On-Page SEO Checklist |
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On-Page SEO elements are the basics or the foundation of any SEO strategy, all the link building and promotion in the world will have little effect if On-Page SEO is ignored. So the real SEO value of your off-page activity is underpinned by the on-page activity.
Luckily On-Page SEO can largely be analysed as a checklist, so I have created a fairly complete On-Page SEO Checklist.
Under general headings below I provide both the element or aspect and a brief description of what this means.
Summary
This page covers all of the following areas:
Meta Data
Meta Description
Meta Keywords
Page Title
GEO Tags
Keywords and Content
Keyword Research
Keyword Mapping
Keyword Density
Keyword Usage
Unique Content
Visible On-Page Elements
H1 Title
H2, 3 and 4 Titles
Rich Snippets / Micro Data
URL Structure
Anchor text internal links
Images
Breadcrumbs
Address and contact details
Website Footer
Under The Bonnet
Crawlability
No JavaScript or flash menus
Robots.txt
Authorship
HTML & CSS
Canonical issue
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
Sitemaps
Submit the xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.
Check for broken links
301 Redirects
Device Friendly
Website Speed
Combine external scripts
Images
Enable Gzip Compression
Minimise Requests
Code
Pages and Structure
Error 404 Page
Essential Pages
Cookie Law Compliance
Site Structure
Outbound links
General Good Advice
Check your IP neighbours
Create Blog - Update Regularly
Social Interaction
Download an On-Page SEO Checklist
Meta Data
Meta Description
Meta description tags should be present within the header of the source code on every page (see example code below):
<meta name="Description" content="Enter a Meta description" />
A meta description is the message that appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) when your site is displayed when someone searches (see example image below).
Although the Meta description is not a direct ranking factor it is an indirect influence on ranking for keywords. This is because a compelling and well optimised Meta description will improve the CTR (Click Through Rate) and CTR is a direct ranking factor.
A Meta description is a sales message, an ad just like a paid text ad and should be written like one. It also needs to be no longer than 155 characters because any character after the 155th will be cut off with "..."
se the keyword the page is targeting
Using the keyword within the Meta description is not a direct ranking factor, but as you can see in the example above that the search term is bolded within the text of the Meta description.
Meta Keywords
These have been publically stated by Matt Cutts as having no impact on rankings, this has been the case for many years. However they are used by Bing (if that matters to you).
If you do decide to use the Meta keyword tag, just use the keyword that the page is targeting and do not stuff it with every keyword you can think of. The Meta keywords code should be located in the same place as the Meta description, within the <head> of the source code. The code for this is in the example below:
<meta name="Keywords" content="On-Page SEO Checklist" />
Page Title
Page Title tags should be present within the header of the source code on every page (see example code below):
<title>On-Page SEO Checklist</title>
The page title appears above the Meta description within the SERPs:
The page title also appears in web browser tabs:
The page title is a direct ranking factor and is arguably one of the most significant and easy to implement if not already present by default. The page title should contain the target keyword for the page and be no more than 70 characters in length.
It is also worth considering a structure for page titles throughout your site in order to drive consistency. If you have a brand, include this within the title tag and separate using a pipe, ideally place the brand after the keyword:
Example Keyword | Brand Name
Or if a page targets two keywords you can target them thusly with the page title:
Example Keyword | Example Keyword | Brand Name
GEO Tags
GEO tag code is used to tell robots that the page is specifically related to a geographical location. This is useful if you have a local business and want to optimise your site to appear higher for local results.
GEO tags should be located within the <head section> of the source code and a useful tool for generating the code based on a location or address is http://www.geo-tag.de/generator/en.html
An example of the Geo Tag code that could target the UK is below:
<meta name="geo.region" content="GB" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="55.378051;-3.435973" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="55.378051, -3.435973" />
Keywords and Content
Keyword Research
Perform keyword research in order to identify appropriate keywords to target. Your keyword strategy should be based upon research among a few other smaller factors.
Keyword Mapping
Map your target keywords to your target pages, target 1 or 2 closely related keywords per page. To target more will dilute the relevance the page has to all of the target keywords and reduce the chances of ranking for any.
Targeting close variations of a keyword such as a plural or using words like 'in' or 'the' within the keyword are easy to target if the page has enough content and relevance to the keyword.
Keyword Density
This is a very outdated idea, content should not be written with this in mind. The same goes for keyword stuffing, avoid these thing and anyone who speaks of them!
Keyword Usage
Use the keyword naturally throughout the page, whenever it would naturally be used it can be. Content should flow normally and adhere to all the rules of the language in which it being written in.
Use the keyword within the opening sentence and the closing paragraph if possible.
Unique Content
This is vital, always always always write or produce unique content. Never copy or duplicate other people's content or content from internet. If for a legitimate reason you have duplicate content on your site, use the canonical tag (see below example) to direct Google to the original source of the content.
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/page.html"/>
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to how much content you should use; some homepages have just a few words and still rank well. However as a rule of thumb the following will serve you well:
Use a minimum of 250 words on a page targeting a keyword
Use 350+ on the home page
Blog posts should be between 500 - 700 at a minimum
To learn more about content please following the link to the content section of the site.
Visible On-Page Elements
H1 Title
Use the keyword within the H1 tag, this is a direct ranking factor and drives relevance. Use only one H1 title on any page meaning that you should not use them for styling font throughout the page. The code for a H1 title is shown below:
<H1>Example Title</H1>
H2, 3 and 4 Titles
Do not use H tags for styling font throughout the page, use H tags only to head relevant sections of the page's content. Use of the keyword is not essential and should only be used naturally. The code for a H2 title shown below, they all follow the same rule:
<H2>Example Title</H2>
Rich Snippets / Micro Data
Rich Snippets allow you to mark up your content in ways that make it readable to Google. For example if you have a page that describes a recipe you can mark that content up and this will effect how the site appears in the SERPs. See an example of this below:
URL Structure
Make the URL's verbose describing the page succinctly and if possible use the target keyword within it. Do not use long number strings or non descriptive terms like 'page1'.
Google see's URL's with hyphens separating words as being the equivalent of a space, thus it see's them as separate words. Leaving actual spaces produces the ugly '%20%' characters in the URL, this makes me sad.
Anchor text internal links
Use the keyword of the linked-to-page within the anchor text of the link in general. However you now need to consider anchor text ratios; the mix of anchor text to any page should be varied in order to be natural. This is especially important on large websites with thousands of pages.
Avoid using "Click here" or "More" as anchor text for the majority of the time, unless you are trying to improve anchor text ratios.
Use internal links to promote pages from relevant places within the content of other pages.
As a rule of thumb; limit the number of links (internal or external) on any page to under 100. Try to avoid linking out to other sites from every page, for example; a header link to a sponsor or partner company from every page will dilute the authority of the site.
Every page should be linked to from 3 other pages. Link to your more important pages more often.
Images
Optimise images to be as small in 'file size' as possible or compress them using your choice of tool or server side compression. It is also valuable to mark up images with Rich Snippets
Do not copy images from other websites.
Use alt tags on every image, this allows Google to know what the image is of. Use the keyword where relevent but primarily the Alt text should be relevant and descriptive. Do not just keyword stuff!
Where possible embed images in the CSS in order to reduce load times and improve website performance.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are a navigation path that illustrates to the site visitors where they are within the website's hierarchical structure. For example a breadcrumb trail for someone landing on the page:
http://www.example.com/directory/page could have the breadcrumb:
Home> Directory> Page
Breadcrumb trails assist visitors in site navigation by providing links to previous hierarchical levels of navigation by allowing them to navigate up through relevant category pages.
Breadcrumbs offer internal linking opportunities, they help crawlers read your site's hierarchy better and Google can display breadcrumbs as rich-snippet-like links within the search results.
Google provide a tool more information on this, which can be found here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/185417?hl=en
Address and contact details
Have these present in the footer of the home page.
Have these details present on your site.
If you are a local business, have these details prominent on every page.
Website Footer
Avoid linking out from the footer to other sites as a theme throughout the site. Do not use site wide links in the footer, just provide essential links, an example of these are below:
- Homepage
- HTML sitemap
- Contact page
- Quote page
- Privacy Policy
- Website Terms and Conditions
Under The Bonnet
Crawlability
The navigation must be readable by search engines and users of different browser functionality; having a JavaScript menu can restrict use in older browser versions and can prevent Google from craling your main navigation.
Try to avoid image based menus as these cannot be read by search engines.
Avoid infinite loop issues as these can result in indexing problems.
No JavaScript or flash menus
These will not always render in some browsers and may limit the navigation of your website by visitors. Minimise the use of JavaScript and avoid flash at all costs as it cannot be read by search engines.
Robots.txt
Create a Robots.txt file and ensure that this links to the xml sitemap with the following code as the last entry in the file:
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Disallow any directories, pages, URL Strings or file types from being indexed that you do not want indexed
Test the robots.txt is working by checking Google Webmaster Tools for errors.
.htaccess file (Linux servers only)
You can use this to resolve canonical issues, enable Gzip Compression, to setup redirects among other things.
Authorship
It is important for your sites to use verified Google+ accounts to claim and own your content as recognised authors. In order to do this verification code will need to be added to the header of the source code on the homepage of the website.
HTML & CSS
Use a W3C Validation tool to check your HTML & CSS is correct, poor or incorrect coding can cause functionality problems for website users.
Canonical issue
Setup a redirect that means that the site can only be accessed either with or without the www. at the beginning.
Also ensure that the index page can only be accessed from the root of the domain and not example.com/index.html
This prevents pages from being accessed through multiple URL's and thus avoids potential duplicate content issues.
Google Analytics
Install Google Analytics tracking code on every page of the site, immediately before the closing head tag </head>. Follow the link to sign up for Google Analytics.
Google Webmaster Tools
Upload Google Webmaster Tools verification file this will verify the account and enable the use of the tool. Submit your xml sitemap/s to Google Webmaster Tools.
Sitemaps
HTML
The site must have a standard HTML sitemap that links to every page on the site that you want indexed.
XML
The site must have an xml sitemap that also links to every page of the site that you want indexed.
Submit the xml sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools.
If the site has 10's of thousands of pages then having multiple sitemap.xml files linked to from a master sitemap.xml file will be useful. This allows you to identify crawl errors more quickly for example.
Check for broken links
Use a tool like 'Screaming Frog' or 'Xenu' to check your site for broken links and either fix or redirect them.
301 Redirects
Use 301 redirects sparingly as they can effect site performance if there are thousands in place. Ensure that they work as desired and do not cause infinite loop issues.
Device Friendly
Either have a mobile friendly version of the site on a sub domain or make the site 'responsive' / 'responsive adaptive' so that it is more accessible on a range of devices.
Website Speed
Use Google Analytics and other 3rd party tools to assess your website's speed to ensure your website loads as quickly as possible. Ideally your site should load within 2 seconds. Below are some examples of components to consider:
Combine external scripts
Combine scripts of a similar type so for example; combine all CSS files. Do not combine files of a different type, like Java and CSS.
Images
Ensure that images are compressed or optimised for small file sizes. Also ensure that all images have relevant 'Alt tags' that describe the image and if possible use the keyword that the page is targeting.
Enable Gzip Compression
Enable Enable Gzip Compression to compress content (not images) and improve site speed. This can be done from adding code to the .htaccess file if the website is hosted on a Linux server.
Minimise Requests
Reduce the number of DNS and server requests that are made when loading a page. Reduce the number of redirects and loadable elements on the page or perform actions on the server to reduce bandwidth and load times.
Code
Remove unnecessary code and white space, control as much as possible with a single CSS file to prevent elements from loading on every page. Reduce errors in the CSS and HTML and make the site accessible from as many devices as possible.
Pages and Structure
Error 404 Page
The site should have a dedicated error 404 page that should be styled like the rest of the site, this will protect the site from lost visitors should they click a broken link or mistype the URL.
Essential Pages
Ensure that you have all of the following pages present on your site:
- Privacy Policy
- Terms and Conditions
- Contact Page
- About Us Page
Cookie Law Compliance
It is now a requirement enforceable by law (however unlikely) that websites that use cookies (which yours will as a result of Google Analytics) need to have an opt-in function on the site for new visitors. See the link below for more details, the site should meet the minimum requirements.
http://www.ico.org.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electronic_communications/the_guide/cookies
Site Structure
Make the site easy to use.
Make the site easy to navigate.
Structure your most important pages in tier one.
Outbound links
Link out to authority sites where relevant from within your content. Link out to relevant sources if you cite information or quote someone. Link out to your content located on other sites and your social profiles.
General Good Advice
Check your IP neighbours
Check to see who you share your IP address with and ensure there are no suspicious sites that could cause some guilt by association.
Create Blog - Update Regularly
Having a blog is a great way to constantly add fresh unique and engaging content and also provides more opportunity to build links and promote the site. It is highly recommended that a blog is present on every site.
Social Interaction
Links to the Facebook page, Google+ page, and Twitter page should be present on every page and where content is particularly engaging such as on the blog, 'like' 'tweet' and '+'s' should be available. This will help to reach new audience and promote your content.
Download an On-Page SEO Checklist
Download an Excel spreadsheet for tracking your On-Page SEO Checklist progress by clicking the link below:
On-Page SEO Checklist - Excel
For a PDF version of this page that contains just the main points minus the description; please click on the link below:
On-Page SEO Checklist - PDF
I cover some of these elements in more detail in other articles, so if you come across something that you do not understand or know how to implement check out the rest of this website.