The Ultimate On Page SEO Checklist For 2024 To Increase Rankings

 

 

Below are the 33 page ranking factors you need to pay the closest attention to for on-page SEO in 2024.

All of these factors either:

I’ve left out anything you could consider not actionable, or outside of your control.

At the end of this on page SEO checklist, you’ll find the five most important on-page factors to get your website ranking highly in the search results.

And if you need help with any other part of SEO…

…I’ve got you covered with our full SEO checklist and downloadable link building checklist!

On-Page SEO Checklist

Let’s get started on improving your on page SEO…

1. Your Primary Keyword At The Start Of Your Title Tag

Putting your target keyword at the start of your title h1 tag helps you gain favour in search engines:

Why?

Title tag optimization allows search engines to see what the main topic is going to be about, within the first few milliseconds of crawling your new page.

If you worried that you may not have the best page titles to send to your audience…

You can use Yoast to help you set up different title tags for readers and search engines to get the best value propositions. Make sure this factor is part of your content marketing process.

2. Use Your Page Title In H1 Tagss

“H1” tags ensure that your keyword-rich title is crawled effectively by Google.

Google crawlers look for what is contained within HTML.

When the title isn’t inside these tags, it can be overlooked.

You don’t want that to happen.

WordPress websites should do this for you, but see if your theme is compatible. If you’re using another platform you’ll have to do this manually on every page.

So in order to format this title tag:

You’d add it into your blog posts code editing area and add the “H1” heading tags.

That should look like this:

You can learn more about heading tags over in this seo guide from W3Schools.

3. Include Primary Keyword In Your URL

A Google roundtable session in 2016 revealed…

Although it’s considered a “very small” ranking factor, I’d consider it part of your SEO best practices to add your primary keyword to all of your pages URLs from now on.

You can see that I do this for all of my URLs:

Keep in mind, every little helps when you’re trying to get to the top. That’s why it’s part of my SEO checklist.

4. Keep Your URL Length Short

The shorter and clearer your content’s URL structure is the more favourable it is to search engines.

Why?

This is useful to a search engines crawlers because…

You’ll also see a benefit to your users because it’s easy to remember.

See my advice to get the best permalink structure.

5. Include Target Keyword In Your Meta Description

Your meta description tag is a factor Google pays attention to.

Optimising your meta description to:

…Can help you boost your ranking pages.

So pay attention to your meta descriptions and ensure your primary keyword is optimized!

Note: You can also use structured data schema markup to get your result to stand out from the crowd.

Indeed, structured data schema markup will, where appropriate, give your result more info such as star rating, pricing, stock availability and review stars.

Don’t forget to test the quality of your schema markup with a schema tester.

WARNING: Do not confuse meta description with meta keywords.

6. Focus Content Structure On User Experience

As part of your content strategy, your website content should be focused on user experience, especially today with the new Google Page Experience update rolling out till August 2021.

This means your blog content layout and formatting should allow someone to quickly and easily navigate their way through your content to find the answer to their query.

Factors which influence a users experience are:

You should then aim to create a layout for your content that is easy to read and navigate.

You want to make sure that your page structure helps users find the answer to their questions as quickly and obstruction-free as possible.

Take a look at the image below:

You can see my content contains…

This will make sure the content easy on the eye and easy for a reader to work their way through.

As you saw in the What Is On-Page SEO? section earlier.

Your user’s experience is one of the major focuses of on-page SEO.

7. Write Unique Content

Search engines work hard to reduce the amount of duplicate content in their results. This ensures the same content can’t rank for the same primary keyword twice.

If it detects the exact same content is being used on multiple sites, blog posts, category pages, and a product page…

Only one of those pages containing the “duplicate content” will rank for it.

You need as little duplicate content on your site as possible to avoid keyword cannibalization issues and other SEO issues.

(Where your site turns cannibal and eats its own rankings, in essence)

And as Rand Fishkin points out over on Moz…

It shouldn’t just be unique…  It should add unique value.

For example, if your content is teaching people how to cook rice, it should show them a new way to cook rice and not the way every other blog post on the internet is showing them. Search engines are looking for something new and unique.

8. Ensure Content Reading Level Is Appropriate

Google used to tag content as:

…based on its reading level.

From a copywriting point of view, a lower reading level as close to basic as possible is advised for most websites. This will make sure your content & blog posts are accessible to the most amount of people.

But depending on your niche this could change.

A scientific journal would be expected to have a higher reading level than other sites. The same goes for a broadsheet newspaper and a tabloid newspaper.

Now it used to be that Google allowed us to get a breakdown of our reading level-

That was removed as an option but it does mean that it’s something Google is paying attention to.

Tips- You can use the Rank Math: the best SEO plugin for WordPress (see my Rank Math review) or Yoast SEO plugins to get a look at your reading level now-

And irrespective of whether this is an active ranking factor or not – it’s a deciding factor for your visitors which have a direct impact on your ranking pages like dwell time or bounce rates.

9. Use Primary Keyword In The First 50 to 100 Words

From an SEO standpoint, the sooner your target keyword appears in your content…

The sooner a search engine’s crawlers can determine what your content is about.

Many new SEO copywriters and bloggers forget about this…

They put the primary keyword right near the end of their introduction or even later in their blog post.

Be sure to check before you publish your blog content, if it’s within in the first 50 to 100 words and it should be like that for every page you’ve got on your site.

10. Use Subheadings In H2 Tags

Using header tags for your subheadings allows search engines to build a clear picture of your page, and the sub-topics you’ve written about.

Not only does this add structure to your web page for search engines, but all of your human visitors will also love it as well.

11. Include LSI Keywords In Content

LSI Keywords help give context to your content which basically just means words and phrases that are related to the topic you’re talking about.

There is much debate about whether they are still useful or not but they are still baked into my processes as I write this.

Let’s say you’re targeting “Podcast Microphones”. Your LSI keyword phrases may be:

Sprinkling these LSI keyword variations throughout your content will make sure it feels more relevant.

Which may also give you a boost of website traffic from other related keywords.

12. Create Synonym Rich Content

It’s possible for web pages to rank for primary keywords that aren’t even used on their page.

This is a byproduct of “Semantic Search”.

This often happens for topics that are closely related to each other or which have different dialectical sayings or spellings.

For example…

“Hoover” and “Vacuum Cleaner” are two words that relate to the same topic. But Google could choose to rank a piece of content focused on Hoovers to also rank for Vacuum cleaner terms.

Performing keyword research, finding primary keywords with an achievable keyword difficulty and search volume that can then be optimized for synonyms can help you gain more organic traffic through multiple keyword use.

13. Maintain Proper Keyword Order

The order a keyword is searched for and where it appears on your page affects rankings.

People often use variations of a search term although they have the same user intent.

So it’s important to cover your bases.

Let me give you an example:

A group of people are looking to buy the book – Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. If four people search for it, they may use the target keywords (in any of these four forms) in their search intent:

Despite the fact they all want the same thing…

Especially in a highly competitive niche.

To combat this you should contain a mixture of keywords with a good keyword density throughout your content to ensure you maximize the reach of your optimized page.

14. Include Outbound Links

Outbound high-quality links can help search engines determine the overall value of your content.

Citations, quotes, and external links back to research articles & case studies about the topic you’re discussing help add authority to your page and show you’re trying to add value.

Make sure you use a relevant anchor text and pay attention to the dofollow and nofollow tag (check source code).

Note: Place high quality links to trusted authority sites in your niche.

15. Optimize Your Internal Linking

Internal link building is one of the most under utilised strategies in SEO, but it’s something you should pay attention to.

Internal links are links from one page on your site (page A), to another relevant page on your site (page B). You should use a range of anchor text.

Take a look at this example from my what are keywords page-

When I wrote a section about the types of keyword, it made sense to link to my types of keywords page.

Internal link building adds extra value to the reader because it gives them an extra resource to read.

But it does something else too.

It helps make my site much easier for crawlers by giving a new access point to another part of my site.

And if that page has some good link juice, it makes sense to share that power between pages.

16. Ensure All Links Are Working

Make sure that all of the external & internal links across your site are working and not leading to 404 pages.

Not only does this waste link juice, but it also does serious damage to the experience your users get, which has a knock-on effect on many other metrics.

17. Optimize Image Alt Tags

Images aren’t just about web design, alt tags help search engines like Google to interpret the images on your page.

Because image crawlers can’t identify every image with 100% accuracy, it’s better to help them figure out by adding alt text tag to your images.

Take the below image as an example:

Most website image uploaders would give this image a default alt tag like:

IMG_DIGI_0435678430.jpg

But this is hard for a crawler to understand.

Instead it’s better to use descriptive alt text to explain what the image is. Such as:

You get the picture. (Literally.)

These tags, as well as file names, can also contain target keywords to help add relevance to your page.

You can sprinkle them throughout the images on your page but don’t stuff them.

18. Make Your Website Mobile Responsive

In 2015 Google began to penalise sites which aren’t mobile friendly.

Meaning if your site doesn’t format on a mobile device, you’ll struggle to rank highly.

Why…? Well, because having a mobile-friendly website improve user experience and can generate traffic.

This was compounded further by the rollout of mobile first indexing in 2018.

You can check if your site is mobile friendly by using this mobile friendly test tool.

19. Improve Site Speed

When it comes to on-page SEO, page speed counts big-time. In 2010 Google announced it would use website speed as an official ranking factor.

It’s a factor you should be taking seriously because it’s in your full control and you can usually increase your websites speed significantly in a couple of hours.

My Nitropack review and case study will show you how to fix all of your site speed problems quickly.

And if you have a Shopify store, check out my Shopify speed optimization tips.

20. Implement HTTPS Security

Few years ago, in 2014 Google announced websites with HTTPS encryption would be given priority.

And that this signal may get stronger over time.

If your website isn’t HTTPS yet, now is the time to switch.

21. Increase Length Of Dwell Time

Dwell Time is the amount of time someone spends on your page consuming your content after finding you through search results.

Let’s say I want to check the Google search results for “How to cook jasmine rice”.

I pop that into Google search engine and because I’m human, I click the top search result:

What’s going to happen when I land on that page is one of three possible outcomes:

1. I’ll leave immediately: I’ll take one look at the content and say, “Nah, not for me”
2. I’ll spend a few minutes there: I’ll read the content and think, “Okay, this is helpful”
3. I’ll spend a long time there: I’ll read the content and think, “Yes! This is perfect”

This can help Google or any other search engines determine the quality of the content.

If the majority of people leave immediately, it’ll be tagged as poor content.

If people spend a few minutes it’ll be tagged as average.

And if people spend a long time there it’ll be excellent.

You can improve your dwell time by improving the quality of content and using different SEO copywriting techniques throughout your writing.

22. Reduce Bounce Rate

The official line from Google is that bounce rate doesn’t affect rankings.

But Moz has some interesting data to show that it correlates with higher rankings.

If you don’t know what bounce rate is…

It’s how many people come to your page and leave before visiting another page.

You can improve your bounce rate by-

You can check out your bounce rate in your Google analytics.

23. Match Competitors Length Of Content

Long-form content consistently outperforms short-form content in search rankings.

In fact, Brian Dean at Backlinko found the average blog post length that ranked number on the first page was 1,890 words.

If you take a look around my blog too, you’ll find that most of my articles start at between 1 000 & 2 000 words and even go all the way up to 10 000 words.

But, there isn’t any ‘perfect’ content length – What counts as a “long” word count will change between niches.

24. Enhance Depth Of Content

Depth of content is my way of saying your body content shouldn’t be “thin”.

Whilst your content should be long, it should also contain a depth of relevant information that helps people get the answers they need.

Let’s say there are two articles about cooking jasmine rice. The first one says:

Whereas the second one says:

…You get the picture.

The more depth of information there is…

The more valuable it will be perceived by a search engine’s crawlers.

25. Use Of Multimedia

Using different content type such as images and videos can help to…

It can also increase the perceived value of your content, and attract backlinks.

Images and video content brings in a wider target audience.

26. Update Your Content Regularly For Freshness

Having fresh, up-to-date content can help you improve your rankings. It can also breathe life into content you’ve written in the past.

Google shows the date of the latest update for an article in its search results:

This means that Google (and your readers) cares about how up-to-date your content is.

From personal experience, I know that I’m more likely to click on a more recent link. So keep in mind, it could help to improve your click-through rates too.

27. Check Spelling And Grammar

Google have pointed out, you should ensure your spelling, grammar and font type makes sense.

Whilst the odd mistake and error won’t destroy your website…

Illegible content that doesn’t make much sense will be perceived as low value.

28. Incorporate E.E.A.T Signals

E.E.A.T in SEO stands for:

Think of E.E.A.T as a set of quality criteria that Google uses to assess your content’s quality, reliability and trustworthiness.

E.E.A.T has become an essential part of SEO today – especially in the age of AI content. Google wants to know that you are a real and trustworthy business they can confidently send traffic to.

There are a few quick ways to improve your E.E.A.T signals.

Make sure you implement all of them to maximise your results. If your site covers any YMYL topics, make sure you pay very close attention to this section.

Add the following things to your site:

1. Business Name, Address & Phone Number (NAP) – Clearly add your business name, address and phone number to your website footer, about page and contact page.
2. Organisational Structured Data – Use the Local SEO module in RankMath to add organisation-structured data to your site.
3. About Page – Create an “about page” that showcases who is behind the business including the important team members, small bios and a link to their LinkedIn profiles.

The truth is that E.E.A.T is only going to become more important.

If you are serious about improving your website’s SEO and E.E.A.T – take my free 28-Day SEO course which shows you how to establish your site as a reliable place where Google can confidently send search traffic.

Who doesn’t want that?

29. Use Image EXIF Data

EXIF data is metadata embedded in image files that contain information about the photo such as:

Here’s why this matters for SEO:

The EXIF data provides search engines with additional context and relevant information about your image. This could improve your image search rankings and visibility.

Cool, right?

Just check out my video below where I ran a test to see how important EXIF data is to Google.

Spoiler alert – The results were even shocking for me:

If you follow traditional image SEO techniques, there is a huge chance you are stripping your images of EXIF data.

This could limit each image’s ranking potential and impact the traffic you get.

Check your website images for EXIF data and make sure it’s there. If you need help, just follow my image SEO tutorial that walks you through it step by step.

30. Analyze Page Experience Report

Google’s core algorithm is designed to reward sites that provide a better user experience.

Using the Page Experience Report is like looking at your site’s user experience through Google’s eyes.

The best part is that it’s a completely free report inside of Google Search Console (GSC).

Here’s what you need to know:

When you log in to GSC, click on the Page Experience tab on the left:

There are 2 parts to the page experience report you need to be aware of:

1. Core Web Vitals: Metrics that measure real user data for site load speed, interactivity and visual stability of the page
2. HTTPs: Measures whether your website is secure or not

The goal is no issues or errors for any of these reports.

It’s something that you should be checking at least once per month. You can also follow this Google Page Experience checklist to ensure your site delivers the best user experience possible.

Most site owners with issues in the Page Experience report are related to Core Web Vitals.

That’s what we will tackle next…

31. Optimize Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are an essential part of how Google measures the quality of your site user experience.

Better Experience = More Traffic.

There are three main Core Web Vitals you need to be aware of:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Measures loading performance
2. First Input Delay (FID) – Measures interactivity
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Measures visual stability

Core Web Vitals apply to your site’s mobile and desktop versions.

While both are important, your mobile site version is the most important. That’s where you need to focus your attention first.

Click on the Core Web Vitals report inside Google Search Console:

Here you will see a detailed list of all Core Web Vitals issues for each URL on your site.

The good news is that Google tells you exactly what you need to fix. You just need to work your way down the list and fix each issue.

Once you’ve applied each fix, you must validate it in Google Search Console.

Don’t sleep on Core Web Vitals.

Spend the time to knock out each issue you find in the report. Core Web Vitals can be the difference between whether you make it to page 1.

Make sure you check out our improve Core Web Vitals tutorial to learn 6 ways to improve them in less than 15 minutes.

32. Implement Modern Schema

Schema markup is a type of code you put on your website to help search engines understand your content better.

It’s important for SEO because it can make your site appear more clearly in search results, which helps you stand out and leads to more traffic.

Cool, right?

Schema markup is the reason that you see featured snippets in the SERPs like this:

Your site may have some Schema on it already. So the first step is to use a schema tester tool to see what’s there.

I recommend using a schema markup validator because it was originally designed by Google and is completely free to use.

Next, you want to implement the schema on your site. The most popular types of schema we use are-

That’s the most relevant schema to our site and content. You need to figure out what’s relevant for your own site.

Go to this page and look at all the types of schema. Make a list of the types of schema you need on your site.

What’s next?

Implementing the schema on your site.

The easiest way to do that is to install the RankMath Pro plugin. It takes most of the hard work out of schema implementation and automatically adds the basics.

Schema can take a minute to get your head around.

That’s why I recommend that you sign up for my completely free 28-Day SEO Course where I show you how to take full advantage of Schema markup.

33. Avoid Mobile Pop-Ups

Google has become very strict on pop-ups over the last few years.

The bottom line is that if you aren’t following Google’s pop-up guidelines – you could be severely damaging your rankings.

Here’s what you need to know:

The most important thing is that you don’t show any popup/lightbox on mobile that stops people from being able to read or scroll through your content.

This is a golden rule that must be followed.

If the person has to close your pop-up to read/scroll your content – the pop-up is intrusive and must be disabled.

So what should I do instead?

You can still run pop-ups on the mobile version of your site.

They just need to be smaller banners that DO NOT stop the user from being able to interact with your content.

Here’s an example of how we do it at Search Logistics:

The pop-up is still visible, but the user can easily scroll through the site without needing to close it. This is ideal!

What about for desktop?

Google doesn’t care as much about desktop pop-ups, so you can be more aggressive. Just make sure that you follow best practices and don’t spam your readers.

That’s the 33 on-page SEO checklist I would recommend you follow to make your search results stand out and increase your website traffic.

The Top 5 On-Page SEO Factors

From an SEO perspective, not all factors are created equal.

And some on-page SEO factors have stronger weights in the algorithm than others.

So here are the top 5x on-page factors for you to focus on (click the link to jump to that section of the guide) for a solid content marketing strategy:

1. Mobile responsive: Ensure your site is optimised for mobile devices.
2. Website speed: Make sure your site loads quickly and efficiently for users.
3. Keyword at the start of your title tag: Get your target keyword into your headline, preferably towards the start.
4. Internal links: Create internal links between this page and the other relevant pages of your site.
5. Length of content: Make sure your content is as long and as in-depth as possible.

If you focus on these five seo tactics you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

But be sure not to neglect the other SEO performance factors for too long.

(If want to dive deeper into on-page SEO factors, optimization techniques and SEO in general, you should check out my list of SEO books that cover those topics in detail).

Download The Ultimate On-Page SEO Checklist

If you’d like a more actionable way of applying these SEO best practices to your site…

I’ve put together a free on-page SEO checklist for you to download.

It shows you all of the factors featured in this article, which you can use for reference when you’re preparing content for your site. (I print it off and keep it next to me).

Ensure you use this within your content marketing strategy & SEO campaign!

Note: choosing the right keywords is essential to rank but isn’t always an easy task. I use SEO tools to help me with my keyword research and find profitable keyword ideas and opportunities.

For example, I use SEMRush to get some serious keyword data researched such as search volumes, keyword frequency, level of competition, cost per click, and many more!

Best keywords & best content are the keys to improving your search engine rankings and archive SEO success.

PRO TIPS: You can measure the success of your entire SEO campaign with the SEO visibility scores metrics.

Wrapping It Up

As a website owner, you’re able to control each on-page SEO factor from this on-page SEO checklist.

And some of the changes can be made to your site in as little as 60 seconds to get your website in front of your target markets.

If you’re short on time you should focus mainly on:

(Don’t forget to submit your URL to Google once you’ve made the changes. If you don’t know how to do that, please consult my search engine submission guide – no need to use SEO submission software).

When you’re editing your content to prepare it for your site, make sure you have a copy of my on-page SEO checklist handy.

And don’t forget to get a free copy of my downloadable link building checklist to keep you on the straight and narrow there as well.

If you are really struggling to complete an on-page SEO checklist you should take a look at my Surfer SEO review which takes the hard work out of it all.

But, if you don’t want to invest the time… consider an SEO consultant.

Or if you’re on a budget… use my free seo tools list to help you out.

Now you know which on-page SEO factors you should be focusing on to reach the top 10 of Google SERP’s, it’s time to complete an SEO audit and optimizes your content.