On Page SEO Checklist For 2018 (Infographic)

21 On Page SEO Tips You Can Implement Today

• 01

  Create a Compelling Title Tag With Your Main Keyword

  SEO experts suggest that the keyword should be front loaded at the beginning of the title, which is fine, but only if it reads well. Write for humans first and not for search engines. Your title has a major impact on your CTR from the search engines which is a bigger ranking factor, so focus first on crafting your title for clicks by creating scarcity, curiosity or even controversy and fit your main keyword in there anywhere. For the full blog post with more details please visit http://anthonyhayes.online/on-page-seo/

• 02

  Your Description Impacts CTR Too, Make

  Again add brackets, modifiers and main keyword using a long tail variation of the main keyword into your description. Try to make it compelling to encourage the click through by offering a solution to a problem and even mention a content upgrade such as cheat sheet or infographic. Tip: Check adwords ads for ideas as the advertisers will have tested many variations of their copy for the best CTR.

• 03

  Short URLs Are Better

  Keep your urls short using main keyword. do not be tempted to keyword stuff the url. If using an SEO plugin use the canonical url option if you are going to save your article into more than one category to avoid duplicate content issues.

• 04

  Use A Full Width Featured Image Or Video At The Top Of The Page

  Using a high quality image at the top of the page helps with setting the tone of your article early and can be used with text on the image as an opportunity to hook the reader. It also helps space out between the heading and the article and gives an opportunity to use a H2 tag subtitle effectively directly underneath.

• 05

  Map Out Your Content With H3 Sub Headings

  Most experts will tell you to use h3 tags for sub headings including your main keywords and you can use multiple LSI variations if you have 2 or more sub headings, which is not wrong, but looking beyond that is an opportunity that is often overlooked... Starting your article by writing your sub headings first allows us to do very effective content mapping!

• 06

  Your First TWO Paragraphs Are Crucial!

  Use your main keyword in the first paragraph and try to sprinkle to related search terms or LSI Keywords throughout the first couple of paragraphs for relevancy. More importantly however is the opportunity to hook the reader. you need to use the beginning of your article to really grab attention. You should also use the first 2 paragraphs to get your internal links in early as people are more inclined to click when they first arrive on a page.

• 07

  Track Relevancy In Real Time!

  Pro Tip: Use a plugin called RelevancyRank, available from http://ntopic.org to score your article as you are writing it, Use this after the first two paragraphs to make sure you have a high relevancy score at the beginning of the article and then recheck as you progress to keep you on track.

• 08

  Remove the Guesswork By Curating Google

  Wait What?...Yep by curating google we can take a lot of guesswork out of what google think is relevant and likes to offer its search audience. Try doing a search in google and look out for the snippets and also the section that says "people also ask" to discover what questions that are relevant to the search term that people are asking. You can copy and paste the questions and the answers into your content and rewrite the answers with your own thoughts and voice and in doing so you are giving google what it wants.

• 09

  Simple Rules For Outbound Links

  Linking out from your article to relevant and authority sites is a great way to align with top ranking and high traffic content. My rules are 1. Curate from a relevant blog or news story, 2. include a social media post with high engagement and 3. Use no follow is fine but ONLY for external links and also by doing the nofollow, then there are no limitations on how many outbound links we can use as long as the links are useful to the reader.

• 10

  Use Multi Media In Your Content

  Multi media can be images, gifs. slides or videos etc. If you have a tool like screen recording tool like camtasia then adding a video to your post is easy to do and can be a summary of your post or a video expanding on a specific point from your post. This can also help with increasing time spent on your content which is a major ranking factor.

• 11

  Engagement Optimization

  A poll, quiz, slide or video can also be used to increase engagement and increase time on your content. Pro Tip: You can rename file properties with your main keyword for videos, slides and images as well as adding main keyword to your Alt tag for images after adding to your post.

• 12

  Use a Quality SEO Plugin

  There are multiple SEO plugins to keep you on track with many on page seo basics. Yoast is the most popular, SEO Presser is also good as well as "all in one SEO" plugin if you want a simpler plugin. Keep an eye out for future posts where i will provide import settings for Yoast an All In One SEO

• 13

  Use a Responsive Theme or Template

  Most people reading this will be using WordPress which has a plethora of great themes. Having a mobile friendly site is made easier with modern themes but if you are stuck you can use a plugin like WP Touch which will make your site mobile friendly with a couple of clicks. Sites that are not mobile friendly will have an SEO disadvantage.

• 14

  Content Formating

  Think of the user friendliness of your content from a readability point of view. Keep paragraphs short and easy to read, break up your content with images and line breaks and even an inline CTR or optin form. Plugins like thrive architect make formatting and creating posts that are pleasing to the eye very easy to do.

• 15

  Have a Remarketing Goal With Every Piece Of Content

  We work hard to get traffic from SEO and we should always have marketing elements in place to bring that traffic back so that we can grow our audience. Make this your main goal for all of your content so that you will not waste the traffic that you have generated to your website and have the opportunity to bring them back through e-marketing via email, push notifications, low cost paid ads etc.

• 16

  Length Of Content

  Statistics show that longer content ranks better but there are bloggers like Seth Godin for example that do short, interesting and thoughtful content expertly and drive huge traffic. Do what you are best at, if its long form content then great, if its short interesting and engaging content then put more emphasis on the other elements mentioned here especially CTR from search engines and social engagement. Sometimes less is more but it ALWAYS has to be high quality.

• 17

  Automate Branded Social Syndication

  Branded social syndication is having a network of social profiles on the main social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Linkedin etc. You can easily set up automated social syndication to these branded social accounts via plugins such as Miroblog poster and "revive old post" which will post your latest content and it will republish it too periodically to get more traffic and social signals.

• 18

  Page Load Time

  Use basics like a wp fast cache and wp smush or similar and add a CDN. Your hosting is really important for speed too, if you are on a shared host then consider to move when you start to drive more traffic. If you need help to get your page load time down to under 2 seconds then check out fiverr.com for services to speed up your site but make sure the seller has some good reviews and feedback before hiring like the seller i recommend on the blog post at http://anthonyhayes.online/on-page-seo/

• 19

  Get SSL Certificate for Your Website

  This will be a mandatory requirement to avoid security warnings when people click through to your site. There are easy solutions however and WPX hosting offers it free. Another great option is to use the source i recommend on the blog post at http://anthonyhayes.online/on-page-seo/

• 20

  Optimize For Featured Snippets

  Adding a table of contents to your site can help as well as doing list style posts and also comparison tables. There are plugins that can help with each to make them more attractive such as Thrive and there are free TOC plugins that you can add to either the top of the post or in the sidebar for each post.

• 21

  Schema MarkUp

  Many themes offer schema markup for reviews, author, news and more and there are multiple plugins to do the same if your theme doesn't have it. This also helps your content stand out in the search results and can help improve CTR. http://anthonyhayes.online/on-page-seo/