[Onpage SEO Checklist] Do NOT Publish
Before You’ve Read This
There's so much talk online about backlinks and marketing strategies that most
people tend to completely forget about on-page SEO. They think that just by
installing Yoast and making a sitemap, they've taken care of their on-page SEO
troubles.
In truth, onpage SEO is far than just technical search only tasks nowadays.
Everything from site speed to how you present your content to how you optimise it
for social will have an impact on your SEO to some extent and therefore deserves to
be optimised.
Despite knowing all this stuff, I often forget to run several items on the ideal Onpage
SEO Checklist before I publish so this might sound a little selfish but this post was
actually written for me to use when I post new content on this site and the other
sites we run :).
More...
I'm sure you'll enjoy it as well, every optimisation item will give you that extra 1% of
awesomeness that can transform your business down the line if scaled to the right
proportions.
I tried to keep it short (sort of), actionable and to the point. Enjoy!
What You Will Learn In This Post
How to fix site level issues for better SEO
How to format content for maximum SEO impact
The secret to crafting winning headlines
How the pros optimize their meta data for big wins on search and social
The post-publishing steps we follow for massive traffic
Fix Site Level Issues
Site speed, performance and share ability have a big impact on how search engines
rank your website. Before you can even hit 'publish', there are a number of site wide
issues you need to take care of.
Most are easy to handle, some may take some time but in the end, why spend hours
and money producing content if the bases are not right?
Let's look at how to fix those quirks!
1. Boost site speed
It's no secret - Google loves sites that load fast. Between two similar sites, the faster
one will always outrank the slower. Your first step, therefore, should be to fix your
site speed.
Our post on improving site speed for non-technical users is a great place to start, but
if you're in a hurry, make sure that you at least do these three things:
Faster Theme
Not all themes are built equally. A lighter theme will load faster for users. At AH, we
use and recommend Thrive Themes.
Better Hosting
How quickly your webhost serves your pages has a direct and immediate effect on
site speed. We recommend TrafficPlanet hosting.
Proper Caching
Caching ensures that all static elements on your site load quickly. This is free and
has a big impact on speed. Check out our settings for W3 Total Cache.
How important is your hosting and is it REALLY worth spending more on premium
hosting providers?
Glad you asked, here are some load impact tests generated by my good friend Paul
Mc Carthy from Thrive Themes comparing a cheap host (Bluehost) to a WordPress
optimised host (Traffic Planet Hosting) on the exact same website.
Cheap host Bluehost, average page load time is always over 5 seconds and goes
over 10 seconds when more than 20 people browse your site (very slow).
Traffic Planet Hosting (proper WP Hosting) always stays below 2 seconds, no matter
the amount of visitors.
We have a full hosting comparison using such tests in the tubes, stay tuned for
that :).
2. Setup sharing buttons
Two reasons why you need social share buttons on your site:
Increase shares: Adding share buttons makes it easy for visitors to share your
content, netting you traffic from social media.
Improve SEO: Search engines use social signals as a ranking factor. On top of that,
shares get more people discover your content including those who can link to you.
We have received many links to this very site as a result of social shares from others.
Image share buttons alone generate over 150 shares/week for us (mostly on
Pinterest) using Sumome.
Floating share buttons work best in our experience, though you should always
experiment with different layouts. Try one of the following three to get started:
(Free)
(Free)
($19)
This may sound simple but you would be amazed at how many sites do not use any
social buttons.
3. Automate Image Optimization
Images are usually the biggest elements on your site in terms of size. Optimising
images for better performance can easily shave seconds off your site load time. The
effect is particularly noticeable if you use a lot of pictures in your posts (as you
should).
The smart way to do this is to automate the entire optimization process by following
these three steps:
Limit Upload Size
Use Imsanity to limit maximum upload size and automatically resize images.
Particularly useful if you have a high res screen like I do.
Compress Images
Image compression plugins use algorithms to automatically reduce size by half or
more. We recommend Kraken.io (Paid) and WP Smush.it (Free)
Use Lazy Load
'Lazy Load' stops the browser from loading an image until a user scrolls to it. This
saves valuable resources and makes your site load much faster (but can affect
indexing)
Optimising our images with Kraken.io we managed to reduce their size by up to 80%
on Autopilot with the WordPress Plugin.
While you are at it, also automate your image optimisation for SEO. Simply follow the
2 steps below:
1
Change File Name
Change the file name to describe the image. Use keywords only where necessary.
Use Media File Renamer plugin to make this easier.
2
Change ALT Tags
Use the ALT tag to describe the contents of the image. Again, use keywords only
where it fits naturally.
Use SEO Friendly Images plugin to automate this process.
Then just make sure your file names are keyword rich and you're good to go for
image optimisation.
4. Make Sure to Not Cannibalize Existing Keywords
Before you hit publish, you need to make sure that you've actually used your focus
keyword in your content, and preferably a keyword you did not target already.
Inside Authority Hacker Pro I teach people how to put together a larger scale
content spreadsheet that helps avoiding that but if you don't have such master
spreadsheet follow these method to find if you have a page targeting these
keywords already:
Method #1
Requires: Yoast SEO Plugin
Download and setup Yoast SEO Plugin. Make sure to use all the right settings for
your site.
Go to 'Posts' and search for your post using the target keyword.
Make sure that this is the same keyword as the focus keyword according to Yoast.
Method #2
Requires: Ahrefs
Log into Ahrefs and go to 'Positions Explorer'
Enter your domain in the search box.
Go to 'Organic Keywords' in the left pane.
Search for your target keyword. Make sure that your post shows up in the list.
Method #3
Requires: a browser
Go to Google.com
Use the query site:<yoursite.com> "target keyword"
Make sure none of the results targets your target term in the title
Tidy Up the Content
Content is like oil. If it's not refined, you can't do much with it, it's just a bunch of
useless mud. But once you work on it and transform it using carefully crafted
processes, you can turn it into a lot of value.
When I talk to people, they often seem to believe the main challenge is to write the
content then publish as fast as possible. The truth is, it's only half the work Here are
some of things I (sometimes should) do (more of) before publishing
1. Check Grammar and Spelling
Would you trust a review or dietary advice if it reads like it was written by a 4th
grader?
Google might not care, but your users definitely will mind if you have terrible
grammar and spelling. And what's bad for users is also bad for SEO.
Before you hit 'publish', make sure to run a grammar and spelling check. Here are
my two secret weapons for doing this without paying an expensive editor:
(Freemium)
Grammarly is like Word's grammar check on steroids. This extremely powerful tool
will spot spelling and grammar mistakes even seasoned editors miss. Best of all, the
base version is free to use.
(Free)
After the Deadline is another powerful grammar and spell check tool, except that this
one is available as a plugin (not compatible with Thrive Content Builder :(). You can
get the latest version with Jetpack.
The Grammarly editor points out your grammar / spelling / style mistakes in just a
few seconds, super handy tool to have!
2. Add Subheaders
Subheaders are almost as important as your content itself. They improve your
structural SEO (keywords within H2, H3 and H4 tags are viewed as "more important"
by Google when processing the page), make your content easy to scan, and help you
plug-in relevant keywords.
Gary Korisko's article on BoostBlogTraffic is the gold standard when it comes to
writing subheaders, but at the very least, you should follow these three steps:
1
Add Multiple Headers
Subheaders make your content easier to scan. Aim for at least 1 header per screen.
2
Use Different Levels of Headers
Use H2, H3, and H4 to organize content in terms of its importance.
3
Long-Tail Keywords
Use long-tail keywords in your headers. Use the Keyword Planner's keyword options
to find these related keywords
You don't need a fancy keyword tool to find long tail keywords for your sub headers,
the "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" option on the keyword
planner is enough.
3. Check Keyword Usage within Content
After Hummingbird, Google has become really good at understanding what a page is
about without needing tons of keywords. That said, keyword usage is still important
if you want to rank for a particular term.
You don't have to overdo it, but at the very least, you should have the following:
Use the target keyword or its close variation once within the first 100 words.
Use the target keyword or its close variation once within the last 100 words.
To do that, no rocket science needed, simply CTRL+F in your browser and type your
keyword in while opening a preview of your article to find the keywords in content
without re reading everything.
All checked for this post :)
4. Use Better Formatting
Long walls of text with a couple of headers are so 2010. If you want to stand out
today, you don't just need great content, you also need great presentation and
formatting.
We've seen this firsthand - one of our posts saw a 9,725% increase in traffic after
reformatting.
We use the Thrive Content Builder to format all our sites. Even if you don't use it,
you should at least follow these rules:
Formatting Rules For Great Content
Limit each paragraph to a maximum of 4 lines for readability.
Use bullet points to describe individual steps.
Break down content in sections with headers every 3-4 paragraphs.
Use or create relevant images to illustrate your point and/or divide content into
sections.
Link to sources (either internal or external) wherever you make any claim or use
statistics.
Use multiple calls to action throughout the content, especially a prominent CTA at
the end of the post.
Images & Multimedia
I've said it many times but given the emails I receive and the sites I see I think it's
safe to say it again, publishing walls of text will not get you very far period.
Actually, the attention time of most website visitors is wayyyy too low for them to
stay if there's nothing like an image or a video to grab their attention as per this
study shows:
See what I just did here?
Let's see how you can do the same.
1. Create Multiple Types of Media Inside The Post
Home made media is awesome, you know why? Because people embed it on their
sites and link back to you (see how many links I gave away on this post already?)
I know it's hard and it takes effort to create videos, to hire designers etc but the
truth is, these things are what earn you the links and the shares you've created
content for in the first place.
Why stop when you are so close from your goal?
Here are a few easy to create media types that you can use on your posts that get
links:
Memes (use memegenerator)
Excel charts (look above and below this list)
Quote images (Use Canva)
Powerpoint presentations (use Slideshare to host them)
Screenshots (alllll over Authority Hacker)
There is many more but those are seriously easy.
Data harvested from Moz shows that pages that have multiple types of content - text,
images, videos, etc. - get more shares and backlinks than text-only pages.
Source: Moz
If you want to create your own images, check out Canva, it's very newbie friendly.
2. Find Complementary Relevant Images
You don't have to be designing ALL the media on your site yourself. That'd be hard.
Instead feel free to use right free images to complete the media collection you add
to your post.
Usually those are not as good as own images but they do the job if you're out of
juice for creativity or time. Be careful though, image rights is serious business on the
internet. Make sure you pick Creative Commons and give the right attribution.
Here are some places where you can find right free images for your site (Pixabay is
my favorite).
If you want to read more on that topic check out our post on creating free blog
images.
3. Add Videos, if Possible
If people like images, they love videos. Video consumption grew 43% over the last
quarter in Q2 2014. It is expected to make up 84% of all internet traffic by 2018.
Videos add another layer of interactivity to your site and make your content more
engaging. It also gives you a chance to dive further into a topic than the text allows.
The best thing would be to make your own videos - it engages the readers better
and gives you another source of traffic through YouTube.
But if you can't do that, at least find a related video on YouTube and embed it within
the post. It's incredibly easy because how Powerful Youtube search is, completely
legal and it makes your blog posts look much better.
Warning: Don't upload your videos directly to WordPress - most hosts can't handle it.
Instead, upload them to YouTube, Vimeo or Wistia.
Headlines
Headlines have a massive effect on your posts' shareability. They're also among the
most important elements on any page as far as SEO is concerned. Follow these steps
to ensure that your headlines are primed for search and social:
1. Use Click-worthy Headlines
Your headline is the single most important element on any page. Most people will
decide whether to read your post or not from the headline itself.
As the great David Ogilvy once said:
"Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. When you have
written your headline, you have spent 80 cents of your dollar"
Click to Tweet
A great headline can make the difference between a decent post and a viral
sensation. Massive media properties like Buzzfeed and Upworthy have managed to
build their audiences on the strengths of their headlines alone.
So how do you write a click-worthy headline? This is a big topic but for starters,
follow these guidelines:
Use numbers (preferably odd numbers) in your headlines ("7 ways to do X", "6
things you didn't know about X", etc.) as such articles are easier to scan.
Use 'power' words that evoke strong emotions in the reader, such as "agony",
"scary", "spectacular", "fantastic", etc. For a full list of power words, check out this
post.
Offer 'secret' knowledge by using words like "trick", "hack", "secret", "little known",
"method", etc.
Evoke curiosity by using phrases such as "you won't believe are real", "#9 is
mindblowing", etc. This works only for certain niches, however. See ViralNova.com
for inspiration.
Jon Morrow's short eBook on Headline Hacks is a great place to learn more about
writing better headlines.
Follow Upworthy's advice and write 25 variations of every headline. Then plug the
best ones into CoSchedule's Headline Analyzer to get a guaranteed click-worthy post.
Coschedule's headline analyzer is awesome (and free) use it!
2. Make Sure to Use Keywords in the Headline
You don't need to repeat keywords throughout your content to ace SEO anymore,
but you still need your target keyword in the headline.
This is easier said than done - fitting keywords into a headline that's also clickworthy can be an ordeal.
Follow these guidelines to make the process easier:
Use the target keyword at the start of the headline. If it doesn't flow naturally, try to
use a hyphen after the keyword, such as "Onpage SEO Checklist - 5 Essential Do's
and Don'ts".
Use modifiers such as "best", "review", "guide", etc. to target related long-term
keywords. For example, change "Onpage SEO Checklist" to "Best Onpage SEO
Checklist".
Use strong adjectives before or after the keyword to make it more catchy. Words like
"amazing", "essential", "crucial", etc. work great. For example: "The Essential
Onpage SEO Checklist Guide for Bloggers"
Social and Meta
This is a step many bloggers tend to skip because it sounds like a lot of effort.
However, top performers know that these little things end up giving them the edge
over the competition. Follow the steps below to optimize social and meta data for
maximum impact.
1. Optimize Titles for Different Uses
Every platform has its own headline preference. 'Shareable' headlines that generate
curiosity do well on social media, while short headlines with keywords and
compelling search snippets do better on Google.
The good part is that your on-page headline doesn't have to be the same as your
search or social headline. You can easily optimize the headline for each platform
using the Yoast SEO plugin:
Search Title
Optimize for search engine clicks (under 'General' tab in Yoast)
Use keywords in the title and search snippet
Keep title limited to 54 characters to better fit mobile screens
Social Title
Optimize for social media clicks (under 'Social' tab in Yoast)
Use titles that generate curiosity and invite shares
Keep title limited to 60 characters
3. Optimize Meta Descriptions
The meta description hasn't been a ranking factor since the early days of Google.
That said, this description is still used in the search snippet and has a big impact on
whether someone decides to click on your site or not.
Additionally the meta description is still used by Bing and other search engines as a
ranking factor. Don't expect a ton of traffic from them but since this post is about 1%
wins, why not take that one as well?
You can add a custom meta description under the 'General' tab in Yoast.
Follow these guidelines when creating the meta description:
Limit yourself to 156 characters. Longer descriptions get cut off from the search
snippet.
Use target keywords. Google places the keywords in bold in the search snippet, thus
increasing your CTR.
Create compelling descriptions. Use power words and descriptive adjectives to drive
higher click-throughs.
4. Optimize the URL
By default, WordPress uses the entire title as the page URL. This isn't very helpful
from a SEO or a user-experience perspective.
You can edit the URL by clicking on the 'Permalink' section right below the title in
WordPress.
Follow these guidelines to optimize the URL:
Remove stop words such as 'of', 'and', 'or', 'the', etc.
Use keywords in the URL - these will show up in bold in search results.
Keep the URL as short as possible while still being descriptive and using keywords. 36 words is the ideal length.
Make sure that the URL is readable by human beings. A person should be able to
look at the URL and figure out what the page is about.
For example, a blog post about "10 SEO Tips Every Blogger Should Follow" can have
a URL like:
Example.com/top-10-seo-tips
Or
Example.com/seo-tips
Read this excellent post on Moz to know how to structure your URL for maximum
SEO benefits.
5. Optimize Images for Social Media
One way to drastically increase shares and click-throughs on social media is to use
custom meta data and images for different social networks.
Yoast allows you to define the title, description and image for Facebook, Twitter and
Google+. You can do this in the 'Social' tab in the Yoast plugin:
The key thing here is the image dimensions. Each social network has its own
recommended dimensions for optimum image rendering. For the major social
networks, these are:
Facebook
1200 x 628
Twitter
1024 x 512
Google+
800 x 1200
Pinterest
735 x 1102
Ideally, you should create customized images for each social network, then upload
them in Yoast. Barring that, you should at least modify the image dimensions as per
the guidelines above.
In reality that's rarely the case but the 1200 x 628 size works perfectly on most
social networks (except Pinterest maybe)
Check out Pablo for a quick way to create images for different social networks.
6. Check How Post will Appear on Social Media
Finally, once you've gone through all the steps above and just published (you can't
really do it before), head over to the Facebook Debug Tool to check how your post
will look on FB.
Plug in your URL into the debug tool and click on 'Fetch new scrape information'
Scroll down to see how the post will look when shared:
If everything looks good, start sharing, otherwise tweak it before you tell your
audience about the post.
Lead Generation & Business Goals
If you want to actually make money from your site (obviously), you need to capture
emails and generate leads. This single tactic will help you get tons of leads for very
little effort.
1. Content Upgrades
Content upgrades are one of our favorite ways to generate leads. These are
essentially PDFs, guides and other downloadables that expand on a blog post's
content. They're massively successful and often get us double digit conversion rates.
For instance, a single content upgrade got us over 11,000 emails from Health
Ambition:
We've already covered how to create and use content upgrades earlier in this post.
You'll need these three tools to create and deliver content upgrades:
Thrive Leads
The best overall lead generation and email collection plugin for WordPress
Active Campaign
A great email marketing and marketing automation software (also very affordable)
2. Affiliate Links
Once the article is fully edited, you can now scan through it and find opportunities to
add mentions to affiliate products (like I did just above) to monetise the content.
Don't spoil it, add to it subtly. This is often the occasion to make your content more
practical by including mini tutorials or more videos that showcase the promoted
products.
Scheduling and Launch Promotion
Once you've hit publish, it's time to go into promotion mode. The right way to do this
is to automate and reach out to as many people on as many platforms as possible.
Follow these steps to see the recipe we use to initially promote our own posts:
1. Publish the Post at the Right Time
When you publish your post can have a big impact on its performance. Publish at
peak activity hours and your post might get buried under an avalanche of other
content. Publish during low activity hours and you might see too little traffic.
There's already been a lot of research on the best time to publish a blog post. The
key takeaways from this research are:
Mornings
Time when most people read blog posts.
Monday
Highest traffic day for most blogs
9-11 AM
Most comments and views between 9-11 AM.
In our own experience, we've found that Monday and Tuesdays, 11 AM is one of the
best times to publish your blog post.
This one is nice to have but not mandatory. Plenty of blogs publish all week long and
do just fine, it's just an extra fine tune that's nice to have if you can accommodate it.
2. Schedule Multiple Posts on Social Media
When you first publish your post on social media, it'll be seen only by a handful of
your followers before it is buried beneath other updates.
For example, research shows that a tweet has a 'half-life' of just 24 minutes, i.e.
after 24 minutes, your tweet will reach only half its potential audience.
This means that you need to promote your post on social media multiple times over
several weeks to reach its full potential.
The best way to do this is to schedule multiple updates in advance. Ideally, you
should follow an update schedule that looks something like this:
We use CoSchedule to automate this entire process, though you can always use
Hootsuite or Buffer to get this done.
3. Schedule an Update to Your Email List
After you hit 'publish', it's a good idea to send an update to your email list about
your new content. We use the time drip function in Active Campaign to deliver the
post at the best time possible for our entire list no matter what their time zone is
(essentially ActiveCampaign detects where the subscriber is and emails them at the
specified time in their timezone, usually 9am)
To do this right, grab the shortlink from WordPress:
Plug this link into the email tool and notify everyone about your new post.
4. Schedule Emails to People You've Mentioned in the Post
If you've mentioned any influencers or companies in your post, it's always a good
idea to notify them about it. Not only will it help you register on their radar, but it
can also land you a tweet or a FB share.
After all, wouldn't you love to tell your followers if someone wrote about you?
We spoke to Dave Schneider of Ninja Outreach about influencer marketing in our
July 23 podcast. That's a good place to start if you want to learn more about this
tactic.
For actually scheduling the emails, we use Buzzstream to automate the process, like
this:
We covered Buzzstream and our outreach strategy in our Buzzstream review earlier.
For a free alternative to Buzzstream, check out Boomerang for Gmail.
5. Add Links From Your Old Posts To Your New Post
This one is fairly easy to do as well but quite powerful if you are consistent.
While it's hard to build external links to your content, building internal links is easy.
You just need to go in your old posts and link keywords back to your new one to
both improve the old post and push the new one up in search.
To do that follow these steps:
1 - search "site:yoursite.com keyword" on Google
2 - Find the articles that talk about what your new article is about and add a link to
the new piece in the copy.
Done, easy mode :).
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Conclusion
Onpage SEO is one of the most important ingredients in any marketing strategy, but
it hardly gets the attention it deserves. How you format your content, optimize your
meta data, or use your images has a direct impact on your rankings and your user
experience.
Sure, this checklist might seem long, but you'll realize that many of these have to be
taken care of just once. Others will take just a few minutes once you have a proper
workflow. In any case, if you're already spending hours crafting a stellar piece of
content, it only makes sense to put in a few extra minutes to make the most of your
hard work.
Before we leave, there are just few rules I'd like to hammer on again. These are not
only important from a SEO perspective, but also from the way you should approach
marketing and business online:
What's good for the user is good for SEO. Good grammar, presentation and image
use will make your readers happy. The rankings, as you'll see, will follow.
What works on one platform doesn't always work on another. Optimize headlines,
images and metadata for search and social separately.
Invest in your site's infrastructure. Buy a fast theme and good hosting. This is the
bedrock of your business - don't skimp on it.
Go for the easy wins first. Fix site speed issues and use SEO plugins before you
tackle more labor intensive stuff such as custom meta data.
What is your routine before publishing new blog posts? Let us know in the comments,
I'd love to edit this post with your suggestions and make it the ultimate checklist for
all of us!