The Ultimate 2024 Checklist for On Page SEO Services + Examples
5.00/5Are you in need of on-page SEO services? Whether you’re considering hiring professional SEO services or handling it in-house, it’s imperative that you understand what on-page SEO is all about and the impact it has on your website’s performance.
Our comprehensive checklist will help you master this art and increase your website’s visibility in search engines.
It consists of 11 elements that will help you achieve the perfect page optimisation. While some of them may feel small (image optimisation, URL structure, internal linking), it’s important that you understand the huge impact that happens when these details are taken care of.
Let’s get started!
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process of optimising your website content for search engines and humans. This practice is made up of various actions that include everything within your page that has a direct impact on search performance:
- Page title
- Page headers
- URL
- Internal linking
- Meta descriptions
- Image optimisation
- Page speed
- etc.
For on-page SEO to work, you need to complement it with accurate content that addresses the needs and questions of your target audience.
On-Page SEO vs. Off-Page SEO
Website optimisation happens on two fronts: on your site and off. The latter refers to the off-page SEO practices that help increase your domain authority, trustworthiness, and visibility.
This includes actions such as backlink acquisition, guest posting, influencer marketing, PR, and social media. While we won’t cover this area in this handy guide, it’s important to note that it still has a huge impact on your search engine rankings.
What Is On-Page SEO vs. Local SEO?
It’s important to note that local SEO is an on-page SEO practice designed to help you improve your rankings for local searches (from a specific physical location), get more website traffic, and if you have, increase the local shoppers that visit your store.
This includes using keywords relevant to a specific geographic location, adding your website to business listings and online directories, optimising a Google My Business profile, building inbound links from reputable web pages, and more.
Why Is On-Page SEO Important in 2024?
Your website content is tailored to the needs of your target audience. It nurtures them and entices them to take action and buy your products or services. For this to work, you need your website to be visible and findable by users in search engines. That’s where on-page SEO comes in.
You can think of it as the language you use to communicate with Google and others to let them know what your content is all about. Ignoring it will only hurt your site’s performance, organic traffic numbers, conversions, and of course, sales.
In short, Google uses your on-page SEO signals to understand your content and rank it in its results pages. While the algorithm they use is constantly changing, some practices are still valid. For example, prioritise your users’ experience by creating and publishing valuable content for them.
2024 Checklist for On-Page SEO Services
With your users’ experience in mind, let’s run through our complete checklist of on-page SEO actions to be taken.
1. Keyword Research and Optimisation
Your on-page SEO efforts start with conducting good keyword research and selecting those that will help position your brand in Google’s top search results.
A good option is to work with keywords that have a search volume of at least 100 per month and a difficulty less than 70. This way, you are targeting traffic that is actively looking for what you have to offer, and you are competing with a group of content creators with less domain authority.
Once you have decided which keyword to work with, you need to strategically incorporate it into different parts of your blog post or individual pages. Make sure you include it:
- Page title
- URL
- Headers (H1, H2, H3…)
- First paragraph
- Meta description
- Page content
Please note that you need to find a balance between stuffing your page with this search query and underusing it. Always make sure that your text feels natural, you can add related keywords to make it easier for the user to read.
2. Meta Tags and Descriptions
You want to make sure that your page’s meta title and meta description encourage searchers to click and visit your site. Here’s what you need to do:
Meta title or title tags
The meta title is the page element that identifies a web page’s title. On search engine results pages, it appears as the clickable headline for a particular result. It’s important for usability, SEO, and social sharing.
- Keep title tags between 50 and 60 characters. This will help ensure that it displays properly in search results.
- Include your focus keyword or long-tail keyword.
- Make sure each of your pages has a unique meta title.
Meta description
A brief summary of your page’s content that appears below the meta title in SERPs. It is designed to give both search engines and searchers a snapshot of your page’s content.
- Stick to 150-160 characters. You want to provide a concise summary of what the content is all about.
- Make sure your copy is compelling, concise and encourages clicks.
- Include your target keyword or long-tail keyword naturally in the description.
- Each meta description should be unique and consistent with the content of the page.
3. Header Tags Optimisation
Header tags are designed to make your content easy to read and engage with. Think for a moment about how you read a blog post or page, you probably tend to quickly scan the sections and only stop at the one that interests you the most. Your readers do the same. Adding and optimising header tags is essential to making their experience as smooth as possible and to retaining them.
As if that were not enough, for search engines they provide vital context around the keywords on your page.
To optimise them, simply follow these guidelines:
- Use one H1 header tag per page. It’s the first thing visitors see, so make sure it’s engaging, compelling, and contains your focus keyword.
- Stick to the traditional header hierarchy (H1, H2, H3…) Don’t jump from an H2 to an H4, this will affect your user experience.
- Match your headers to your users’ search intent.
- Don’t use multiple keywords in a single header. Stick to one!
- Use related keywords whenever possible.
Remember, headers are the perfect way to break up your text and make it more readable for the end user.
4. URL Structure
URLs are the address of your blog posts and pages. In just a few characters, they give search engines and potential visitors a quick guide to what your content is all about.
While the structure of the URL is made up of many different elements (protocol, subdomain, domain, subdirectory, and slug), for the purposes of SEO we will stick to the slug. This is the part we can customise to better describe our content.
A perfectly optimised URL is a must:
- Have an exact phrase or term that quickly describes your content.
- Include your focus keyword at the beginning of the slug.
- Use hyphens to separate words.
- Be all lowercase.
- Avoid unnecessary parameters like “?”, “&”, and “=”.
5. Internal Linking
Internal linking means that you include links in your blog posts to other content published on your site. This practice helps users and Google find more relevant content and navigate through your site with ease.
From an SEO standpoint, it’s important that you incorporate internal links with a strategic approach.
- You want to build the hierarchy of your content and link from the pillar pages to the topic clusters and supporting pages.
- Each time you add a link, you need to make sure that the anchor text is relevant and aligned with the keywords and content of the page you are linking to.
6. Image Optimisation
In addition to creating and adding high-quality images to your blog posts, you also need to make a few adjustments to make them speak the same language as search engines and communicate what your content is all about.
- Make sure your images are useful to your readers. You can work with photos, graphics, charts, icons, logos, or even screenshots.
- Use the right image format. Usually SVG is perfect for icons and logos, and WebP for all other images.
- Give your images a descriptive and concise filename.
- Be sure to tag them with metadata or ALT text. Try to stick to less than 125 characters that clearly explain the context of the image.
- Compress your images.
- Always use responsive image scaling to ensure that they are suitable for any screen size and resolution.
7. Mobile Optimisation
Now more than ever, mobile optimisation is critical to a website’s success. Recent statistics show that at least half of global searches are performed from a mobile device, so as a business owner or marketing executive, you need to ensure that your site performs flawlessly on any screen size.
How do you do that?
- Ask your web development and web design teams to implement responsive web design.
- Make sure they prioritise mobile-friendly navigation, where only essential links are visible.
- Optimise your site to load in less than 3 seconds on mobile devices.
- Optimise your CTAs and forms to make them easy for people to complete.
- Get rid of pop-ups.
8. Page Speed and Performance
Having a great website filled with valuable content with a slow load time is the perfect combination for disaster. To be successful you need to make sure that your load time is less than 3 seconds. If not, you will see your bounce rate go up and your conversions start to drop.
To check the speed of your website, we highly recommend that you go to Google’s PageSpeed Insight. It’s a free tool that will show you the different areas you need to improve in order to provide a better user experience.
Some of these action items may include
- Enable browser caching.
- Enable image compression.
- Implement a content delivery network (CDN).
- Optimising media and image files.
- Minimise HTTP requests.
- Use the right web host.
Remember, your page load time is one of the main factors Google uses to determine your ranking in search engine results pages.
Another option is to implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on your site. In short, this is an open source HTML framework designed to help web pages load faster on mobile devices.
9. Schema Markup and Structured Data
One of the least used on-page SEO services is schema markup. This new concept basically relies on inserting code into your website to help search engines return more informative results to potential clients. It’s especially important if you want to position your brand in SERP features.
You don’t need any programming skills to implement it, just follow these steps:
- Go to Google’s Structured Data Markup Wizard
- Select the type of data: articles, book reviews, events, products, local businesses, movies, etc.
- Paste the URL you want to markup
- Select the page elements you want to markup. For example, if it’s an article, you can select the title.
- Use the list of data elements and complete as many as you can.
- Click Create HTML.
- Go to your CMS or source code and paste the highlighted snippets into the appropriate places.
- Use Google’s Testing Tool to see what your page looks like with the markup you just added.
10. User Experience (UX) and Engagement
How your content is served, displayed, and viewed on your site is critical to your ranking in Google search results. With that in mind, there are several page elements that you need to pay attention to if you want to achieve the top search results.
- Page load speed
- Mobile-first indexing
- Site structure and navigation that puts the user first.
- Functional and aesthetic design.
We strongly recommend that you pay close attention to Google’s Core Web Vitals report. It gives you a set of metrics that evaluate the user experience on your site based on criteria such as load performance, responsiveness to user input, and layout stability. This allows you to prioritise which UX elements to optimise first.
11. Security and HTTPS
While Google’s page ranking algorithms are constantly changing, they are adamant about the importance of security. In this sense, they recently decided to consider the SSL certificate (a protocol for encrypting Internet traffic and verifying server identity) as an indicator of trustworthiness and give sites a boost in their SEO.
To get your SSL certificate, purchase, install, and activate it from a verified third party. It’s usually a good idea to do this through Wix, DigiCert, GoDaddy, or SSL.com.
What Is the Cost of On-Page SEO Services?
There is no one right answer to this question. It will depend on how you handle your on-page SEO services. For example, you can hire someone to work for you in-house or you can work with an SEO agency. Even if you hire an agency or an outside team, the price range will vary depending on the services you request, their experience, and the page optimisation needs of your website.
For more information, check out the list of on-page SEO agencies on our platform.
Conclusion
There are several areas involved in on page SEO services. From web design to web development and content creation. Everything has an impact, small or large, on the signals you send to Google and other search engines so that they can understand the content and context of your site and rank you in the results pages.
This checklist is designed to help you understand everything your SEO team or agency should be doing so you can better monitor their work and achieve your goals. Remember, SEO plays a key role in driving organic qualified traffic to your site and converting those visitors into users, subscribers, and clients.
Key Takeaways: The Ultimate 2024 Checklist for On-Page SEO Services
Importance in 2024:
- On-page SEO enhances visibility, traffic, conversions, and sales by making content easily findable by search engines.
2024 On-Page SEO Checklist:
- Keyword Research:
- Target keywords with 100+ searches/month and difficulty <70.
- Include keywords in titles, URLs, headers, meta descriptions, and content.
- Meta Tags:
- Use unique, keyword-rich meta titles (50-60 characters) and meta descriptions (150-160 characters).
- Header Tags:
- Maintain a clear hierarchy (H1, H2, H3) aligned with user intent.
- URL Structure:
- Use descriptive, keyword-rich slugs with hyphens and lowercase letters.
- Internal Linking:
- Link to relevant site content with appropriate anchor text.
- Image Optimisation:
- Use descriptive filenames, ALT text, proper formats, and compressed images.
- Mobile Optimisation:
- Ensure responsive design, fast loading (<3 seconds), and mobile-friendly navigation.
- Page Speed:
- Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to improve load time with caching, image compression, and CDNs.
- Schema Markup:
- Add schema markup to enhance SERP features and search engine understanding.
- User Experience (UX):
- Focus on speed, mobile-first indexing, user-friendly navigation, and aesthetic design.
- Security (HTTPS):
- Use SSL certificates for encryption and site trustworthiness.
Cost of Services:
- It varies based on in-house efforts vs. hiring an agency and required services.
