On-Page SEO & Basic Technical SEO Checklist

For the better understanding of client, I have compiled all On Page & Technical SEO factor. We will be working on all of these factors to optmize your website.

Most of the times, client does not understand the SEO changes that we make in the website, with the guide below our client will not have this issue.

In the explanation below, you will find the introduction of all factors and why are important in SEO.

Let’s understand them one by one.

Keyword Research:

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization (SEO) or general marketing. Keyword research can uncover queries to target, the popularity of these queries, their ranking difficulty, and more.

Main Keywords for given business/niche

Niche keywords are specific keywords that focus on a particular area or industry. They define your business interests.

Sub-Keywords and topics

Subtopic keywords address a specific questions about your target niche. This piece of content should include a link back to your pillar page to drive traffic to your website. When you attach a blog post, landing page, or website page to a subtopic keyword, the SEO tool tracks how many inbound links you have referred back to your pillar page.

Page type for the keywords (Service page – Blog page etc.)

Every business has specific services/product / blog, and keywords specific to those pages are necessary to optimize those pages.

URL:

URLs are the organization of your website’s content. They’re the link between your content and a user. URL structure matters because of User Experience & Page Rank.

Long URLs

Most URLs automatically use the page or post title as the default URL but sometimes the title can be an unnecessarily long string of characters for the URL. The shorter URL, the better—short URLs tend to rank higher too.

HTTPS protocol

HTTPS is the secure version of the HTTP protocol. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encrypts communication between your browser and a website so even if hackers manage to trap the data, they can’t read it.

Dynamic URls

Dynamic URLs are not human-friendly, that’s why they are considered as a good approach in SEO. One should avoid Dynamic URLs if possible.

Canonical URLs

A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of duplicate pages on your site. For example, if you have URLs for the same page. There are very important for eCommerce brands.

Title:

An SEO title tag must contain your target keyword. This tells both Google and searchers that your web page is relevant to this search query. Besides, searchers are much more likely to click on a web page if they see the exact keyword or keyword phrase they just typed in the title.

Long or Short Title

We generally recommend keeping your titles under 60 characters long, the exact display limit is a bit more complicated and is based on a 600-pixel container.

Missing Title

If it is missing, this represents an issue that may affect search engine rankings and click-through rate from the search results.

Heading Tags:

Header tags, also known as heading tags, are used to separate headings and subheadings on a webpage. They rank in order of importance, from H1 to H6, with H1s usually being the title. Header tags improve the readability and SEO of a webpage.

Missing H1 tags

H1 tags greatly contribute to the visibility of sites. This is what Google users often see first among the search results. That is the reason why they always contain keywords. H1 tag missing issue means that such a vital element is not present in the body of the site.

Multiple H1 tags

If multiple H1 tags makes sense for the end users, webmasters can use it without the fear of Google disapproving it. Otherwise it will hurt the SEO

Missing H2 tags

When you create a page on your website, you are required to include one or more <h2> tags in order for Google to properly index and search through your content.

Skipping these tags can cause Google to incorrectly associate your page with other pages on your website that include the same <h2> tags, which could lead to lower rankings. However, there is no evidence that skipping H2 tags actually has any negative SEO effects.

Image:

Image optimization involves creating and delivering high-quality images in the ideal format, size, and resolution to increase user engagement. It also involves accurately labeling images with metadata so search engine crawlers can read them and understand page context.

Size of images

A file size below 70 kb is what you should be targeting. In the case of heavy files closer to 300 kb, the best you can achieve is a 100 kb file size. Doing so saves your images from taking extra milliseconds to load while it gives you lossy, compressed images that do not compromise the visual quality.

Alt tags of images

Also called alt tags and alt descriptions, alt text is the written copy that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user's screen. This text helps screen-reading tools describe images to visually impaired readers and allows search engines to better crawl and rank your website.

Web p format of images

WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster. WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs

Lazyload

Lazy loading is simply a script entered into the code of the page causes that images and video files don’t load as soon as the users open the page, but only when they’re in this part of the website where the images or videos are located. It’s often used as part of technical SEO services optimization to improve a site’s performance.

Meta Description:

The meta description is one of a web page's meta tags. With this meta information, webmasters can briefly sketch out the content and quality of a web page. The meta description is one of a web page's meta tags. With this meta information, webmasters can briefly sketch out the content and quality of a web page.

Size of Meta Description:

Meta descriptions can technically be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets to ~155-160 characters. It's best to keep meta descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive, so we recommend descriptions between 50 and 160 characters.

Security:

SSL keeps internet connections secure and prevents criminals from reading or modifying information transferred between two systems. When you see a padlock icon next to the URL in the address bar, that means SSL protects the website you are visiting.

Schema markup:

Schema markup, found at Schema.org, is a form of microdata. Once added to a webpage, schema markup creates an enhanced description (commonly known as a rich snippet), which appears in search results.

Google recommends that you start with the Rich Results Test to see what Google-rich results can be generated for your page. For generic schema validation, use the Schema Markup Validator to test all types of schema.org markup without Google-specific validation.

The following are commonly used schemas.

Organization Schema

Specify the image Google Search uses for your organization's logo in Search results and in the Google Knowledge panel. Google Search uses the markup in the use case example to recognize the image to use as the organization's logo. This ensures that, when possible, the image appears in search results about the company. Markup like this is a strong signal to Google Search algorithms to show this image in knowledge panels.

Sitelink Search box Schema

A site links search box is a quick way for people to search your site or app immediately on the search results page. The search box implements real-time suggestions and other features.

Breadcrumbs Schema (if any)

A breadcrumb trail on a page indicates the page's position in the site hierarchy, and it may help users understand and explore a site effectively. A user can navigate all the way up in the site hierarchy, one level at a time, by starting from the last breadcrumb in the breadcrumb trail.

Review Schema (if any)

A review snippet is a short excerpt of a review or a rating from a review website, usually an average of the combined rating scores from many reviewers. When Google finds valid reviews or ratings markup, we may show a rich snippet that includes stars and other summary info from reviews or ratings. In addition to the text of the review, a rating is an evaluation described on a numeric scale (such as 1 to 5).

Product Schema (if any)

When you add structured data to your product pages, Google search results (including Google Images and Google Lens) can show product information in richer ways. Users can see price, availability, review ratings, shipping information, and more right in search results.

Article Schema (if any)

Adding Article structured data to your news, blog, and sports article pages can help Google understand more about the web page and show better title text, images, and date information for the article in search results on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News and the Google Assistant).

While there's no markup requirement to be eligible for Google News features like Top stories, you can add Article to more explicitly tell Google what your content is about (for example, that it's a news article, who the author is, or what the title of the article is).

Content Optimization:

Content and SEO go hand-in-hand. People use search engines to find answers or solutions to their questions and search engines serve up the most relevant content available. While the top search result might be a blog post, a YouTube video, or a product description – it’s all content.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. That “one place” is defined as a location with a unique website address (URL) – so, if the same content appears at more than one web address, you’ve got duplicate content.

Thin content Issue

Thin content is on-page content that has little or no value to the visitor. This means content that is automatically generated, unhelpful affiliate content, content that has been stolen from other sites, or content on doorway pages. Basically, content that's just not useful.

Keyword Optimization

First, ensure that Google understands what keywords you want this page to rank. To achieve that, make sure you include at least the main keyword in the following:

Post’s title
URL
H1 Tag
Introduction
Meta-title and meta-description tags
Image file names and ALT tags

Well structured content

Structured content is information or content that is organized in a predictable way and is usually classified with metadata. It helps crawler understand the content easily.

Short Sentences and paragraphs

A concise sentence ideal for SEO is below 20 syllables. You don’t have to make all your sentences short – this would sound robotic – but it’s a good rule of thumb to follow. If a lot of your sentences are above 20 syllables, your content is hard to read.

Same goes with paragraphs, people rarely reads long paragraphs.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics SEO tools allow you to gain a deep insight into how customers reach your pages. One way to improve SEO is to view your highest converting pages and optimize them even more. This can also mean including more keywords, and CTA (call to action) pointers to encourage them to finally make a purchase.

Google Search Console

SEO specialists or marketers: As someone focused on online marketing, Search Console will help you monitor your website traffic, optimize your ranking, and make informed decisions about the appearance of your site's search results.

Response Codes:

An HTTP status code is a server response to a browser’s request. When you visit a website, your browser sends a request to the site’s server, and the server then responds to the browser’s request with a three-digit code: the HTTP status code. Following codes are considered as potential issue in SEO.

3xx Redirects

A redirect is when a web page is visited at a certain URL, it changes to a different URL. For instance, a person visits “website.com/page-a” in their browser and they are redirected to “website.com/page-b” instead. This is very useful if we want to redirect a certain page to a new location, change the URL structure of a site, remove the “www.” portion of the URL, or even redirect users to another website entirely

4xx Client Error

Client errors, or HTTP status codes from 400 to 499, are the result of HTTP requests sent by a user client (i.e. a web browser or other HTTP client).

5xx Server Error

A 5xx code occurs when a server does not support the functionality required to process a visitor's request. Simply put, it means that there's an error caused by the server. In many cases, a chain of servers is handling an HTTP request, so keep in mind that it may not be your server that's causing the issue.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently.

Website Structure:

Site structure is a vital aspect of your SEO strategy. The structure of your website shows Google which pages of your site are most important. This means you can influence with your site's structure which content will rank highest in the search engines.

Sometimes 3+ level pages are not crawlable to google. That’s why all important pages should be available to google on less than 3rd level.

Robot.txt file

Plugins Updates:

Updating WordPress's core, plugins, and themes can increase security by patching the vulnerabilities that the developer releases out regularly and strengthening your system against hacking attacks. One of the most significant ways to reduce the risk of your site being hacked or compromised is to keep it updated!