Checklist for On-Page SEO Technical Best Practices

Title tags are elements that assign a name to a webpage and get displayed on the search engine result pages. Every page title tag should be unique and descriptive of the content displayed on the respective page. As for optimization, the title tag should include a keyword and be under 60 characters in length.

Headings are like mini-headlines within your content. Headings have to primarily be relevant to the content and while you can include keywords, the relevance of the heading should not suffer from their inclusion. Ideally use H1 headings with subheadings being handy in long-form content pieces.

URL structure has also become important as search engines will use it to categorize your website’s content. Similarly, you can optimize URLs with keywords, so long as they remain relevant. An example of a good URL structure would be to include the name of the product instead of a product id, e.g.: http://www.yourshoes.com/red-leather-shoes (instead of www.yourshoes.com/shoe-5679).

Alt text (alternative text) is an element pertaining to images on your website. These offer information to search engine robots about an image. As such, alt text should be specific and descriptive of the image, with a 125 characters or less length.

Page load speed is vital for any website, because nobody wants to wait too long until a page loads. Web pages that have high bounce rates will generally be avoided by search engines, assigning them a lower search ranking.

Internal links make it easier for visitors to navigate around your website and gives a hint to search engines how the sitemap looks like. At the very least, each page on your site should link back to its category or subcategory page and to the homepage.

Meta descriptions are short but explicit descriptions that expand on title tags, summarizing the content of a page. The meta description appears below the title and the URL in the search results and it should not be longer than 160 characters.

Responsiveness is an aspect of website optimization that has become mandatory. This ensures all website elements will be properly displayed on any devices, mobile and desktops alike. Not only has mobile traffic taken over search internet traffic, but devices come increasingly in unconventional shapes and sizes.

Keywords are the centrepiece of any on-page SEO strategy and these can be included in content as well as in technical elements of SEO. In order to be effective, keywords must be researched and carefully inserted, maintaining the relevancy of the keywords within the content and the website as a whole.