This is the checklist that lives on the wall above our desk, typed out. Twenty-seven checks, grouped into six stages, run on every page we publish or optimise — for clients and for ourselves.

Tick them off as you go: your progress is saved in this browser tab, so you can work through a real page alongside it.

The interactive checklist

Work through a page of your own site as you read. Nothing is sent anywhere — the ticks live in your browser only.

0 of 27 done (0%)

Stage 1: Intent and targeting (checks 1–3)

Everything else is wasted if this stage is wrong. Before you write a word, you should be able to finish these three sentences:

  • "Someone searching [primary term] wants to…"
  • "The one page on my site that should answer that is…"
  • "I will do it better than the current top results by…"

If the third sentence is "by writing more words", stop. Length is not a differentiator. Specificity, first-hand experience, better structure, current prices, real screenshots and honest trade-offs are.

Check for cannibalisation while you are here. Search site:yourdomain.com [your term] and see how many of your own pages Google thinks are relevant. More than one strong candidate means you need to consolidate before optimising.

Stage 2: Title, description and URL (checks 4–7)

The title tag is the highest-leverage single line on the page. It influences ranking and it decides whether anyone clicks.

The title formula that works

Primary term + qualifier + brand — for example, "On-Page SEO Checklist: 27 Checks for Every Page | SEO Starter Pack". Put the primary term first, keep it under roughly 60 characters so it is not truncated, and make sure it reads like something a human wrote.

Meta descriptions

These do not affect ranking directly, but they affect click-through rate, and click-through rate absolutely affects how much traffic a given position earns you. Aim for 70–158 characters: what the page contains, who it is for, and why yours is worth opening. Google rewrites descriptions perhaps half the time, usually when your description does not match the query — which is itself useful feedback.

URLs

Short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, no dates, no ?p=1423. /on-page-seo-checklist/ not /blog/2026/08/14/the-ultimate-on-page-seo-checklist-for-beginners/. If you are changing an existing URL, 301 redirect the old one — and if the page has any rankings at all, ask whether the change is worth the temporary dip.

There is a free snippet preview tool on our blog page if you want to see how your title and description will look before you publish.

Stage 3: Structure and content (checks 8–15)

Headings are the skeleton. Read only the H2s of your page: if that list does not make sense as an outline, neither does the page.

  • One H1. It should restate the title's promise, not repeat it word for word.
  • H2s as questions or milestones. They frequently become the text Google shows in featured snippets.
  • No skipped levels. Partly for screen readers, partly because skipping usually signals muddled thinking.

Answer first, elaborate second

Put the direct answer in the first 150 words. Journalism calls it not burying the lede; search calls it satisfying intent quickly. Both reward you — readers stay, and snippet extraction gets easier.

Evidence is the differentiator

The pages that hold rankings through algorithm updates almost all contain something that could only come from doing the work: a screenshot of your own dashboard, the actual price you charge, a mistake you made, a number from your own data. Generic advice is now infinitely available. First-hand specifics are not.

Word count myths There is no minimum word count. There is a minimum completeness: cover what the query needs and stop. We have pages of 600 words outranking 4,000-word competitors because the shorter page answers the question in the first screen.

Internal linking is the most underused tool available to a small site, because it is entirely within your control.

Links out of the page

Three to six contextual links to genuinely related pages, using anchor text that describes the destination. "Read our guide to keyword research" tells Google something. "Click here" tells it nothing.

Links into the page

This is the bit everyone forgets. A new page with zero inbound internal links is an orphan; Google may find it via the sitemap but it inherits no authority. Before you publish, decide which two or three existing pages should link to the new one, and add those links on day one.

External links

Linking out to sources does not leak your rankings. It signals that your claims are checkable. Link to primary sources — documentation, original research, official guidance — not to aggregators repeating them.

Stage 5: Images, schema and speed (checks 19–24)

Images

Images are where most small sites lose their speed scores. Three rules cover ninety per cent of it: export at the size you actually display, compress before uploading, and set width and height attributes so the layout does not jump while they load.

Alt text should describe the image for someone who cannot see it. "Screenshot of Search Console showing impressions rising from 400 to 2,100" is useful. "seo seo services best seo" is spam.

Schema

Structured data does not directly improve rankings, but it makes you eligible for rich results, which changes how much space you occupy and how often you get clicked. Pick the types that genuinely apply:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "The On-Page SEO Checklist",
  "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Martin Huntbach" },
  "datePublished": "2026-08-14"
}
</script>

Validate it with Google's Rich Results Test before you move on. Invalid schema is worse than no schema.

Speed and mobile

Aim for Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range phone on 4G, not on your desktop on fibre. Test the page, not the homepage. And genuinely look at it on a phone — the number of otherwise excellent pages with a cookie banner covering the answer is remarkable.

Our technical SEO guide covers the non-developer fixes for each of these in detail.

Stage 6: Conversion and publication (checks 25–27)

A ranking page that asks nothing of the reader is a missed opportunity. Every page should have exactly one obvious next step — enquire, buy, download, read the related guide — and it should appear before the reader has to scroll back up looking for it.

Then the publication mechanics, which take four minutes and are skipped constantly:

  1. Confirm the page is indexable: no accidental noindex, canonical pointing at itself, not blocked in robots.txt.
  2. Submit the URL in Search Console's URL Inspection tool and request indexing.
  3. Record today's position and impressions for the primary term, so you have a baseline to compare against in ninety days.
Then leave it alone Resist the urge to tinker weekly. Give a new or reworked page six to twelve weeks before you judge it, then review with data rather than nerves.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I re-run this checklist on old pages?

Annually for your money pages, or whenever a page's impressions start declining month over month. Most sites get more from refreshing ten existing pages than from publishing ten new ones.

Does keyword density matter?

No. Write naturally, use the primary term where it genuinely belongs — title, H1, first paragraph, once or twice in the body — and let the supporting terms appear as a by-product of covering the topic properly.

Should every page have schema?

Every page should have the schema that actually applies to it. Marking a blog post up as a product to chase rich results is the kind of thing that gets sites manual actions.

Can I do all of this on Squarespace or Wix?

Yes. Every check here except some schema work is available in the standard settings of the major website builders. Schema may need a code injection block, which both platforms support.

Want the templates as well as the theory? The SEO Starter Pack gives you the video training, the planner, the checklist and the keyword templates behind this guide — one payment of $47.
Get the pack — $47 Or have it done for you
Martin Huntbach

Martin Huntbach

SEO strategist & co-founder

Martin has been doing SEO for small businesses since 2009. He runs the technical and strategy side of the studio and has a well-documented weakness for spreadsheets.

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