How do I Check my On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO is the foundation of any high ranking website. Why? It mainly comes down to how Google works. Yes, Google does gather data on websites as a whole, but at the end of the day, it analyzes individual web pages through the crawling process and ranks them based on multiple factors for specific search terms. As such, improving, revising, and analyzing web pages to improve their effectiveness from an SEO perspective is not just a recommendation but rather, a necessity, but where do you start? What content should you keep and revise? These are the questions that plague most website owners, which is why our SEO experts at On the Map Marketing decided to explain exactly how to check your website’s on-page SEO!

On-Page SEO Checklist

1. Analyze Each Page’s Keyword Distribution and Density

When you are analyzing how much a particular page uses a keyword, it’s important for you to do a couple of things:

  • Look at how many times a keyword and terms that are synonymous with a keyword are used.
  • Ensure that keywords are used naturally
  • Always ensure that you are not engaging in keyword stuffing

Analyzing a web page’s keyword density should always be done with caution because you don’t ever want to labeled by Google as engaging in the blackhat SEO technique of keyword stuffing. However, if you are targeting a particular keyword and it is only used once or twice on a web page, you might want to consider making some revisions to your content. Moreover, keywords should always be used naturally, and yes, Google can tell if a keyword is being used in an unnatural fashion, which will ultimately have a negative on a web page’s ranking. Additionally, you should also analyze the density of any terms that are synonymous with the keyword you are targeting.

Keyword Distribution

There are certain page attributes that should incorporate a targeted keyword as long as it can be used naturally. These attributes include the page’s:

  • Meta description
  • Headers
  • Title Tag

However, these attributes can also use terms that are synonymous with a page’s targeted keyword. The goal is to create page attributes that accurately describe the page’s content, engage the user, and incorporate targeted keywords where possible.

2. Check Each Web Page for Broken Links

This may seem like an obvious on-page SEO technique, but it is one that is often forgotten by website owners. Undoubtedly, you have probably been focusing on adding plenty of content to your website, but many internal and external links change as time passes and your website grows. Moreover, broken links within a web page’s content can have a negative impact on your website, because they are typically identified by Google’s crawler and are considered a symptom of a sub-par web page. Luckily, there are plenty of broken link checker tools available for you to use including one that is offered by Google.

3. Optimize the Images on Each Web Page

Guess which type of content slows down most web pages? Images! Many website owners often fail or forget to optimize their images, or it has just been a while since you have converted your images to a load-friendly format. So, here are a few tips for optimizing your website’s images for on-page SEO:

  • Write “alt text” for every image on each web page using targeted keywords if possible
  • Choose the appropriate format for each image based on its contents
  • Compress each image. There are tons of online image compressors for you to use for free.

Remember, Google now uses mobile page-loading speeds as a ranking factor, so the goal of choosing the proper image format and compressing each image is to allow your web pages to load as quickly as possible for all users. Moreover, make sure you use Google’s page speed insights test to gauge the effectiveness of your image optimization efforts. This is one aspect of on-page SEO that is important from both an SEO perspective and a conversion perspective. In fact according to research conducted by Google, as little as a one second delay in page-load times has been found to reduce website conversions by 20%. So, image optimization paired with creating lean, load-friendly content is a critical aspect of on-page SEO.

4. Consider Revising, Expanding, or Re-writing Content

Writing engaging content is a critical SEO technique, but even the best content needs a revision every once in a while. So, as you analyze each web page, consider the age and size of each webpage, and if a web page is either outdated or isn’t large enough to allow you incorporate your targeted keywords at a healthy density level, you should consider revising the web page’s content. Remember, one of the factors that Google uses to rank content is content freshness, so regularly updating, improving, and revising content is an important part of on-page SEO.

5. Optimize Your Content for “Topical Relevance”

SEO experts and website owners often focus exclusively on keywords and terms that are synonymous with the keywords they are targeting, and while this is an important aspect of creating SEO-friendly content, it is short-sighted if you do not also focus on content that incorporates words and statements focused on topical relevance.

What does topical relevance mean and why is important?

Topical relevance is the use of terms that are closely related to a keyword as opposed to having the same meaning. For example, if you were writing content about cars you would incorporate terms such as:

  • Tires
  • Horse Power
  • Gas Mileage
  • Cruise Control

The reason this is important is Google uses “phrase-based indexing” as a part of their algorithm. Phrase-based indexing improves on Google’s previous method by using common phrases that appear in a piece of content to anticipate or predict other phrases within a piece of content. This means that not only does Google’s algorithm analyze how many times a keyword or term that is synonymous with a keyword appears in a piece of content, but it also connects certain common phrases used in content that discusses a particular subject with a particular topic or keyword. Consequently, you should review your website’s content and determine whether or not it incorporates, to the greatest intent possible, common terms that are associated with the topic of each web page.

Do You Need Help with Your Website’s On-Page SEO?

The SEO experts at On the Map Marketing are ready to help. Our team of SEO specialists has helped hundreds of business owners implement on-page SEO techniques that allow them to maximize their website’s value, and we are ready to start working on your website today. So, call the SEO experts at On the Map Marketing today to find out how our team can help you.