August 25, 2016

By Intrigue

A huge question asked by many in the SEO and marketing field is, How do I get to the top of Google?

There are lots of best practice checklists you could follow but this often ends up in missing important items. By following the steps in this blog, you will be able to get closer to gaining your way to the top of Google.

Give the Searcher Answers

Back in the day, adding keywords wherever you could fit them in would help boost your SEO, but today, Google performs over a trillion searches per year. To make it easier for the searcher, you want to create phrases that give them answers and fulfills their goals. This will help boost your SEO.

Example: Let’s say someone is looking for wedding formal wear shoes. Their intent is to find formal footwear that they can wear at a wedding. What we don’t know is if they are the bride, the groom, or a guest. There are a lot of questions that haven’t been answered. To help with this, you want to create pieces of content like: 15 Fabulous Men’s Dress Shoes for a Wedding. If you were targeting men, this would be ideal and this content would fulfill their needs. You can also add links to specific places where they can buy the shoes. This would be a great starting point to boost your On-Page SEO.

Keyword Targeting

Keywords are a vital part of On-Page SEO. A few years ago, you were able to add keywords into your meta descriptions and title tags and be good to go. Today, it’s a different story.

The first thing you need to consider is finding the right keywords. A great tool to start with is Google’s Keyword Planner. You’ll want to focus on keywords that have low competition and a high CTR (click-through rate). The next step will be to add your keywords in the following places:

  • Title

  • In your content

  • Images (title, ALT Text)

  • Meta description

  • Title Tags

  • URL

  • Internal Links

Create Unique Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

You can read more about this in my post “How to write great title tags and meta descriptions” , but in a nutshell, these are key contributors for On-Page SEO. When you are writing your Title Tags, you’ll want to add your primary keyword and your location. For your meta description, you’ll want to add keywords and give the searcher a reason to click on your site. A meta description is your last call out to the searcher, so you want to make it compelling.

meta description and title tag

H1,H2,H3

Not sure what these are? These are simply sizes of titles.

You want to make sure that you are creating titles in these sizes as they will help boost your On-Page SEO.

So where do they go? H1 tags should be titles. H2 tags are best for subheadings, and H3 tags can be small lists.

Pro Tip: Never have an H1 tag and then skip to an H3 below it. This will not help your SEO ranking. Always follow these sizes in numerical order from largest to smallest.

Boost Your Site’s Speed

Speed is everything. Everyone wants information right away. User satisfaction is a big part of Google’s ranking and something that you cannot overlook. Having fast load times and a mobile-friendly site will help boost your On-Page SEO. You will increase engagement on your site and improve your ranking.

Images

You want to make sure that you are using the highest quality images that you can find. Nobody wants to look at an unprofessional photo, and it won’t help your site look legit. You also want to add keywords into your image titles and alt text — both of these small details will help improve your On-Page SEO.

photographer taking photos of the skyline

Content

Content is very important. Google’s algorithm looks for content length, the frequency of content being published, and how valuable the content is. You want your content to be fresh. The more frequently you produce quality content, the better your ranking will be. You also want to consider the length of your content. If it’s too short, Google will not be able to track it. You want to aim to have your content with, at least, 300+ words.

On-Page SEO is a huge topic and there are lots of things you can do to help your ranking. By following this list, and putting in some work, you’ll be closer to getting to the top of Google.

For help with your On-Page SEO contact the team at Intrigue today.

Intrigue is a Canadian digital marketing company delivering solutions to help businesses get noticed and found. Guided by a commitment to empower leaders to strengthen communities, Intrigue offers website design and development, branding, online advertising, content marketing, graphic design, video production, SEO, and analytics. Take your marketing to the next level and Get Noticed. Get Found.® intrigueme.ca

9 thoughts on “On-Page SEO Checklist

  1. Hey Ryan, decent list.

    The biggest factor right now is actually having the KW in domain/URL, so if someone wants to rank a page they really need to make sure they are optimizing their inner URL structure. Obviously this is not always possible.

    I have seen limited results with content and images on-page, Google seems to look for some media on the page though – embeds or images. Google can tell if your images aren’t original, so extra points if you make your own images. Content, on the other hand, is nowhere near as important as people are saying it is at the moment. I’ve tested having the Keywords show up a lot, all the way to not showing up at all and there is almost no difference.

    URL>Title>H Tags> Content>Outbound Links

    That’s the way I see on-page.

    Thanks for the post Ryan!

    1. Hey Linden,

      Thanks for the comment! Overall, I’d agree with your diagnosis of the SEO hierarchy. But it was very interesting to hear you’d tested content with and without keywords, and seen no substantial difference in ranking results (as most other SEO experts I’ve read would say otherwise). Was this a recent experiment? Did you document your case study anywhere?

      Would love to get some further insight 🙂

      Thanks,
      Alex

  2. I would concur with Linden’s comments about the biggest ranking signal to google is the keyword in the domain of the site that is linking to you. This level of “relevence” is the hardest type of link to get and Google knows it. As a result rankings improve in a big way. I have tested this on a client of mine who ranks #1 and #2 for a search with 18K monthly volume.

    1. Interesting insight, Paul! I think Linden was referring to the KW in your own domain/URL, rather than a linking domain. This is definitely a different perspective — although not directly relevant to On-Page SEO, it’s still a valuable piece of knowledge on SEO best practices.

      Thanks for sharing in any case! Love the feedback:)

  3. Hi Ryan,
    I would like to say thanks to your for sharing such a wonderful and in-depth post about on page seo.
    I agree that On-page optimization is very important part of SEO without doing proper on-page optimization it will be difficult to rank your website. I would like to add that in today’s SEO content is the most important factor for on-page optimization you should add unique and quality content on your website or blog on daily basis just to enhance the interest of the visitors.
    Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us.

  4. An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a coworker who has been doing a
    little homework on this. And he in fact bought me dinner because
    I discovered it for him… lol. So let me reword this….
    Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending some time to
    discuss this subject here on your web site.

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