Basic on page SEO Checks

A website can often be neglected and sometimes the most basic on page SEO can be overlooked. Although on page SEO is just one of the factors in an SEO campaign, by investing some time using the following checklist, you can be sure that the pages and keywords are fine tuned as much as possible.

• Target one main keyword/phrase per page – and ensure that each keyword is used for one page only. This will help the keyword to be focused on the page and ensure the page gets the full strength and rank high for the keyword.

• Use one instance of the <h1> tag on each page – Although the header tags <h1>, <h2>, <h3> are used in styling, search engines rank words in <h1> tags with more importance over other header tags, therefore the keyword you are targeting on the page should placed within the <h1></h1> tags and used once only. <h2> and <h3> tags can be used multiple times and should contain secondary key phrases.

• Ensure all title tags are unique and keeping to less than 65 characters – The title tag for a page is one of the most important pieces of text that crawlers will pick up, and one of the first things that a user will see in the search results. It tells the search engines what the page is about, so it should always contain the keyword you are targeting.

• Make sure the meta description on each page is unique and compelling – The description along with the title is the first thing the user will see in the search results; a description with a unique selling point and call to action will help to increase the click through rate. Although the description does not get picked up by the search engines, keywords included within the text will show up in bold which will help with keyword association.

Julie Cheung
SEO Programmer