On-page SEO optimizes website elements for better rankings through various methods. These methods range from user-experience-related tweaks, like minimizing load times and improving text readability, to more technical practices, like adding Schema markups, for example.
On-page SEO is quite broad and it's often easy to unintentionally skip over key details. This on-page SEO checklist will walk you through all the best practices needed to ensure your web pages are properly optimized for indexing and user experience.
What you will learn
- The essential elements of on-page SEO
- Best practices to ensure search engines can crawl and index your page properly
- Common mistakes to avoid
1. Place keywords strategically
Include your primary keyword in the following areas:
- Page title (<title> HTML tag)
- Meta description
- URL structure
- Headings (H1, H2, and H3 tags)
- First 100 words of your content
- Image alt text
Keyword optimization is super important because it helps search engines understand your webpage's primary topic, how to index it, and what queries to rank your content for.
For extra context, let's go through one of my older posts and see how we added our seed search term, "Domain authority," throughout all these areas.
Here's the meta title and description:
And here's the web page itself:
The primary keyword is included naturally all throughout the content—it doesn't distract from the reading experience. Only include your seed term where it makes sense. Otherwise, your pages might be flagged for keyword stuffing and get penalized.
Watch for keyword density. Ideally, you should include your primary keyword once or twice in every 100 words.
2. Use secondary related keywords
Secondary keywords improve topical relevance—they let search engines know you cover the ins and outs of your target subject.
For example, for our "domain authority" primary keyword, we can also focus on other closely related search terms like "website authority," "domain authority scores," "DA scores," and so on.
You can target long-tail keyword variations and synonyms of your seed term, and switch between them throughout the content.
This is a smart way to optimize your content for your target search term, while keeping the keyword density in check and preserving the reading experience.
Still, try to find new search terms that do not derive directly from your seed keyword, but do tie into your central topic. This lets search engines know you cover your main topic and all its related sub-topics in detail.
Surfer makes it simple to ensure your pages have optimal keyword density by showing you related keywords and NLP terms, and a suggested frequency of use on your page.
In the case of this article you're reading, some examples are "target keywords," "search intent," and "internal links."
3. Optimize URLs
Your URLs must be crisp, clear, and descriptive—just like so:
Notice how the URL is essentially a condensed version of the page title. And of course, include your primary keyword here. All these factors help search engines pick up your page's primary topic as quickly as possible.
Here's a how-not-to example:
This URL string is way too lengthy and targets too many keywords at once—search engine bots will probably have trouble identifying which keyword to rank the page for.
There are a few other best practices to keep in mind.
For example, always use hyphens (-) to separate words—and not underscores (_). That's because Google uses hyphens to differentiate between words.
Underscores or any other symbols may cause search engine crawlers to view your entire URL path as a single word, which can potentially lead to indexing problems.
4. High-quality content
Google wants you to create content readers will find genuinely useful. That means your content must be user-first—original, engaging, thoroughly researched, and aligned with user intent.
Start with your target keywords' search intent. This helps you pinpoint the reason users type in particular queries in the search bar.
There are four search intent types: navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional.
Your target keywords' search intent will shape your content's overall direction. How-to guides work well for informational intent, while product roundups and buying guides are suitable for commercial intent keywords.
Either way, your content's main objective is to satisfy intent and serve users with the information they want as quickly as possible. For example, this NerdWallet post jumps straight to the point:
The content is informational intent-oriented—it gets into the details almost immediately. It's also well-researched and in-depth to ensure comprehensive topic coverage.
You can also support your statements with practical examples and insights, especially in more technical posts. This makes your content engaging and easier to understand.
Readability and formatting
User-first content also means your posts must be readable and easy to digest. Structure your content to minimize bounce rates and maximize dwell times—Google may consider these factors to assess your page's user experience.
The same NerdWallet post is super skimmable and easy to read:
The blog post uses multiple sub-headings (H2s and H3s) to break down the content into smaller, digestible sections. Formatting your blog posts like this also helps search engines understand the content's structure and primary discussion points more easily.
Also, notice how it switches between normal paragraphs and bullet points throughout the post—it's a clever way to break monotony and keep the reading experience fresh. You can also include tables, numbered lists, and so on.
Other readability best practices include:
- Keep paragraphs short—two or three sentences each—and use whitespace to make your texts easy on the eyes.
- Add relevant visuals (infographics, videos, and images) to support your texts—they add extra context, break up monotony, and improve dwell times.
- Use conversational language—an overly formal or robotic tone will likely disengage your audience and cause them to leave.
- Use active voice—it keeps your sentences concise and easy to read.
5. Internal linking strategy
Aim for two or three internal links per page. This helps search engines and users find more pages on your site. As such, search engines will find and index pages faster, while users spend more time on your website.
Still, make sure the anchor text accurately describes the linked page's content—just like what Nomadic Matt does here.
Search engines use the anchor text to get context about the linked page's content and how inter-connected posts relate to each other.
Avoid generic texts like "click here" or "read more."
You can also develop complete topic clusters—a network of inter-connected pages that cover a specific topic and its related sub-topics in detail. This helps establish topical authority and boost rankings.
You can generate ideas for topic clusters in your niche with Surfer's Topical Map. Here's a snippet from 24 parent topics for a website about photography.
The blog post I just showed is actually part of a topic cluster covering travel tips.
The website also includes numerous other topic clusters dedicated to specific geographic areas and content types.
6. External links to authoritative sources
On a similar note, Google recommends linking to other authoritative sources within your niche as it provides readers with extra value—it lets them fact-check your information and learn more about the topic in question.
Plus, external links give your statements extra weight. For example, this Healthline post includes statistics from government institutions, like CDC and NBCI, and links back to them.
This reassures readers that the article is based on factual information from highly authoritative resources, which bolsters credibility and trust.
"Highly authoritative" is the keyword here.
You don't want to associate yourself with spammy or low-quality websites—toxic backlinks can lead to SEO penalties. You can pass sites through DA checkers if you're not 100% sure of their quality.
7. Display E-EAT
Google's quality rater guidelines prioritize content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-EAT).
Let's go through a brief rundown on how to fulfill each factor.
Experience
Demonstrate your content is based on first-hand experience. You can do this through author bios that highlight your credentials—just like so:
Add your profile picture and links to your socials or portfolio so readers can verify you're genuine.
You can also include first-person pronouns throughout the content to bolster your experience. Original photos and screenshots also work when relevant, like product photos in reviews, for example.
Expertise
Highlight subject-matter expertise through industry-expert quotes and statistics from authoritative resources.
For example, this BankRate post includes a quote from one of its high-ranking employees.
This tells search engines and readers the content is well-researched and based on insights from industry professionals.
Authority
Acquire high-quality backlinks from other reputable sources within your niche. This helps search engines see you as a valuable industry resource of information.
This should come naturally as long as you create top-notch content, but you can also speed up the process through highly sharable posts—think infographics, case studies, research reports, and so on.
Guest posting and content syndication also work. For example, the founder of an AI platform regularly contributes to Forbes with content around AI and business-related topics.
Trustworthiness
Be transparent about your editorial guidelines and how you create content—especially if you're in the affiliate or YMYL industry.
For example, this gaming PC roundup from Tom's Hardware clearly states the testing and evaluation criteria for the displayed products.
You can also create pages dedicated to explaining your editorial process or presenting your review board.
8. NAP
NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) also counts as an E-EAT factor.
It boosts trustworthiness because your customers, and search engines want to know there's a real company or person behind each website—especially for brick-and-mortar businesses.
Make sure you include these details across your website, socials, Google Business Profile, and any other directories or local listings.
NAP must be consistent across all listings to demonstrate a company's authenticity—just like this:
9. Optimize title tags
Keep your title tag between 50 and 60 characters in length to ensure it displays fully on the search engine results page.
Including your target keyword here is mandatory too—it lets search engines know about the content's main topic and boosts keyword rankings.
Try to be specific, yet engaging to boost click-throughs.
Here's a good example:
Notice how Crazy Egg uses power words like "you must get" to instill a sense of urgency and get users to visit the web page.
Using numbers is also recommended, especially for listicles and how-to-type guides. It helps readers set realistic expectations and quantify the post's content before reading it.
You can also include years for more time-sensitive topics to give your content a sense of freshness.
10. Write compelling meta-descriptions
Similarly, your meta descriptions should be under 160 characters. Again, include your main keyword, ideally as close as possible to the beginning, as long as it fits naturally.
Your meta description should build on the title tag—just like email subject lines and preview texts. Try to summarize your page's content in an engaging manner.
For example, Qualtrics teases some of its psychographic segmentation techniques discussed in its blog post to encourage click-throughs.
Notice how the meta-description also points out what these techniques are used for.
11. Use descriptive alt text
Your image alt texts should be concise, but as informative as possible, and ideally include your target keywords.
Proper alt texts help your pages adhere to Google's Accessibility Guidelines—screen reader users rely on alt texts to understand your image's contents.
The same applies to search crawlers. They use alt text to understand how images tie into the rest of your web page. Plus, optimized texts can boost rankings in Google Image search results.
Here's a solid example:
And here's the image the alt text actually describes:
Undoubtedly, the alt text leaves almost no room for guesswork—it condensed the image's entire content in just a few words.
It even manages to implement the "mushroom steak dinner" keyword naturally and ranks in image search results for that specific keyword.
12. Optimize page loading times
Use tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to measure your page performance.
This step is super important because page speed is considered a ranking factor that may contribute to your website's user experience and crawlability. Plus, your load speed has a direct effect on bounce rates and dwell times—also ranking factors.
Ideally, your PageSpeed Insights scores should be above 90. If your pages' performance is not up to par, here are a few best practices:
- Compress images: Trim image file size with tools like TinyPNG, Smush (for WordPress), and ImageOptim (for Mac)—large image files are common causes of poor performance.
- Pick the right image format: WebP is typically the fastest and most versatile format—it handles both lossy and lossless compression. JPEG is lossy (loses a lot of weight during compression but drops in quality). PNG is lossless (maintains quality during compression but it's quite heavy).
- Enable lazy loading: Use the <img loading= "lazy"> attribute throughout your images' HTML code. This makes certain images load only when users start scrolling down your page, improving initial loading speed.
- Minimize HTML/CSS codes: Tools like TopTotal cut down unnecessary code—the less code, the faster your page.
- Use a CDN: CDNs distribute your website across a large network of servers across the globe. Users will connect to the server that's closest to them, optimizing loading times.
13. Mobile-friendly layout
Use Google Lighthouse to test your website for mobile-friendliness.
Google's mobile-first indexing uses your website's mobile version to index and rank web pages—websites unoptimized for mobile devices will face significant ranking penalties.
Responsive design is the best course of action here—it uses CSS media queries to automatically adjust the size of design elements across multiple viewports.
Most website builders are responsive by default, but you can also implement this design language manually through various methods.
Here's a quick example:
In short, this code snippet tells browsers to load different-sized images based on screen width—the small image for screens up to 600 pixels wide, while the default one displays for screens between 600 and 1500 pixels in width.
14. Structured data and schema markup
Structured data helps search engines identify extra information about your webpage's content—information they can display in search results via rich snippets.
Rich snippets are important because they occupy more SERP real estate, which attracts attention and boosts click-throughs.
For example, besides the usual meta title and description, this search listing also includes review ratings:
This is done through a series of pre-defined HTML code snippets (schema markups) that categorize your page content.
Here's the schema markup for the search result I just showed:
The "@type": "Product" label tells search engines about the presence of a particular product or service—Madrid tours in our case.
The "@type": "AggregateRating" markup and the information following it instructs search engines to display the information seen in the organic listing for that particular product.
There are loads of other schema markup types. Local business schemas help highlight NAP and other details in organic search listings, for instance.
In any case, validate your schemas through Google's Rich Results Test first—it lets you see whether your page is qualified to rank for rich results.
15. Conversion rate optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves web design decisions that nudge visitors to take specific actions—be it to purchase a product, sign up for a free trial or newsletter, etc.
This page from KoreanSkinCare is super clever about CRO—it naturally plugs in the company's products in an otherwise informative blog post.
It's not pushy, but convenient. Readers have easy access to skincare products relevant to the blog post—they don't need to browse through lengthy product pages.
Notice how the page uses whitespace and alternates between layouts. It breaks monotony and spotlights each particular product.
Here are some other best practices to draw from this page:
- Clear CTA buttons: They pop through contrasting colors, while CTA copy lets visitors know exactly what happens once they click. Each "See more" button takes users to its corresponding product page. "Click Here," for example, would be too vague.
- Visual hierarchy: The web page uses placement and sizing to draw attention to key areas—product images and CTAs first catch the visitor's eye, while the smaller texts in between reveal other necessary details. These elements are neatly stacked on top of each other, ensuring they are viewed in their entirety.
- Highlights pricing: Highlighting each product's pricing up-front clears up any potential visitor uncertainties, which can boost click-throughs.
- Includes secondary CTAs: Secondary CTAs offer an alternative to visitors who may not be ready to purchase a product—but may result in a monetary conversion later. In this case, the website prompts for newsletter sign-ups in exchange for discount codes.
Common On-Page SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Now that we ticked all the boxes in your on-page SEO checklist, let's go through some common mistakes and how to avoid them.
1. Duplicate content
Duplicate content refers to a content piece that appears on multiple web pages with little to no modifications across URLs. This is a common issue in content syndication and page localization, for example.
Duplicate content can be a problem because search engines won't know which version to index—likely causing them to index neither of the pages.
You can use Google's Page Indexing report to spot duplicate content.
If you do have duplicates, implement a canonical URL—it signals to the search engine the web page variation they should index.
There are three ways in which you can do so:
- The rel=”canonical” attribute: An HTML code snippet implemented in your duplicate page—it tells crawlers the page in question is a duplicate and points them to the original content.
- Sitemaps: Specify the original page to your sitemap and submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Redirects: Set up redirects to drive traffic to your original URL.
2. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing overuses the same search term in an attempt to rank higher for the keyword in question.
It's a black hat SEO tactic penalized by search engines. Plus, keyword stuffing makes the content hard to read, which will cause visitors to bounce off the webpage.
For example, this paragraph uses the same keywords so many times, the content feels forced and unnatural.
Again, watch for keyword density and implement search terms naturally.
Use synonyms to keep the reading experience fresh. Search engines are smart enough to understand the correlation between your target keywords and their synonyms.
3. Ignoring Image SEO
It's easy to overlook image SEO if you're not familiar with this tactic. But this may cause you to lose out on massive ranking opportunities.
That said, try to merge image SEO in your current content creation process—compress images and write alt texts as you're uploading them to your content.
Here are a few other image SEO best practices you should follow:
- Use descriptive file names: Never use the default file image file name—search engines use them to understand your images, just like with alt texts. Be descriptive and use hyphens to separate words.
- Use image sitemaps: Not to be confused with regular sitemaps—these are visual-specific. They help search engines find and index images faster.
- Write image captions: These are the visible text snippets under embedded images. A clever way to maximize dwell times and sneak a few more keywords in.
4. Not Updating Old Content
Always check in on older content and update it with new information whenever possible—especially for time-sensitive topics like news or statistic compilations.
It's a smart way to maximize traffic and maintain relevance without writing new content from scratch. For example, SocialBee regularly updates this post with the latest social media news and events.
5. Forgetting mobile optimization
According to Similarweb, 67.94% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. Besides SEO-related consequences, unoptimized layouts render websites unusable for most users. Don't skimp on this step.
Let's go through a side-by-side example to better understand what to look for layout-wise.
The image on the left is the homepage's desktop version seen on mobiles, while the image on the right is the optimized homepage layout.
The right-hand image is much more usable for mobiles. It displays fewer on-screen elements for more breathing room, most navigation menu items are hidden behind a hamburger icon, and the search bar is longer to allow for easier on-screen typing.
Key Takeaways
- On-page SEO optimizes web pages both for user experience and search engine crawlability.
- Page speed and mobile-friendliness are key factors to make your website navigable by both search engines and users.
- Optimize meta titles and descriptions to maximize rankings and drive more click-throughs.
- Content-wise, focus on readability, search intent, proper keyword usage, quality, appropriate links, and relevant visuals. The E-EAT guidelines are also crucial factors for high-ranking content.
- As for technicalities, focus on structured data and image alt texts to boost crawlability and indexing.
- In terms of design, emphasize responsive layout for mobile users. Optimize your web pages for maximum conversions through well-crafted CTAs and establish visual hierarchy to attract attention to specific areas.
