Run through this checklist on every page you publish or refresh, so it is fully optimised before it goes live.
On-page SEO is the work you do on the page itself, the part you fully control. None of these items take long, but skipping them is the most common reason good content never ranks.
Content
- One primary keyword, matched to search intent
- A clear, compelling title tag with the keyword
- A unique meta description that earns the click
- One H1, with H2s structuring the rest
Links and media
- Descriptive internal links to related pages
- At least one outbound link to a trusted source
- Descriptive alt text on every image
- Compressed images and a short, clean URL
Technical
- Loads fast on mobile and desktop
- Canonical tag set correctly
- Structured data added where relevant
First move: If you only do three things: nail the title, match the intent, and add internal links.
How to use it
Keep it next to your publishing workflow and run it before every page goes live, then again whenever you refresh old content. Over time these checks become second nature, but the list stops the small misses that quietly cost rankings.