Free On-Page SEO Checklist
This checker turns a page and its target keyword into a 15-point checklist covering keyword placement, content quality, and technical signals, with the exact browser step that verifies each item. It also drafts a title tag, a meta description, and an opening paragraph you can edit. Free, no signup.
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Summary · Last updated 2026-05-10
The Free On-Page SEO Checklist gives you 15 on-page factors to check against a target keyword: 8 keyword placement checks (title, H1, meta, first 100 words, subheadings, URL, alt text, density), 4 content quality checks (length versus the ranking pages, internal links, external links, heading structure), and 3 technical checks (image alt coverage, schema markup, mobile + canonical + indexability). Each check names the browser step that answers it, so you verify your own page in about ten minutes. You also get question ideas to cover and draft scaffolding for your title tag, meta description, and opening paragraph. It does not fetch your page and reports no search-volume or difficulty data. Free, no signup. Best for SEO writers, content teams, and local-business owners optimizing service-area pages.
15
On-page factors checked
3
Drafts to fill in
~10m
To work the list on one page
What is on the checklist?
15 specific factors, grouped into three categories. Each one comes with the browser step that answers it, so you can work through them on your own page in one pass and see exactly what to fix first. The point weights below show which signals matter most.
Keyword placement (8 checks · 50 points)
Whether your target keyword appears in the locations Google weights most heavily: title tag (10 pts) — the single highest on-page signal. H1 heading (8 pts) — should appear exactly once and contain the keyword. Meta description (6 pts) — not a direct ranking factor but boosts click-through rate when keyword is bolded in SERPs. First 100 words (6 pts) — Google weights early-position keywords. Subheadings (5 pts) — at least one H2 or H3 should reinforce the topic. URL slug (5 pts) — a clean keyword-rich URL is a small but real signal. Image alt text (5 pts) — at least one image should have keyword-rich alt text. Density (5 pts) — 0.5-3% is the sweet spot; below is underuse, above risks stuffing.
Content quality (4 checks · 30 points)
Word count vs competitor average (10 pts) — search your keyword, open the top 3 results, and compare their length and coverage against yours. Going to war 60% shorter than the pages already ranking rarely works. Internal links (6 pts) — 3+ to related pages. External links (4 pts) — at least one citation to an authoritative source. Heading structure (10 pts) — exactly 1 H1, 3+ H2s, and 2+ H3s.
Technical signals (3 checks · 20 points)
Image alt coverage (8 pts) — % of images with descriptive alt text. Schema markup (7 pts) — JSON-LD with content-specific types (Article, FAQ, LocalBusiness) trigger rich results. Generic Organization schema alone scores partial. Mobile + canonical + indexable (5 pts) — viewport meta tag, canonical link, and no accidental noindex meta tag.
Where should my target keyword appear on the page?
In priority order, here's where keyword placement actually moves rankings:
- Title tag. The single most important on-page placement. Keyword near the start. 50-60 characters. "Emergency Plumber Austin · 24/7 Service" beats "Our Services · ABC Plumbing" by a wide margin.
- H1 heading. Exactly one per page, containing the keyword. The H1 is what users see first; Google reads it as the page topic confirmation.
- First 100 words. Google weights early-position keywords. Don't bury "dental implants Austin" 600 words deep in a generic intro.
- Subheadings (H2/H3). At least one subheading containing the keyword or close variation. Helps with Featured Snippets.
- Body content. Naturally throughout, at 1-3% density. Use semantic variations — Google understands "dentist Austin," "Austin dental practice," and "dental care in Austin" as the same topic.
- URL slug. /dental-implants-austin beats /page-id-12345. Keep slugs short and readable.
- Image alt text. Where natural — don't stuff every image with the same phrase.
- Meta description. Not a ranking factor, but Google bolds keyword matches in SERPs, lifting CTR by 5-10%.
What is keyword density and how much is too much?
Keyword density is the percentage of times your target keyword appears relative to the total word count. For a 1,000-word page targeting "dentist in Austin," 2% density means the phrase appears about 20 times. The optimal range is 1-3%.
Below 0.5% means you may not have mentioned your keyword often enough for Google to confidently associate the page with that search term. Above 3% starts to feel unnatural to readers and can trigger Google's keyword stuffing filters — which actively hurts rankings.
The right approach: write naturally for your audience, then check density. If you're below 1%, add the keyword in 2-3 natural places (an H2, a body sentence, an alt text). If you're above 3%, replace some exact-match instances with synonyms and related phrases. Google's semantic models understand "dentist," "dental practice," and "dental care" as the same topical territory.
On-page SEO for local businesses
Local businesses have a structural advantage with on-page SEO: your target keywords almost always include a city or service area. Keywords like "dentist in Austin," "emergency plumber San Diego," or "personal injury lawyer Houston" have explicit local intent that pages can match directly.
The winning approach is straightforward: create a dedicated page for each service + city combination you want to rank for. "Dental implants in Austin" gets its own page. "Teeth whitening in Austin" gets its own. Each page has a unique title, H1, and 800+ words of content specifically about that service in that city. Mention neighborhoods, landmarks, and nearby areas to reinforce local relevance.
The biggest mistake local businesses make is trying to rank one page for everything. A single "Services" page cannot compete with a competitor who has 15 individual service pages — even if your single page is better written. Use this tool to check each of your service pages against its target keyword, then prioritize fixes by impact.
How this differs from Ahrefs, Surfer, and Semrush on-page tools
Those tools crawl your page and pull their own search data — that is what you pay them for, and this checklist does not replace it. What it replaces is the blank page: the 15 things worth checking, in order, with the step for each. Here is the honest comparison:
| Feature | theStacc | Ahrefs / Semrush | Surfer SEO |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free, no signup | ✓ | $99-$449/mo | $89/mo |
| Fetches and scores your page | No — you check it yourself | ✓ | ✓ |
| Keyword volume + difficulty data | No | ✓ | ✓ |
| Top 10 SERP comparison | No | ✓ | ✓ |
| 15-point checklist with the step for each | All inline | Generic recommendations | In editor only |
| Question ideas to cover | ✓ generated from your keyword | Limited | Add-on |
| Title + meta + opener drafts | 3 drafts to fill in | No | Editor-based |
| Works before you have a page built | ✓ | No | No |
Frequently asked questions
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages so they rank higher in search results for specific keywords. It covers everything you control on the page itself: title tag, meta description, H1, headings, body content, image alt text, internal links, schema markup, and URL structure. Done well, on-page SEO is the highest-leverage SEO work because every change is fully under your control and the results show up within 1-3 weeks of re-indexing.
Enter your page URL and target keyword. The page returns 15 on-page checks, each with the exact way to verify it in your own browser — view-source, a one-line DevTools query, or a Google site: search. It also generates question ideas your page should answer and draft rewrites for your title tag, meta description, and opening paragraph, built from your keyword. Everything runs in your browser.
No. It does not fetch your URL, does not crawl anything, and does not produce a score. The 15 checks are things you run yourself, and each one names the step that answers it — most take a few seconds. Working through the list on your own page takes about ten minutes and tells you more than an automated number, because you see the actual title, the actual headings, and the actual word count.
They do not — this tool does not report search volume, keyword difficulty, or click estimates, because it has no search data behind it and inventing those numbers would be worse than omitting them. For real volume and difficulty, use Google Keyword Planner (free with an Ads account), or a paid tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
In priority order: title tag (highest weight), H1 heading, meta description, first 100 words, subheadings (H2/H3), URL slug, image alt text, and naturally throughout body content. The title tag and H1 carry the most weight because they tell Google what the page is about. Always include your keyword early — Google weights early-position keywords more heavily than late ones.
Keyword density is the percentage of times your keyword appears relative to the total word count. The optimal range is 1-3% for most pages. Below 0.5% means you may be underusing the keyword. Above 3% risks tripping Google's keyword stuffing filters. Modern SEO favors natural language with semantic variations over rigid density targets — use synonyms and related phrases (which the tool surfaces in the related-keywords panel).
Two browser features cover almost everything. View-source (Ctrl+U) shows your title tag, meta description, canonical, viewport, and JSON-LD schema. The DevTools console answers the rest in one line each — document.querySelectorAll("h2").length for heading structure, document.querySelectorAll("img:not([alt])").length for alt coverage. Each check in the list names the step it needs.
They are common question shapes applied to your keyword — definition, cost, comparison, how-to. Covering questions as H2s with a direct answer underneath is what gets a page pulled into featured snippets and AI answers. They are drafted here, not read from Google's People Also Ask box; search your keyword to see the real one and keep the questions that match.
The drafts are short by design (title 50-60 chars, meta 150-160, opening paragraph 40-60 words) and follow neutral, direct prose built from your keyword. They are scaffolding — swap in your real differentiators and specifics before publishing, and delete any claim you cannot stand behind. We avoid corporate-speak ("we pride ourselves," "industry-leading") so the shape is usable in most B2B and local-business contexts.
Yes. No credit card, no signup, no limits — the whole checklist, the question ideas, and all three drafts are visible to everyone. It runs entirely in your browser, so there is no API cost behind it to recover.
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