SEO cheat sheet: on-page, technical and local

A short checklist for the pages you want to be found with in Google, and in the AI assistants that more and more people ask instead. No myths, just what counts.

Content

• Answer one question per page, the way people ask it. Start with the short answer, then go into detail.
• Write for people, with the words they use. Long-tail searches ("custom app for 40 field technicians") bring fewer but better visitors. Keyword Planner, Search Console and your own sales questions tell you what people type.
• Length follows the question. There is no magic word count; a page is long enough when it fully answers.
• Keep it current. Update facts, prices and dates, and show when the page was last updated.
• Link between your pages with words that say where the link goes, not "click here".

On the page

• Title: unique per page, the main topic first, about 50 to 60 characters so it isn't cut off.
• Meta description: unique, about 150 to 160 characters, a reason to click. Google doesn't rank on it, but it decides your click rate.
• One H1 that says what the page is about, then H2 and H3 in a logical order.
• Images with a descriptive alt text, in WebP, at the size they are shown.
• Readable URLs: short, with words, and they don't change. When they do, redirect the old one.
• Open Graph: og:title, og:description and og:image, so a shared link looks good on LinkedIn, Slack and WhatsApp.

Technical

• Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) under 0.1, for at least 75% of visits (web.dev). INP replaced First Input Delay in March 2024. Check them in PageSpeed Insights and Search Console.
• Mobile first: Google indexes the mobile version of your site, so the mobile page needs the same content. Lighthouse in Chrome shows mobile problems.
• HTTPS everywhere, without mixed content.
• Sitemap and robots.txt: submit the sitemap in Search Console, and don't block pages you want found.
• Canonical tags on pages that exist in more than one version, and hreflang when you have more than one language.
• A real 404 for pages that don't exist, and a 301 for pages that moved.

Structured data

Schema.org data tells search engines what a page is: an organisation, an article, a product, a breadcrumb. It can give you rich results (stars, prices, breadcrumbs). Since 2023 Google only shows FAQ rich results for well-known government and health sites.

Off the page

• Links from other sites that matter in your field: partners, clients, talks, open source, the press. Avoid bought or spammy links.
• Google Business Profile for local searches, with your name, address and phone the same everywhere, and real reviews.

For AI assistants (GEO)

• Clear answers with sources: assistants quote pages that answer a question directly and can be trusted.
• Who wrote it: a real author with experience, and your organisation in structured data.

Want a site that does all of this from the start? It is part of every website we build.