Maybe this is the complete updated On-Page SEO Checklist 2021. When comes the name On-Page SEO, Keywords and Meta tag comes in our mind first.
Someone may think it is so easy to fulfill the on-page SEO, but I will tell, here have a lot of technical terms which you can’t do easily. On the other hand, it is so effective for completing your on-page SEO.
We know Two parts of SEO: On-Page and Off-Page.
Here we will not do any work in other’s domain. That means it will be only the ultimate checklist for on-page SEO. Important to realize, it is not only a beginners guideline, but I will also cover all the latest matters of on-page SEO. So, you can depend on it to do all the issues in the white hat and updated method.
What is on-page SEO and Why it is essential?
On-page SEO means doing Search engine optimization to your site or page. For example, Formatting, adding meta keywords or generating SEO friendly content.
The benefits of On-page SEO- Actually, it is the best method to optimize your content. When you want to do off-page SEO, you need to ensure fully optimized website with on-page SEO factors.
It will help you to rank the content fast. At the same time, Google will take it as the natural optimization.
Ultimate On-Page SEO Checklist
You will get the complete guideline of On-Page SEO techniques today. You do not need to go anywhere for checking on-page SEO factors for WordPress or anything. It will cover all the aspects and the latest guideline for on-page SEO.
Let’s talk about the complete On-page SEO checklist.
1. Ensure SEO-friendly URL
You may think it has no value in On-Page SEO for ranking with URL. But you will be inspired that Matt Cutts (Google WebMaster Engineer) has told not to neglect this matter.
Actually, he wanted to tell, keep all the matters presented in your article and Google will take it as useful formation, not ugly. It makes the URL optimized and clean.
For this reason, ensure your URLs of the page or post are SEO friendly, and you have kept here the focus keyword.
With this in mind, make the URL like https://www.speedhost.com.bd/on-page-seo (Don’t add the date or unwanted things). It is not authoritative.
2. Keep Keyword on the Title
It is very important to attract the readers and the search engine. It seems the post is entirely for the desired query. You need to follow it. It is the best practice to keep the keyword on the title.
At the same time, try to keep the keyword on the starting of the title, if possible.
3. Add modifiers in the Title
When you want to increase the CTR, adding an eye-catching modifier is very necessary. For example, adding the year, or best, top and review. It attracts the readers to enter into your site.
When you include the year, it seems it is the latest and updated solution for them. With this in mind, try to add attractive modifiers with the title. Another key point, you should update the year form the title when the year is near to end.
4. Ensure Your Title is H1
H1 tag is the headline of your post or page. By default, WordPress keeps the title as H1. But some themes may change it.
For this reason, check it before using any new theme, if the H1 is your title. If you use any other CMS or framework, you should also check it, if you are using the title as the H1 tag!
Another key point, you should not add H1 more than ones into a post or page.
5. Rich Multimedia for natural on-page SEO
A content becomes more interactive and user-friendly if you add visual content to it including images, videos or infographics. It will surely reduce the bounce rate.
When the users like the content, then automatically they will stay on the page.
Moreover, Google likes it with the visual content-rich web page. It is good for SEO too. To point out, it makes the content more natural.
6. Keep the Subheading in H2 with keywords
Use every important paragraph into a subheading. It will make the content more user-interactive. At the same time, always keep the keywords in your subheading al least one times.
That means, keep the keyword into H2, and it helps the search engine to realize you have discussed the desired things of the readers in details.
Read More: Check how to increase domain authority.
7. Try to keep Keywords into first 100-200 Words
Experts inspire to add keywords into first 100 to 200 words. It adds value to rank the post. Don’t do it unnaturally. Google love all the things which are natural.
For this reason, keeping the keywords into the first paragraph naturally is helpful for ranking of your page.
8. Confirm Responsive Design
Google gives priority to rank mobile-friendly sites. They even started to fall penalty mobile -unfriendly websites.
At the same time, now half of the visitors come from mobile. So for keeping your website more functional and engaging, you should ensure responsive design today.
9. Keep Outbound link balance
Sometimes, we can’t mention other with the outbound link. But it is very important to rank your sites. You should point useful resource which is similar to your content as the outbound link.
It helps to understand the Google about your content and resources. Experts say to add 2 to 4 outbound link for every 1000 words, and it seems natural.
10. Ensure Keyword friendly Internal links
When you want to pass juice from one page to another, internal links helps you the most. If you want to see the example of the internal link, I will inspire to see the Wikipedia.
But you do not need to interlink as the amount of Wikipedia. Use at least 3 to 5 internal link with the old post to keep balance. It is so helpful and efficient to rank the content.
11. Enrich Site Speed
Google loves the fast loading web page. Even Google keep the record for ranking and displaying the page among the readers. For this reason, you have to take the site speed as serious. You should ensure your web page never takes up to 4 seconds to load and it is natural for ranking and user-engagement.
- Check how to increase the speed of your WordPress website and How to check the speed of your website.
You should do the following things to enrich the site speed.
- Choose a good host (Check Reliable SpeedHost Hosting Package)
- Never use a theme which is not lightweight and cleanly coded
- Use CDN (Content delivery network)
- Optimize the visual content
You can check the site speed and performance freely by using Pingdom or GTmetrix. The tools will also provide you suggestions how can you increase the speed also.
12. Control LSI keywords
For ranking on the first page of Google, you should make keyword rich content. But keyword stuffing is not allowed by Google. For this reason, using LSI (Similar Keywords/Synonyms) is very effected to keep the ratio high.
On the other hand, Google takes it as a positive score. That means it thinks the content is resourceful.
Important to realize, you have to add the LSI keywords naturally. If you can do it, your content will surely be SEO friendly.
13. Optimize the Image
Using ALT tag to rank the image is very important. It helps to make the image SEO friendly. It will surely help you to rank the images as well as the content.
- Let’s check ways of optimizing images.
Additionally, use the keywords in the ‘alt’ at least one of your images to boost the ranking of the content.
14. Make Available Social Sharing buttons
Social Sharing does not impact for ranking directly, but it gives huge juice to rank your sites. It ensures the content more engaging.
For this reason, make your content social media friendly.
Take a look at the below video where Matt Cutts from Google Web Master Engineer has described the ranking possibility of social media friendly content.
15. Generate Lengthy Content
Never forget to generate the long form of content. It is very effective to rank the content on the first page of Google. It proves the content is resourceful. Undoubtedly, it increases the social share and engagement.
At the same time, it increases the amount of getting natural links.
16. Increase Dwell Time
If the readers come to your page, go back immediately it increases the bounce rate. It tells your content is not resourceful and the readers are not getting it as useful.
Google take it as an important ranking factor. So, try to make the landing page and compelling call to actions to keep the readers engaging. Format the content interactively and use the visual content to keep the readers with you.
17. Update the site Regularly
When comes ranking the sites fastly, then you have to ensure you are updating the content regularly. Here, you have to ensure adding new content in consequence. That means, keep a balance of posting new content. It may be daily, in a week or monthly. But try to maintain balance.
Then again, always update the previous content. Especially the content which is getting organic visitors from the search engine. It helps to boost the page and helps to convert the visitors into sales.
18. Reduce Broken Link
The Broken link is always harmful to your sites. It does not give any value for your sites. Similarly, your readers feel bored when a link is not opening. That means you should check your content if the outbound or internal link is working.
It happens for two reasons, one- Maybe the site owner has deleted the page, or they have taken the page into another URLs.
In this case, you can replace the link with another one. Otherwise, you can delete the linking. It will make the site fresh. It will increase the domain authority. By all means, it is good for on-page SEO.
19. Follow Skycrapper technique
The primary goal of the skyscraper technique is gaining link in the natural ways. For applying the method, you have to make quality or evergreen content. That means your site will get a lot of useful and informative content. It will increase the reliability on the Google.
At the same time, it will bring important visitors to you. On the other hand, it will get a lot of natural backlinks. Similarly, you can apply the method for outreaching your blog/website for backlinks or gaining accessibility with the industry leader. So for perfect on-page SEO, use the skyscraper technique.
20. Redirect the page with 301
If you get any 404 page in your site with backlinks that means it can add value to your site. But it is not reaching any important page. For this reason, you can redirect them to another page. Then it will get some juice to your existing page.
On the other hand, you can also redirect them to your homepage. Certainly, we can describe it as on-page SEO tactics. Surely, it will add value to your website. But do it carefully.
On-Page SEO unorder checklist, but important:
For doing on-page SEO, you will also need some things which are very necessary. Though I have told it as the unordered list, Surely, it is essential for doing on-page SEO of your sites. Let’s see.
i. Domain Name
Select a brandable domain name for your blog and try to make it a brand. You should give priority of your niche. You can go with EMD domain. Though Google does not provide any value, other search engines including Bing, Yahoo, ETC can count it as ranking factors.
ii. Quality Content
I have told about writing quality and more extended form of content before. But I should say again as it is the most effective factors for ranking of your site. At the same time, other techniques will work fine if you can generate lengthy and quality content.
You can ask how search engines define the quality content. Actually, there was no actual method, but they consider the below things.
- Time on site
- Browsers Bookmark stats
- Repeat visitors algorithm
- Dwell time and CTR
- Brand Value and searches on Google
With this in mind, if you only post lengthy, quality and evergreen content, you will get the desired results.
iii. Inspire to Comment
I am surprised to see some of the bloggers turn off commenting on their blog. How is it possible? Blogging means maintaining a community and commenting increase the interaction among the fellow minded blogger.
At the same time, I should say, bloggers should accept comment with the quality link on the author profile. It has no bad effects, and even it is so amazing to maintain the community.
On the other hand, Google loves the engagement and experts say Google sometimes count the text on the comment. Important to realize, I think commenting is the beauty of blogging.
iv. Use Good Typography
Content is the life of a blog. For this reason, for increasing interaction, you should use an attractive font. Never add a font which is not good for reading. You can also use other CSS to make the web page visually impressive.
v. XML Sitemaps
You need to submit the XML sitemap to the most popular search engine to index your page. If you do not do it, it will not be able to crawl it perfectly. I know you do it, but I have mentioned here for not forgetting the matters. At the same time, any newbie will get help.
You can generate your sites XML sitemaps by Yoast SEO on WordPress, and it is such an easy method.
vi. Schema Markup
You should use schema markup to display the content in more informative ways. If you use the Rich snippets before, you will understand the method perfectly.
If do not know how it works and how you can implement schema markup for boosting on-page SEO, you can get the tutorial from here.
vii. SSL/HTTPS
Google is giving priority on ranking for the HTTPS-enabled sites. HTTPS refers to ‘Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure.’ It shows a green signal of the browsers with secure notifications, and it is effective to achieve trust among the visitors.
HTTPS encrypts the data from eavesdroppers to keep it more secure. It also helps to integrate the data and authentication. Google take the HTTPS site with more reliable and safe.
viii. AMP ready
Mobile visitors are increasing rapidly. For this reason, you have to concentrate here. AMP helps to display the content on mobile correctly. For this reason, Google gives priority AMP ready web page on the search ranking.
Especially, AMP means Accelerated Mobile Pages, and it makes the dynamic pages of your site into static. For this reason, mobile users can access the page very fastly without any hassle. With this in mind, Google is taking it as serious issues for ranking the sites with AMP enabled pages.
viii. Keyword Density
It is very important among on-page SEO factors. Keeping a good ratio on keyword helps the search engine to understand the content. It helps to rank the page.
For this reason, you have to maintain a good ratio of keyword density. At the same time, never forget to use LSI keywords.
ix. Short URL
It is not the primary concern for ranking a page, but surely using short URL make the content neat and clean. For this reason, you can follow it. At the same time, you can make domain friendly URL for your site. It looks very authoritative.
Now it’s your turn:
I will tell, On-page SEO mostly depends on the posting quality content and optimizing it for displaying on the search engines. Off-page SEO will work correctly if you can optimize the on-page SEO perfectly, it will surely help to go forward for the next activities for raking the content.
Anyway, that’s enough for On-Page SEO. If I get any updated tips, I will surely add it here. So, you do not need to go anywhere for on-page SEO checklist. At the same time, If you think I should add any other techniques, you can inform me from the comment section. SpeedHost team are to help you.
Thanks in advance. 🙂
