# SEO cheat sheet: on-page, technical and local

> A short SEO checklist: content, titles and meta descriptions, Core Web Vitals with INP, structured data, links, local SEO, and getting found by AI assistants.

By Koen Van Looveren, impaktfull · Published 2024-08-05

Source: https://www.impaktfull.com/blog/on-page-seo-cheat-sheet

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](https://web.dev/articles/vitals)). 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](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes).

## 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](https://www.impaktfull.com/service/websites).

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impaktfull builds and runs apps, websites, platforms and AI agents, from Antwerp, Belgium. More at https://www.impaktfull.com.