9-keypoint On-page SEO Checklist

SEO is mainly of three types: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. 

On-page SEO plays a very important role in a website’s ranking. Though a website ranks in search engines when many other SEO-related factors are met. 

On-page SEO is one of the main factors that play a very vital role.

Table of contents:

1. Content Planning & Creation.
2. Keyword Research.
3. Keyword Density.
4. Title, Permalink, and H2 tag distribution. 
5. Image Alt information.
6. Meta description.
7. Inbound and outbound linking.
8. Backlink.
9. Active Voice, sentence length & choice of words.

Content Planning & Creation:

On-page SEO means you have to write content for your website. The content must follow the rules that search engine likes. 

People who want to try their luck in blogging feel confused about what they should write. 

A blogging website must be based on a particular niche. You can do your own research about the most demanding niches and choose the one that goes with your personality. 

After you decide on your niche then you must do keyword research before you finalize your topic. 

Any content that you will write must cross at least 500 words. If you are new to writing then you will find it very difficult to do. 500 words are only your initial target but soon you need to expand your writing capacity to 1000 words and then up to 2000 words. 

SEO works better when you write lengthy articles.  

Keyword Research:

Don’t start writing without keyword research. We do keyword research to find out the people’s demands. Every day people search on Google for their questions. Questions they type on the Google search engine are called keywords.

Your content should target those keywords to rank on search results. The process may sound easy but there is a lot of effort that you need to give. First, you must know how to do keyword research. 

There are many platforms where you can do the research. But the most popular and always free platform is Google Ads > Keyword Planning tool.  

If you are a first-time user of Google Ads then you must activate your Google Ads account in order to do the keyword research.

 You have to find out the keywords by searching with your niche. Also, remember always choose low-competition keywords if your website is new and has low DA (Domain Authority). 

An article you can create focusing on 1 to 5 keywords. 

Keyword Density:

Don’t overuse your keywords in your article. You can repeat your focus keywords in your content for up to 1% to 3%. This means if your content is 1000 words long then your focus keywords can be used 10 to 30 times. 

Title, Permalink, and H2 tag distribution:

The article’s title must include the focus keyword. If you are using WordPress then don’t forget to change your permalink setting to post Permalink. That means if you publish your article on “5 ways to write SEO friendly article” and your website name is darkmatt.com then after publishing the article’s like will be as follows: https://darkmatt,com/5-ways-to-write-SEO-friendly-article

Here my focus keyword/keyphrase is “SEO friendly article” which I have used in my article title and also the keyword is present in the permalink. 

You must break your article into a few paragraphs with H2 headings. Don’t make lengthy paragraphs. And a few H2 headings must include your focus keyword. 

Image Alt information:

You need to add some images to your article. WordPress users can find the alt option in the media section. You can also edit the HTML code to add it like this, <img src=” image link” alt=” your focus keyword” />.

Search Engine crawlers can understand your text but they are unable to understand what the image is all about. So in the alt section, you need to explain the whereabouts of the image and smartly add the focus keyword.  

By Ranjan Barman (Certified Trainer)

Meta Description:

If you know HTML language then you already know that meta is a group of HTML tags. In the meta description section, we write short information about the article within 155 to 160 characters. The title and meta description appears in search results. It helps a user to click on the website of his choice from the search results. As the users search with keywords in search engines so your meta description must include the focus keyphrase (keyword). 

WordPress users can use popular SEO plugins like Yoast or Rankmath that will solve all your problems.

Inbound and outbound linking:

Inbound linking means in your current article you link any other article that you posted earlier. We can do it with HTML <a> tag and WordPress users can simply select the words and click the link button or press CTRL+K from the keyboard. Then add the article’s link that you previously published. 

Outbound linking is almost the same process link inbound linking but here you are linking with a different website’s page/post rather than linking your own website.

Whether it is inbound linking or outbound linking you must know about nofollow and dofollow.  

Nofollow means you don’t want any search engine to track the link. And dofollow means you want the search engines to must track the link that is connected with another website. 

Backlink:

The backlink is a process where we link other websites with outbound linking. The more backlinks you manage to get from other websites that also focus on the same types of niche as yours the more your DA (Domain Authority) increases. High DA means more trust from search engines. With high DA you can rank easily in search results. Also, the age of the website plays a role here.

With a high DA and a few years old websites, you can write on medium to high competition keywords. But with low DA you must focus on low-competition keywords to rank on search engines.  

Active Voice, sentence length & choice of words:

Everyone has his own style of writing. But if you want to make search engine algorithms happy then you must follow their terms as well as remember about your readers. Many SEO analysts suggest that you must use a more active voice in your sentence. And your sentences shouldn’t be lengthy. Besides when you are writing try to choose easy words so that a wider audience can easily read and understand our content. It increases your readability score.  

Questions? 

1. How to activate a Google Ads account?
2. How to do keyword research for free from Google Ads?
3. How to add a keyword in the alt section of an image?
4. How to do inbound and outbound linking in an article? 

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Ranjan Barman (Certified Digital Marketing Trainer)