The Visual, Step-by-Step Guide (& Free Checklist!)

If you’ve ever considered a page ranking at the top of Google to be “lucky,” think again. For any such lucky duck, majestically perched at the top of the SERP, you can rest assured there’s a host of legwork going on beneath the surface to make this possible.

Said legwork is called SEO, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes like second nature. So in this guide, I’m going to turn the complex process of on-page SEO into a step-by-step, visual guide to make this possible for you.

Ready to start ranking higher and get more traffic to your website?

Quack 🦆

Table of contents

Click to enlarge | Make a copy of this Google Sheet template

What is on-page SEO?

Just as the name sounds, on-page SEO refers to the optimizations you make to a specific page on your website to get it to rank higher on the SERP for queries related to the keyword it’s targeting. Some of those optimizations are visible on the page itself while others are behind the scenes. This, of course, translates to more relevant traffic to that page, and the more pages optimized on your website, the stronger your SEO muscles become.

On-page vs off-page SEO

To understand the difference between on-page and off-page SEO, it’s best to go back to the SEO basics. There are three core types of SEO:

First and foremost, do your keyword research. You can’t do any of the steps in this post if you don’t know what keyword you’re targeting. We show you how to do keyword research here, but here are a few tips:

Google defines thin content as inauthentic and providing little value—like auto-generated copy, thin affiliate pages, scraped content, and doorway pages.

But just because your page doesn’t fit the above criteria doesn’t mean your content isn’t thin. The important word above is “value.” If you want your page to rank for the keyword it’s targeting, it needs to be:

• Trustworthy: information is accurate and delivers on the promise of the headline.
• Useful: provides the information a user is seeking when they search that keyword.
• Actionable: all “what”s should be accompanied by “how”s, even if that means a link to a separate resource.
• Readable: information is organized, scannable via headers, reads like a human wrote it, and text is broken up by images, bullets, call-out quotes, and other visual elements.
• Adequate length: if the page you’re optimizing is a blog post, aim for at least 1,500 words. Hubspot recommends 2,100-2,400 words based on the average length of its top 50 blog posts, but also mentions that a third of those top posts were less than 1,500 words.
• Free of fluff: i.e., it does not use many words to say little. See below:

121 words of empty-calorie robotic fluff with no nutritional value
vs
44 words of protein-packed peanut butter

3. Keyword placement

Now if you’re writing quality content like a human, the keyword and related LSI keywords will occur naturally in the body of the text. But there are some places where you need to intentionally place your target keyword. These include:

1. Page title: This is the title of the page as it appears on the page.
2. Title tag: This is the title of the page as it appears on the SERP.
3. First 100 words of the page: Make sure this is incorporated naturally.
4. Headings: ideally in at least two H2s on the page.
5. Meta description: This is the summary of your page that appears on the SERP.
6. Image alt text: The text alternative of an image.
7. Image file name: Don’t just save an image as “Screenshot-1” or “chart.”

Click to enlarge

If you were confused by the above list, don’t worry—the rest of this guide will dive deeper into each one.

4. Images

Images on their own are an on-page optimization since they keep readers engaged with a page, and time on page factors into ranking. But there’s more to images on a page than meets the eye. Here is your image optimization checklist:

• Optimize for speed: Resize your images so their width doesn’t exceed the maximum width of the page (your site will resize them automatically, but this still requires requests to the server), and compress them to reduce file size without sacrificing quality (I use tinypng.com because it’s fast, free, and has a cute panda on it.) If you have a particularly large site with lots of images, you may want to look into a content delivery network (CDN).
• Add alt text: This is the text alternative of an image. This is how you tell Google (and how screen readers can tell the visually impaired) what your image is about, and should contain the keyword you’re targeting.
• Convey value: Use images to illustrate the concepts on your page, such as with graphs, screenshots, and even your own illustrations (how to use Canva here!) not empty graphics.
• Don’t replace text with images: Alt text is only meant to be a few words, so when you’re using an image to convey information relevant to the keyword you’re targeting, make sure that information is also written out in the body text of the page.
• Optimize filename: The name of the image file you upload to your page should contain the keyword you’re targeting. Be sure also to replace spaces in the filename with dashes or underscores. Otherwise, they’ll get replaced with “%20” or some other jibberish that doesn’t look trustworthy and can impact your image’s ranking in image results.

Here’s what alt text, file name, file size, and dimensions look like in WordPress.

In the image at the top of this post, I optimized for the keyword “on-page vs off-page SEO.” My alt text reads “comparison of on-page vs off-page vs technical SEO,” my file name is “technical-vs-on-page-vs-off-page-seo.png, and I’ve both compressed and resized the image.

5. Title

There are two different titles for any given web page on a website:

• Title tag: Also known as the meta title or SEO title, this is the title of the page as it appears in search results. An optimal title tag is 60 characters or less and contains the keyword you’re targeting. Be sure to front-load the headline with the keyword to make sure it doesn’t get cut off on smaller screens.
• H1 tag: This is the title of the page that readers see when on the page. You have more room here to be creative and convey value here, but it should still contain the keyword.

Your title tag and H1 tag don’t have to be different, but it’s good to know you have this option. Regardless, a strong headline is a must for on-page SEO since it impacts whether or not users click through to your page. A strong headline:

The meta description is the description of your page that appears under the title on the SERP. Consider it the ad for your page, as a well-written meta description tells searchers your post will answer their query and gets them to click. Here’s your meta description checklist:

Get a free, fast, on-page SEO audit with our free Website Grader!

8. URL

Most, if not all CMSs generate an automatic URL for your page—sometimes the title you’ve given it or sometimes a string of numbers. You’ll want to edit this URL to:

• Contain the keyword you’re targeting
• Use dashes instead of spaces
• Keep it short. The keyword itself will suffice in almost all cases.

Had this URL been https://localiq.com/post-2844, would you have trusted it enough to click it?

9. Links

There are two types of links involved in on-page SEO—internal links and external links (also called backlinks). We shares some great intel on linking in this 10-step SEO audit, but here are the basics.

External links

These are the links on your page that take users to other domains. An on-page SEO best practice is to link out to pages on the topic from websites with high domain authority. This helps Google to trust your page more. In his SEO techniques post, Brian Dean recommends linking out to at least 3 high-quality domains

Internal links

These are the links on your page that take the reader to other pages on your site. Your page should not only include internal links, but other pages on your site should link to the one you’re optimizing.

For any case with linking, the anchor text should be specific to the page you’re linking to and contain the keyword it’s targeting. Not only does this make for a better user experience, but the more links to your page that use the keyword as the anchor text, the better your chances of ranking.

10. A *few* technical optimizations

I know, I know, this is not a technical SEO checklist, but like I said earlier, the different types of SEO are interconnected. Below are some things that should already be in place, but sometimes have glitches so they’re easy troubleshooting if your page is not performing as well as you expected.

• Mobile-friendliness: Your site as a whole should be built with responsive design—meaning it will adjust to any screen size—but sometimes, elements fall through the cracks. If you’ve embedded a video or added a table to your page, for example, double-check to make sure it’s appearing properly on mobile.
• Crawlability: Your page can’t rank if it’s not indexed. And it can’t be indexed if it’s not crawlable. If your website shows up on the SERP, it’s indexed. But sometimes, blog posts or pages get accidentally unindexed for one reason or another. If a page is getting unexpectedly low traffic, check the back end of the page in your CMS to make sure indexing isn’t turned off. If it isn’t, you can use Search Console to troubleshoot.
• Social share buttons: This is done at the site level, usually through a plugin, and makes it easier for others to amplify your content. Just make sure the plugin doesn’t slow down your site.
• Page speed: Page speed is a ranking factor, and oversized images aren’t the only thing that can drag a page down. Use PageSpeed Insights to check the speed of your individual page. Both tools will tell you what you need to do if you have a poor score.

11. Content freshness

The importance of content freshness can vary depending on the query, but it’s important to periodically update any page you want to rank to preserve its value. I have a complete content refresh checklist here, but for a sneak peek, here are some updates you can make:

• Update or add new information.
• Add links to new content and fix any broken links.
• Replace old images (especially graphs and platform screenshots).
• Check to make sure the intent of the keyword hasn’t changed.

Free on-page SEO checkers

As you can now see, a page ranking at the top of Google isn’t just effortlessly streaming along. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, and this is for every page on your site. Luckily, there are on-page SEO checkers to help you out.

• SEO tools: Free trials from sites like Ahrefs and Semrush can run comprehensive audits on your website to check for on-page, off-page, and technical SEO factors. These are best for SEO specialists who know what to look for and how to read the results.
• WordPress plugins: Namely Yoast, which will provide a score and suggestions on the readability and keyword targeting of your content. Take these suggestions with a grain of salt though.
• Website graders: These tools are more beginner-friendly. LOCALiQ’s Free Website Grader provides a report like the one below, explaining what the results mean and prioritizing action items for you.

Use the free LOCALiQ Website Grader to get a report like this for your website.

On-page SEO templates

To make your life easier, I have a few templates for you.

On-page SEO checklist template

The first is the checklist template that you can customize to your liking. You can print it out or make a copy of the Google Doc to use when publishing pages or running content audits.

Click to enlarge | Make a copy of this Google Sheet template

SEO blog post templates

I’ve created a series of blog post templates that will help you to create quality content optimized around the keyword you’re targeting. Here’s just one example:

Go to the free blog post templates.

Get more website traffic with on-point on-page SEO

Now can you see why on-page SEO is that below-the-surface hustle? There is a lot of legwork that goes into it. But the more you do it, the easier it gets—and the more traffic you’ll get to your website. To recap, here’s how to do on-page SEO:

1. Do your keyword research and target only one keyword or keyword theme per page.
2. Write accurate, organized, actionable, and in-depth content on the targeted keyword
3. Place your keyword in the title, headings, images, meta description, URL, and first 100 words of the page.
4. Compress and resize images, and include the keyword in the alt text and file name.
5. Use a compelling title that conveys value, front-loaded with the keyword.
6. Use headings to convey information hierarchy, with the keyword in at least two H2 headings.
7. Write a benefit-focused meta description that contains the keyword.
8. Include 1-3 external links to high-quality sites plus internal links.
9. Keep the URL short, descriptive, with dashes between words and include the keyword.
10. Check for mobile compatibility, page speed, and indexation.
11. Periodically update and refresh the page elements to maintain content freshness.