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing)

Using keywords should be the main focus of your blogs. As they help in boosting your overall rankings.

Your title should have the primary keyword which ultimately reflects the intent of the content.

For example,

Here, the title contains the primary keyword which is “Mobile SEO Tools”.

Similarly, each element of your content should fluently contain keywords.

To make your content rank, you should always put target keywords in the opening paragraphs of your content.

You can surely apply this On-page SEO strategy, which can boost your Google rankings.

Let me tell you how.

As you can see,

In the Blog – “How To Write SEO Friendly Product Description”

The highlighted part tells how you can simply apply the target keywords in your opening paragraphs.

Considering this On Page SEO strategy, you can expect a massive boost in your webpage’s ranking.

Read More: 11 Best Keyword Research Tools In 2022

Add Text Content To Accompany Your Non-Text Content

Non Context content includes images, charts, graphs, audio content, video content, and much more.

To make your non-text content more understandable, it should contain text content.

Which makes it easier for search engines like Google to understand the intent of your website.

Here’s an example of our website,

Imagine if there were just pictures like this:

Will you be able to get what the context is all about?

Of course not!

And now, look at this.

Here you can easily get what is being told about which is, Our Work and services to make your website rank on Google.

This is the best example to relate to the given element to enhance your website’s on site optimization.

This means, by adding text to the images, the given content becomes more attractive and understandable.

So next time, make sure that your Non-content text is accompanied by the text content to boost your website’s rankings.

Optimize Your Content For E-A-T

Firstly, E-A-T is Google’s search quality rater guidelines, which stand for E- Expertise, A-Authoritativeness, and T- Trustworthiness.

Expertise depends on the quality of the content you provide to your users on Google. 

Make certain that the content on your website is of high quality and well optimized.

Authoritativeness is measured by your website’s value among the competitors in the same field and if you are getting some good backlinks or not. 

At last, Trustworthiness is measured by analyzing your target audience and their reviews for you.

The concept of E-A-T helps you in writing the main content to boost your rankings.

Though it is not directly linked to your ranking, it is the backbone of the SEO strategy.

To optimize your content for E-A-T you can:

Audit your Content- In this, ask a few questions to yourself:

Does your content highlight your expertise?

Is your content sufficient to give the background of the topic discussed?

Is it best among the rest?

Is it perfect when compared to your competitor’s website?

Create Better Content for the Future

Keeping in mind the points during the audit, you can make a framework of expertise in writing the content.

Also, produce good-quality content that has well-researched information to build trust and authority for your website. You can do this by hiring experienced content writers.

Beautify Your Content (Formatting And Styling) And Make It Easy To Read.

“Content is the King” as the statement says…

The content on your web pages should be appealing to the readers. Also, it should be easy to understand and read what the content is all about.

Indeed, readers do not read the whole content…

But also, if they find the content provided interesting and relevant they tend to go through it.

So, to make your content more readable you can,

Write in an inverted pyramid style in which, put the most important facts on the top and the least important at the bottom.

Write in a conversational tone with short sentences.

Here you can make use of some bucket brigades.

This technique works like a magic and successfully grabs the attention of the readers.

Use proper text with accurate punctuations, making it easier for the readers to know where to stop and where there is a pause.

Optimize your content with non-textual content such as images, videos, graphs, and GIFs, which can make your content more appealing.

All in all:

Your writing style should consist of a conversational tone,

With short sentences and suitable nontext content ( images, graphs, stats, videos, etc) for any reader to understand what’s all in it.

Remember to write in a pyramid style that helps the readers get the most important information first.

Also, have the magic of bucket brigades to gather the attention of the readers.

Read More: Step-by-Step Content Creation Guide [Writing to Publishing Content Successfully]

Optimize Your Images

Before uploading the images to your websites make sure to optimize them.

Without proper image optimization, you are wasting a crucial SEO asset.

Image optimization has great advantages for optimizing on site performance, such as a better user experience, faster page load times, and ultimately boosting your ranking.

Here’s how you can optimize your images for your content.

I. Choose The Correct Image Format: Choosing the correct format for your images is the key to making them load quickly when they appear in front of the user. You can convert your images into various supported formats, such as WebP, PNG, or JPEG, for better quality and a perfect balance.

II. Compress Your Images: It helps the images load quickly.

Studies tell us that images cover almost 21% of the total webpage’s weight.

Large-size images can affect your website’s page load speed.

That’s why images should be compressed before being uploaded to your website.

III. Make Use Of Unique Images: because most websites tend to use old, repeated images in their content.

But you should always come up with original and unique images for your content.

IV. Always Write SEO-Friendly Alt Text: these are text alternatives to the images.

Alt text is so beneficial for the overall visibility of the images. This text allows Google bots to crawl the images and rank them in the image section of Google.

Even if you are satisfied with all the SEO practices, if images fail to load for any reason, the users would certainly not be able to relate to the information provided.

For this, it is important to provide useful information about the image to Google in the form of Alt Text.

V. Mobile Friendly Images: Optimizing for mobile devices is where websites fail to fulfill the requirements.

In short:

Your images should be capable enough to be loaded on any device (desktop or mobile).

Read More: 13 Must-Have Mobile SEO Tools (Free And Paid)

Create A Dedicated Image and Video Sitemap And Submit It To Google.

Creating and submitting an image sitemap is an extremely important step to make it easier for search engines to crawl each and every element of your on page checklist. 

This can boost your rankings in search results.

A sitemap of images tells Google about the depth in the content of your website to make those images indexed in the search engine.

Moreover, you can increase the value of your image content by submitting an XML image sitemap to search engines.

This can boost the SEO value of your image content.

There is a need for a sitemap if, 

a. Your site is really large.

b. Your site has a lot of media like images, videos, etc.

c. Your site has lesser external links.

Now coming on to Video Sitemaps…

The video sitemap is quite similar to what I discussed in the image sitemap.

It is the video content on your website that you provide to Google.

Here every site entry means the URL of that page which is having the videos.

So to sum up:

We can say that creating a video and image sitemap of your website helps Google easily find the images and videos in your content and make them indexed.

Check Your Internal Linking Strategy

Now that you have optimized your website, make sure to have proper internal linking.

This includes identifying proper anchor texts with which you can interlink other webpages of your website.

It can help you decrease the bounce rate of your web pages.

Here is a quick and easy example,

As you can in the above images,

The text which is highlighted is called anchor text, also it is linked to another webpage on the same website which is known as internal linking.

This is done to make the readers visit other webpages of your website also.

So, a solid internal linking strategy can rock your rankings in search engines.

With suitable tools, data and planning you can bring a quick strategy and big results.

Optimize Your Post For Google Featured Snippet

Coming to the end of the on-page optimization checklist we have, featured snippets optimization

A featured snippet is a section located on the top of the SERPs.

They can be in the form of paragraphs, lists, tables, or videos.

Here’s an example,

The result that appears above the first search result on the Google SERPs for any search query is called the “featured snippet.”

To be in a featured snippet,

The content on your website should contain the keywords that the user might be searching for to fulfill their needs and requirements. The content could be anything… a blog post with a step-by-step or list, a guide, a product page, a service page listing the services they offer, and so on.

Your post must have some triggering questions starting with ‘why’, ‘can’, ‘do’ etc.

Date your post. Stats show that dated content tends to feature more in the featured snippets.

If your website earns a featured snippet, there is the most chance that readers will click on your website’s link and this can boost your rankings.

Read More: The Easiest Way To Rank In Google Position Zero (Featured Snippets)

Conclusion

So here it is! The Ultimate On Page SEO Checklist. 

I hope, this blog helped you understand how to optimize your website for google.

By keeping in mind the above-mentioned points you can easily improve your website rankings.

And if you need any help regarding any SEO Service do let me know by leaving a comment below.

Frequently Asked Questions ( FAQs)

1. How do you do On-Page SEO step by step?

By following the On Page SEO checklist you can accomplish on-page SEO which includes optimizing titles, descriptions, headings, and content, finding the right keywords, putting them in the content, and finally making suitable interlinking to the content.

2. How do you analyze on-page SEO?

Analyzing includes examining the SEO practice you conducted on your website and later what results are outcasted which consist of your rankings, traffic, and revenue generated.

3. What are the 3 most important on-page SEO factors?

There are many factors included in the website SEO checklist. They are: 

• Title Tag
• Meta Description
• Headings
• Content 
• Image Optimization
• Well Composed URL

4. What is a good On-Page SEO score?

A good On page SEO score ranges between 80-100.

To achieve this your website should be perfect in all aspects such as Technical SEO, Off Page SEO, and On-Page SEO

5. What are the benefits of on-page SEO?

A few benefits of On-Page SEO are;

• Improved Local Search
• Boosting Rankings
• High Organic Traffic
• Increase in Conversion rates
• Increases CTR