On-Page SEO Checklist: 14 Checks for Every Page

An on-page SEO checklist is a list of checks you run on one page before and after you publish it. In order: match the search intent, then the title tag, meta description, H1 and headings, URL, opening paragraph, content quality, images, internal links, structured data, indexability, mobile and speed, dates and author information. Each one takes minutes with a free tool.

This guide works at the level of a single page: a new service page, a blog post, a product page you're about to relaunch. If you need to check a whole website, our SEO audit checklist covers crawling, sitemaps and site architecture, and what is technical SEO explains the infrastructure side. On-page optimisation sits on top of both: it decides how clearly each page answers the search it's meant to win.

Key takeaways

Start with search intent: if the page is the wrong type of answer, no amount of on-page optimisation will fix it.
Google says E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor, but it strongly encourages accurate authorship information such as bylines.
Heading order, word count and keyword density don't matter in themselves for Google; clarity and usefulness do.
Run the whole checklist before you publish, then re-check indexing, links and speed once the page is live.

The on-page SEO checklist

1. The page matches search intent

Google's own explanation of how it ranks results starts here: "we first need to establish what you're looking for - the intent behind your query."

Write down the main query in a customer's words, such as "emergency plumber Leeds", and what that searcher wants: a price, a phone number, a step-by-step guide. Then search it on Google from the country you're targeting and look at what already ranks. If the top results are local service pages with a map, a 2,000-word guide won't fit. If they're how-to guides, a sales page won't fit either. Match the format (guide, list, product, service, tool) as well as the topic. Our guide to search intent goes into this in more detail.

2. The title tag is unique, clear and front-loaded

Google's SEO Starter Guide says "a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page."

Put the main topic first, in the searcher's words.
Keep the meaningful part early, because long titles are cut off to fit the screen.
Add your brand at the end, briefly.
Don't repeat the keyword in variations. Google rewrites stuffed titles.

Check the live tag with the meta tag checker, then preview how it will look in results with the SERP snippet preview. Our full guide to title tags and meta descriptions covers templates and why Google rewrites titles.

3. The meta description sells the click

Meta descriptions aren't a ranking factor, and Google primarily uses the content on the page to build snippets. Write one anyway. It's the only snippet text you control, and Google uses it when it summarises the page better than text pulled from the body.

Make it specific to this page: what's covered, who it's for, a price, area or turnaround time. Around 140-160 characters keeps the main point visible on most screens.

4. One clear H1 and logical headings

The page should have one obvious main heading that agrees with the title tag, then H2s for the main sections and H3s inside them where they help.

Two things people often get wrong. First, the Starter Guide says that "from Google Search perspective, it doesn't matter if you're using them out of order", and that there's "no magical, ideal amount of headings". Second, that doesn't make structure pointless. Headings help readers scan and skip to what they need, and Google says keywords in "the headings or body text" can signal relevance. Use headings to describe what each section actually says.

Run the heading checker to see the H1-H6 outline, spot a missing or duplicated H1 and catch headings used only for styling. Our guide to heading structure for SEO has examples.

5. The URL slug is short and readable

Google suggests you "include words in the URL that may be useful for users", and notes that a URL made of random identifiers is less helpful.

Good: /services/boiler-repair-leeds
Weak: /index.php?page_id=4721&cat=3

Use lowercase hyphenated words and skip dates. The slug generator turns a title into a clean slug. If you change the URL of a page that's already live, add a 301 redirect from the old one. See SEO-friendly URLs for the details.

6. The opening paragraph answers the query

Someone who searched "how long does a boiler service take" wants that answer near the top, not after three paragraphs about your company history. Give a direct answer in the first 40-60 words, then expand on it.

Read the opening aloud. If it doesn't answer the question in the title, rewrite it.

7. The content is helpful and written for people

Google's guide to creating helpful, reliable, people-first content includes self-assessment questions you can run against any page. A few of the most useful:

"Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?"
"Is this content written or reviewed by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrably knows the topic well?"
"Does the content have any easily-verified factual errors?"

A page that repeats the top five results gives Google little reason to rank it above them. Add what only you know: local prices, photos of your own work, the questions customers actually ask you, the mistakes you see on jobs.

Length and keywords. The Starter Guide is direct: "The length of the content alone doesn't matter for ranking purposes." It also warns that keyword stuffing "is against Google's spam policies." Write as long as the topic needs. The keyword density checker is useful for spotting accidental repetition, not for hitting a percentage. Keyword density isn't a ranking factor, as we explain in the keyword density myth.

Readability. Short sentences and plain words help everyone, especially on a phone. Paste your draft into the readability checker to find long sentences and passive voice.

8. Images have descriptive alt text and file names

Google's image SEO best practices give a clear pattern:

Alt text should describe the image in context. Google's example of good alt text is alt="Dalmatian puppy playing fetch", and it says to "avoid filling alt attributes with keywords".
File names should be short but descriptive. Google contrasts my-new-black-kitten.jpg with IMG00023.JPG.
Placement matters: "make sure images are placed near relevant text".

Compress images before uploading so they don't slow the page down. Our image compressor handles that, and image SEO and alt text covers the rest.

9. Internal links go in and out

Every new page needs links from other pages on your site, and it should link to related pages itself. Google says "every page you care about should have a link from at least one other page on your site".

Use normal <a href> links. Google says it "can only crawl your link if it's an <a> HTML element" with an href attribute.
Write descriptive anchor text. Google calls "Click here" and "Read more" poor examples.
Add at least one link to the new page from a relevant, established page, such as a service hub or a popular post.

After publishing, run the broken link checker on the page. Our internal linking strategy guide explains how to plan links across the site.

10. Structured data matches the page

Add the schema type that fits, such as Article for posts, Product for products or LocalBusiness for a location page. Two rules from Google's structured data policies:

"Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page."
"Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results."

Generate the JSON-LD with the schema generator if you need to, then test the live page with the schema markup validator. Our structured data guide explains which types are worth adding.

11. The page is indexable and canonical

A page with a stray noindex won't appear in Google at all. Check that:

there's no noindex in the meta robots tag or the X-Robots-Tag header;
robots.txt doesn't block the URL;
the canonical tag points to the page itself (or to the version you want indexed);
the page returns a 200 status, not a redirect or an error.

Google calls rel="canonical" "a strong signal" for which URL should be canonical. It also says not to use robots.txt for canonicalisation. The indexability checker shows noindex, canonical and robots status for a URL in one go. If the page still doesn't show up after a few days, see how to check if a page is indexed and our guide to canonical tags.

12. It works on mobile and loads quickly

Google says it uses "the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking". Make sure the mobile version shows the same content, headings and structured data as desktop.

On speed, Google's page experience guidance says "Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems", but also that relevance comes first: Google "always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par." So fix speed, but don't expect it to outrank a better answer.

Test the URL with the PageSpeed checker, and read Core Web Vitals explained if the results need translating.

13. Dates are visible, accurate and honest

For articles and guides, show a clearly labelled date, such as "Published" or "Last updated". Google's byline date guidance recommends adding datePublished and dateModified in Article or BlogPosting markup and keeping visible and structured dates consistent.

Only change the date when you've genuinely updated the page. One of Google's helpful content questions asks: "Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?" Our guide to updating old blog posts explains what counts as a real update.

14. Readers can see who wrote it and why to trust it

Google's people-first guidance says: "We strongly encourage adding accurate authorship information, such as bylines to content where readers might expect it." It describes E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), says that "trust is most important", and is also clear that "E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor."

In practice: add bylines linking to short author pages that show real experience, show who is behind the business (address, contact details, accreditations you actually hold), and cite sources for facts. Never invent reviews, credentials or authors; Google's guidance warns against fake creator profiles.

Free tools for each check

Checklist item	What to check	Free tool
2-3. Title and meta description	Present, unique, sensible length, how it looks in results	Meta tag checker, SERP snippet preview
4. H1 and headings	One clear H1, logical outline	Heading checker
5. URL slug	Short, lowercase, hyphenated words	Slug generator
6-7. Opening and content	Plain English, short sentences	Readability checker
7. Repetition	Accidental keyword stuffing (not a target density)	Keyword density checker
9. Links	No broken internal or outbound links	Broken link checker
10. Structured data	Valid JSON-LD that matches visible content	Schema markup validator
11. Indexability	No noindex, correct canonical, not blocked	Indexability checker
12. Mobile and speed	Core Web Vitals and performance	PageSpeed checker

No tool can tell you whether the page matches intent (item 1), is genuinely useful (item 7) or has credible author information (item 14). Search the query yourself and read the page as a customer would.

Before and after publishing

Before publishing: run items 1-10 on the draft, and make sure it won't go live with a leftover staging noindex.

Within a day of publishing: re-run the indexability, broken link and PageSpeed checks on the live URL, add an internal link from an established page, and inspect the URL in Google Search Console. Our guide to getting indexed by Google faster walks through it.

A few weeks later: check the page's queries in Search Console. If it's getting impressions for searches you didn't plan for, adjust the title and headings, or write a separate page if the intent is different.

Doing it at scale

Across a whole site, page-by-page checks get slow. The free SEO audit checks titles, meta descriptions, headings, canonical tags and more on any URL, and you can run one from the homepage without signing up. For many pages at once, the Pro site crawl checks your site page by page, including internal links, indexability and pages competing for the same keyword. See pricing for plan limits.

To be clear about what these tools can't do: none of them, Make It Flow's included, can judge whether your content is the best answer, and none can guarantee a ranking. They find the technical and structural problems that hold a good page back.

FAQ

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is everything you control on the page itself to help it rank and earn clicks: the content, title tag, meta description, headings, URL, images, internal links and structured data. It differs from technical SEO, which covers whether search engines can crawl and index your site, and from off-page SEO, which is mainly about links and mentions from other sites.

What are the most important on-page SEO factors?

Start with search intent and content quality, because a page that doesn't answer the query won't rank however well it's tagged. Next come a clear, unique title tag, an H1 that matches it, and an opening paragraph that answers the question. Make sure the page is indexable, linked from other pages and usable on mobile.

How many times should I use my keyword on a page?

There's no set number. Google says keyword stuffing is against its spam policies, and there's no ideal keyword density. Use the main phrase naturally in the title, H1, opening paragraph and somewhere in the body, then write normally with related words and synonyms. If a sentence sounds odd when read aloud, you've overdone it.

Does word count matter for on-page SEO?

Not in itself. Google's SEO Starter Guide says the length of the content alone doesn't matter for ranking purposes, and there's no minimum or maximum word count. Cover the topic as fully as the searcher needs. A short page can rank for a simple question, and a long guide can fail if it's padded.

Should I do on-page SEO before or after publishing?

Both. Do most of the work before publishing: intent, title, headings, URL, content, images, links and schema. After the page goes live, check that it's indexable, has no broken links, loads well on mobile and is linked from other pages. Then review its Search Console queries after a few weeks.

Is E-E-A-T a ranking factor?

Google says E-E-A-T itself isn't a specific ranking factor. Its systems look for signals that line up with experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, and Google says trust matters most. In practice, accurate bylines, real author pages, clear business details and cited sources all support those signals.

On-Page SEO Checklist: 14 Checks to Run on Every Page