Your Guide to Basic On-Page SEO
If you think SEO is a completely different language, I can relate.
It’s easy to get carried away with designing a website – either for yourself or a brand – while overlooking your search engine optimization. But although SEO is changing, especially with the rise of AI summaries in the search results, it is still an important and essential part of your website. And the great part is that a lot of the basics of on-page SEO are easy for anyone to take care of.
In this article, I’m going to go over some basic on-page SEO changes that anyone managing a website can make right now. These changes are a basic introduction to the topic of SEO, and it will help you when it comes to getting your website noticed in the search engine results page.
But first, you have to do an audit.
Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to Perform an SEO audit
In order to fix your SEO, you need to know what to fix. Luckily, you can do this easy with Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Don’t let the name scare you – the application is more simple than the name makes it sound.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an application that crawls your website. According to Screaming Frog, the application “helps you improve onsite SEO by auditing for common SEO issues.” What this means is that the application will analyze up to 500 pages on your website and check what you have and don’t have when it comes to SEO things.
Once you insert your domain into Screaming Frog SEO Spider, you’ll be able to see all of your H1, H2, Meta Descriptions, and more (and if you don’t know what any of this means, I’ll explain later). And if anything is missing, you’ll know based on Screaming Frog’s crawl.
The great thing is that Screaming Frog SEO Spider is also free! All you need to do is download it from the Screaming Frog website.
And if you find that Screaming Frog SEO Spider doesn’t do it for you, there are a ton of other options out there. According to a blog by Ansel Barrett for Octoparse, other SEO crawlers include Semrush, Moz and Ahrefs. For the purpose of this blog, I’ll be using Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
Your Basic On-Page SEO Checklist
In this basic on-page SEO audit, you’re going to want to check for these things. These include:
Title Tag
According to Chima Mmmeje for Moz, the title tag is “the clickable headline that appears on search engine results pages (SERPs), browsers, and social media platforms.” You know how when you search something on Google, each of the pages that show up have a name that shows underneath the actual domain? Yep, that’s the title tag.
H1
This is simply an acronym for Heading 1. According to Ron Robbins in an article for Clicta Digital, “Your H1 tag is your head honcho, containing the target keywords for your post… it has to clearly state what the reader will learn when they finally get to read your piece.”Every page (should) have a heading, and it should be a heading 1, or H1. For example, if you built your website in Squarespace, you have the option to choose your text style. One of those options in heading 1. If you’re a coder, then the text should be in an <h1> tag in the code.
H2
If H1 stands for Header 1, H2 stands for H2. Now, your H2 isn’t as important as your h1, but you should take note of it anyway. According to Robbins, “H1 tags are most important — then H2, and so forth. Each subheading will provide different information but relate to the main topic.”
Meta Descriptions
You know how when you look through search results, each page has a short line of text underneath that gives you some context as to what the page is? That’s the meta description. According to MailChimp, “Meta descriptions inform users about what to expect when they visit your web page. These descriptions are not visible on the web pages themselves. Rather, they appear on SERPs to help users decide whether they should click on a web page.” All of your pages should have a sweet and concise meta description so that people know what they’re getting into when they click on your site.
Alt Tags
These are tags that are specifically for images, and it is a little description of what’s in the image. They are mainly used for accessibility purposes, as they allow users who are visually impaired to know what’s in an image. However, they play a big part in SEO as well. According to Joost de Valk for Yoast SEO, “Search engines like Google also use this information to understand the context of an image; to find out what an image shows, and its purpose.” By giving context to your image, search engines have more information to work with when coming up with results.
Content
The most important thing about on-page SEO is, well, what’s on the actual page! According to Moz, “Good content must supply a demand and must be linkable.” In other words, content that you have on the page must be able to link to other pages in the site, as internal linking is another beneficial SEO practice. According to Mary Kate Mack in a blog post for SEO Clarity, “Internal links play a crucial role in SEO by helping search engines discover, index, and understand the structure of your website.” Having good and linkable content helps with on-page internal linking, which makes your SEO even better! Along with this, be sure to analyze your writing style.
Check For What You Have (and Don’t Have)
Okay, so now that you have your checklist of what to check for, go into Screaming Frog SEO Spider (or another similar page crawler) and check for everything listed (expect content… you’re going to have to analyze that yourself with a content strategy).
I’m going to use apple.com as an example. First, I’m going to go into Screaming Frog and paste the URL into the search bar. Then, I’ll click “start.”
After this, Screaming Frog will begin to crawl the website. A lot of things are going to populate, but don’t fear – this is going to be more simple than it looks.
Towards the top of the page, you’re going to see some tabs. Among them will be page titles, meta description, meta keywords, H1, and H2. Sounds familiar? These are the things you’re looking for in this basic on-page SEO audit!
For the sake of example, I’m going to click on page titles. I can see the specific pages on the Apple website and their associated titles. Screaming Frog also gives me some explanation as to how long the title is.
On the right hand side of the screen, you can see some more specific information regarding the tag you’re looking at. You’ll see how many of the crawled pages are missing the tag, or have a duplicate tag.
Using your SEO crawler, you should make note of what pages have the tags that we discussed in our checklist. You should look out for and note pages that don’t have titles and meta descriptions. You need to make sure every page has an H1 and an H2, and that the titles make sense given the page topic. You need to check your alt tags and make sure all your images have an alt tag. If something is missing, make a note of it.
It’s also worth noting things that can be improved. For example, you should be keeping your meta descriptions short and sweet. If you notice that a page has a meta description that verges on being very long, or doesn’t actually give context as to what’s on the page, that’s worth changing. The same also goes for alt tags – make sure they actually relate and describe the image they’re attached to.
Now, Make the Necessary Fixes!
Congrats! You’ve completed your basic on-page SEO audit. Now, it’s time to do the actual work in making SEO fixes.
If your website was built in a website builder like Squarespace, this can be pretty easy. Your H1 is simply whatever you have listed on the page as your H1. Your page title is exactly what you titled the page. Image alt tags can easily be added by clicking on the image and inserting the text in Squrespace’s predetermined spot for alt text.
If your website was coded, never fear! Tags are pretty simple if you know how to code. If you;re looking at an HTML file, here’s what you need to look for
Title
<Title>Page Title Goes Here</Title>
Heading 1
<H1>Heading 1 Goes Here</H1>
Heading 2
<H2>Heading 2 Goes Here</H2>
Alt Tags
<img alt=”Your Alt Text Goes Here”>
Meta Description
NOTE: This is actually the online one I had to look up, and it’s a bit more complicated (but not too complicated). Your meta description goes within the <head> of your code. Check out this article by MailChimp for more information on this.
<head><meta name=”description” content=”Your Description Goes Here”></head>
Get a Hold of Your SEO
I get it – SEO isn’t easy. There’s a lot of moving parts, and so many things that have to go on in the backend of your website. But we all have to start somewhere, and the basics are a good place to start. This basic on-page SEO guide can get you started on the right track. Using a free SEO crawler to analyze your website, and then get started by making the changes you need to better your website’s SEO!