In this on-page SEO checklist, Paul Eide gives you the basics.
There are 200+ known Google ranking signals. The least you can do is handle your on page business with this on page SEO checklist.
Here are some Omaha on-page SEO tips for blog posts and pages on your website, ranked from most important to less important.
On-Page SEO Checklist Quick Links:
Keyword Research
Title Tag
Headline Structure
Image Naming and Compression
URL String Structure
Meta Description
Internal Links
Backlinks
All are absolutely necessary for on-page SEO best practices and to get your page ranked as high as possible in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Keyword Research
Keyword research is the process of selecting keywords to target in a piece of content. Aside from context, the two main factors are: monthly search volume and competition.
If a pizza shop created a piece of content and tried to rank for “dui lawyers near me,” even if it was KILLING IT in organic for it’s own industry terms, it wouldn’t do well. Google knows what your site is and what its about, if you are doing it right. Each site gets an Authority Score.
Keyword research put concisely is knowing the difference between “health care” and “healthcare” and knowing why you are targeting one over the other.
Title Tag
A <title tag> tells a search engine, and a website visitor, what your page is about. A title tag appears via the inset of your browser tab – typically they are truncated. IMO, it is the most important on-page SEO signal. And should def be your #1 step. Because everything else you do on a page depends on this.
Here is this page’s title tag:
Headline Structure
The Title tag also takes precedence over H1. But hierarchical structure is important. Each <h> tag is like a flare sent up to Google that says, “Hey Google, let me make your life indexing content easier – here is a subtopic of this page and what it is about!”
Think of headlines in the way you think of bolding or italicizing something in general. It’s a “call out.”
An <H1> or a Title Tag vs. subsequent higher numbers/lower levels of importance would look like this:
Image Naming and Compression
Every image you upload gets stored in a server, like manila file folders in an old school file cabinet – Google it, kids.
The more documents a folder contains, the heavier it is to carry, and the longer it takes to figure out what it is about. The same is true for servers and website hosting.
Everything you publish on the Internet needs to render. The bigger the file, the longer it takes to load. The longer it takes to load, the slower it goes to the next piece of content that needs to be “served.” Images are notorious for being extremely large files. Compress the image with a tool like Image Compressor and save 80% memory per image. And, rename the image, kids.
Search crawlers (called spider or robots) crawl the World Wide “Web.” They are tiny txt/text files. All they do is parse data on a site, then jump to another via the “web.”
Google’s goal is to parse and categorize every site on the regular Internet (not including the deep web). Their business is relevance. Thus, they need to know the most current information about ANY particular topic, at any time. Just like your mother-In-law.
Actually, it’s a lot like how we know more about the moon than we do about our own oceans.
That said (for really no reason), spiders read left to right. They read faster in this format (paul-eide-is-the-man) than they do in this (Paul Eide Is The Wurst) because it looks like code and the “string” structure is the language they speak.
Compress your image. Then name the file name your keyword first, or at least include it. And, add Alt Text and a caption.
If targeting a keyphrase/keyword (which you should be doing, you boob) having it at the front of the string for that page (examplesite.com/paul-eide) helps you rank. And, it makes the URL look pretty and discernable.
URL String Structure
I hate ugly URLs more than I hate ugly children. But the difference is you can CONTROL what your URL looks like.
If you received a random text with just a random link, would you be more prone to click on:
example.com/6yt7654er?
Or, example.com/on-page-seo-checklist?
Don’t be lazy – your mom raised you better than that.
Meta Description
This is the little box of text that shows up when you share a link; sometimes the Featured Image will also show up next to it.
Depending on the user’s device, it will either be a short, truncated amount of words (phone), or you may see the entire meta description, up to 140 characters (desktop). Use this space to be concise, witty, and fun. Just like the spouse of your dreams.
The Meta Description, along with Title Tag, makes a person decide if they want to click on your site over a billion competitors. Make it fun. Get weird.
Like a freelance editor of mine (who I worked with for 5 years) at a huge publication you would know, who I had gotten particularly weird with in a pitch email, once said. “Your email stood out from a sea of ‘Dear Sirs.”
If its your brand or one you are representing, take the risk, and dare to be great.
Internal Links
The slumbering giant of any on-page SEO checklist. Internal links are hyperlinks in one page/post on your site, that link to another page/post within your site. Google gives every page an SEO score. And some pages have more SEO Juice than others. Typically, the homepage has the most link juice because all pages flow through it.
If I was trying to improve our page about social media, I would backlink to it like this: Omaha social media. The anchor text you use to hyperlink is also important and a is a ranking signal to Google.
What would you be more likely to click: “click here” or some descriptive anchor text that entices a visitor to click because it is relevant to the original piece of content? We want to give the site visitor more content that got them on our site in the first place.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from OTHER sites, to your site.
Though technically not considered an on-page SEO checklist necessity, because a link from another site “off-page,” backlinks are hugely important for ranking.
A link from another site is like a recommendation. “Hey Google, this piece of content is really good and relevant to what I’m writing about and will aid the listeners quest for relevant information.” The more backlinks you get, the better. Each link passes SEO link juice.
The 8 steps in this on-page SEO checklist absolutely must be done for any page you are trying to rank. Which should be every page on your site.
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