If you search with the phrase on-page SEO checklist, you will find many tips and tricks available over the internet.
But not all have the same weightage.
However, there are some important factors, which you should not forget. If used in the right manner, these will help you to optimize your webpage and rank you higher.
On-page SEO techniques simply involve increasing the SERP’s rankings which in turn will boost your blog traffic.
There are a lot of things to keep in mind while running a blog and doing proper SEO is one of the most important aspects of making a blog successful.
If all the on-page SEO factors are kept in mind, your website is likely to climb up the search engine rankings much faster.
Given the fact that Google keeps changing the algorithms, it becomes essential to always remain updated about the same.
Only a well-structured and well-optimized website can help you to get visitors, while one which is not properly optimized will take you nowhere.
That’s the reason you must make sure that you properly optimize your blog posts and also have a checklist of things to do before publishing.
On-Page SEO Checklist for Higher Ranking
Here are some very important on-site optimization techniques to boost your SEO and search engine rankings.
1. Suitable Page Titles
For starters, this is one of the most important things to keep in mind.
Make sure you do enter the main keyword into the title and at the same time be equally careful about not stuffing the title with too many of them.
The main keyword is the one that basically sums up what the entire article is about, so if anyone searches about the related things, you might as well be ranked higher on the search engines.
2. Apt Meta Description
Though many a time people tend to skip this part, this is as important as the other aspects of your article.
This should again have the main keyword as well as all other long tail or keywords that are related to your article.
In case you do not use it, you never know as this might as well be the reason for your drop in views.
It shouldn’t be more than 160 characters and must be short and crisp to have a better chance of click-through while people make searches.
3. Usage of Keywords
Keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO ranking.
Therefore, using these keywords in the right place in the right manner is highly essential.
While too many keywords could have you banned from the search engines, too less of them wouldn’t even help you to rank high.
The perfect amount of keywords would be 1.5% of your content along with a mix of the long tail and LSI Keywords.
These keywords are such that they are related to the content as closely as possible.
This is yet another way of increasing your chances to be ranked better and faster while people make searches.
You must ensure to use the main keyword in the beginning as well as the end, along with additional keywords at the proper places.
4. H (Heading) Tags
The next topic in this on-page SEO techniques list is the header tags.
Break your content into main sections and sub-sections to increase readability.
Also, use proper H tags for each heading/ section. H1 is generally used for the main heading like the page title and subsequently uses the rest H2, H3, H4, etc.
Try to use your keywords (main and long tail) in the headings. This will also help the crawlers to differentiate important content.
5. URL Structure
This refers to having an SEO-friendly URL structure.
Your URL structure should be well optimized with alphabets or even numerals while special characters must be avoided.
The targeted keywords must be used at the start of the URL. This counts as an important optimization technique.
6. Internal Linking
If you link your own articles to other relevant websites, you sure will do better in terms of SEO and ranking.
Interlinking blog posts is a primary concern if SEO is what you are aiming at. It makes it simple for the customers to go to the pages they are looking for.
Content links and permanent navigation links are what shall help you better in your internal linking process.
7. Content Readability
Your content should be informative and yet it should be easy to understand.
If you use a technical word for everything you wish to explain, you will only end up pushing viewers far from your website.
You need to keep in mind that the content you put will be read by anyone between the age of 13 to 65 or even above.
Your content should be technically sound, but at the same time, easily readable.
8. Blog Comments
What might you do with the comment? Well, I have the answer, don’t worry.
All you need to do is keep the comments in moderation and review them before the comment is added to the blog post.
You might add a couple keywords there since the reader sure wouldn’t consider doing that unless it’s done randomly. Don’t overdo it, but maybe just add some keywords in there.
Doing this will help you for sure while overdoing it might cause you harm! Be careful how you do it and you might have a significant increase in traffic.
9. Images and Videos
We often tend to ignore this aspect of our blogs.
However, embedding the right kind of videos and using the right kind of images with the right and suitable tags helps in ranking the page faster and better.
Putting apt alt tags in the images also plays a very important role in image search.
10. Your Content
The last yet most important one in this list of on-page SEO techniques is your content!
Your article shouldn’t be what textbook content is like.
If all you have is a bundle of information, the readers have no reason to choose you over any other random website.
Write useful and interesting articles. Your content should be interesting enough so that it can captivate the readers and have their full attention on your article.
Conclusion: On-Page SEO Checklist for Higher Rankings
These are some of the factors for on-page optimization in SEO which I follow on a regular basis along with proper link building.
If followed rightly, this on-page SEO checklist will not only make your articles look appealing and attractive, but will, at the same time increase your blog’s ranking in the SERPs.
Is any other on-page SEO technique working good for you? I would love to know about it in the comments below!