The On-Page SEO Checklist for Every Blog Post

By Stephanie  ·  Last updated July 31, 2026

On-page SEO has a reputation for being complicated, dozens of factors, conflicting advice, tools that each emphasize something different. In practice, the fundamentals that actually move rankings fit on one page, and most of them take minutes to check once you know what to look for. This is the checklist version, the list to run through before you hit publish on anything.

Title tag and H1

• Primary keyword appears in both, ideally near the front of the title tag specifically
• Title tag stays under 60 characters so it doesn't truncate in search results
• Title tag and H1 don't have to match exactly, see our guide on title tag versus H1 for when to split them
• Every page on the site has a unique title tag, no duplicates across pages competing for different queries

Meta description

• Written for every page, not left blank for Google to auto-generate
• Falls between 140 and 160 characters
• Contains the primary keyword once, naturally, for the bolding effect in search results
• Ends with a specific reason to click rather than trailing off vaguely

Content structure

• Primary keyword appears in the first 100 words of body text
• At least one H2 subheading contains the keyword or a close variation
• A subheading appears roughly every 300 words to support scanning
• Paragraphs run one to four sentences, especially for anything likely to be read on mobile

Readability and voice

• Flesch Reading Ease score lands between 60 and 80 for general web content
• Passive voice stays under roughly 10% of sentences
• Average sentence length stays under 20 words

Keyword usage

• Primary keyword density falls between 0.5% and 2.5% of total word count, checked after drafting, not written toward
• Related terms and natural variations appear throughout, not just the exact-match phrase repeated
• No single page competes with another page on the same site for the identical primary keyword

Technical basics

• A canonical tag points to the correct URL, especially important for pages reachable through multiple URL variants
• Open Graph tags are present so shared links render a proper preview rather than a blank card
• Images include descriptive alt text where they genuinely add meaning to the page
• The page is included in the sitemap and not accidentally blocked in robots.txt

Internal linking

• At least one internal link points to a related page on the site, using descriptive anchor text rather than "click here"
• The page is reachable within a few clicks from the homepage, not orphaned deep in the site structure
• If the page pairs with a tool or a related guide, that connection is linked explicitly in both directions

Structured data

• Schema markup matches what's actually on the page, FAQPage schema should correspond to a visible FAQ section, Article schema to a real byline and date
• WebApplication schema is present on functional tool pages

How to actually use this

Don't try to hit every item while drafting, that produces stilted, checklist-driven writing that reads exactly like what it is. Write the page for the reader first, then run this list as an editing pass before publishing. Most well-written content already satisfies two-thirds of these items naturally, the checklist exists to catch the specific, mechanical gaps, a missing meta description, an untitled image, a keyword that never made it into any H2, that are easy to miss in a normal editing read-through focused on the writing itself.

Which items matter most if you're short on time

Not every item on this list carries equal weight, and a rushed publish is better served by prioritizing than by skipping the checklist entirely. If you can only manage a five-minute pass, check three things first: the title tag is unique and contains the primary keyword near the front, the meta description exists and isn't a Google-generated placeholder, and the primary keyword appears somewhere in the first hundred words. These three catch the most common and most costly gaps, missing or duplicate titles and descriptions are consistently the highest-frequency issues found in real site audits, well ahead of anything related to schema markup or internal linking depth.

Tools that check these items for you

Several checks on this list don't need to be done by eye. A keyword density checker confirms your primary term appears at a natural frequency and shows your actual top words, catching both under and over-optimization in one pass. A readability checker verifies the Flesch score and sentence length items instantly rather than requiring a manual estimate. A passive voice detector gives you the real percentage rather than a guess based on how the writing feels. Running a draft through these three tools before the manual checklist items turns a fifteen-minute audit into more like five, and it removes the guesswork from the three items on this list that are hardest to judge accurately just by reading, density, reading level, and passive percentage all feel roughly right to a writer far more often than they actually are.

Auditing an existing site versus a new page

This checklist works for both, but the practical approach differs. For a new page, run through it before publishing, in the order listed, since each section builds on the one before it. For an existing site, don't try to fix every page at once, start with your highest-traffic pages first, since improvements there return the most value fastest, and work outward from there rather than attempting a full-site pass in one sitting, which tends to stall out partway through.

Frequently asked questions