On-Page SEO Checklist: 17 Checks to Run on Any Page (and How to Fix Each)

On-page SEO problems are rarely dramatic. Nobody deletes a homepage by accident. What happens instead is a title that quietly doubles in length after a plugin update, a canonical that points at the staging site, or a noindex left behind from a launch. Each one is small, invisible on the page itself, and enough to cost you rankings.

This checklist covers the 17 checks worth running on any page that matters. For each one: what it is, why it matters, what good looks like and how to fix it. They're grouped by what breaks if you get them wrong.

You can work through them by hand with View Source, or run all 17 in one click with the free MyKavo Chrome extension, which checks the page locally in your browser and lists the fixes.

Can search engines index the page?#

Get these wrong and nothing else on the list matters, because the page can't rank at all.

1. Indexable (no noindex)#

A noindex in the robots meta tag (or an X-Robots-Tag header) tells search engines to keep the page out of results. It's the single most expensive line of HTML on a page that should rank.

• Good: no noindex on any page you want found.
• Fix: remove noindex from the robots meta tag, and check SEO plugin settings and staging leftovers, which are where most stray noindex tags come from.

2. Canonical#

The canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of the page.

• Good: exactly one <link rel="canonical">, an absolute URL (starting with https://), usually pointing at the page itself.
• Watch for: more than one canonical (search engines may ignore them all), relative URLs, and canonicals pointing at a different page you didn't intend, such as the homepage or a staging domain.
• Fix: set one absolute, self-referencing canonical unless the page genuinely duplicates another.

3. Meta refresh#

A meta refresh redirect sends visitors on after a delay. Search engines handle it less reliably than a real redirect.

• Good: no meta refresh.
• Fix: replace it with a server-side 301 redirect.

Will people click it in search results?#

Ranking is half the job; the title and description decide whether anyone clicks.

4. Title tag#

• Good: exactly one <title>, unique to the page, roughly 30 to 60 characters, leading with what the page is about.
• Watch for: missing titles, duplicate title tags, titles over about 60 characters (Google cuts them off) and one-word titles that say nothing.
• Fix: write a descriptive title that matches the search you want to win, with the main term near the front.

5. Meta description#

Google doesn't rank on it, but it often uses it as the snippet under your title, so it's your sales line.

• Good: roughly 70 to 155 characters, specific to the page, with a reason to click.
• Fix: summarise what the visitor gets, in plain language. Avoid copying the same description across pages.

6. H1 heading#

• Good: exactly one H1 that names the page's topic.
• Watch for: no H1 at all, or several H1s from a theme that wraps the logo or section titles in H1 tags.
• Fix: keep one H1 and demote the rest to H2 or H3.

Is the page safe and mobile-ready?#

7. HTTPS#

• Good: the page loads over https:// and http:// redirects to it.
• Fix: install a certificate (most hosts include one free) and add a site-wide redirect from http to https.

8. Mixed content#

A secure page that loads images, scripts or styles over http:// shows browser warnings and can have those files blocked.

• Good: every resource loads over https://.
• Fix: update the hard-coded http:// URLs in your theme, content or settings.

9. Mobile viewport#

Without a viewport tag, phones render the desktop layout zoomed out, and Google indexes the mobile version of your page.

• Good: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> in the head.
• Fix: add that line to your theme's head template.

10. Language#

• Good: a lang attribute on the <html> tag, for example lang="en".
• Fix: set it in the theme or site language settings. It helps search engines and screen readers alike.

Does the page look good when shared?#

11. Open Graph tags#

These control the preview when someone shares the page on LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack or WhatsApp.

• Good: og:title, og:description and an og:image (1200 x 630 pixels works everywhere).
• Fix: most SEO plugins and frameworks have fields for these; fill them in, especially the image.

12. Twitter card#

• Good: a twitter:card tag, usually summary_large_image, so links show a large preview on X.
• Fix: add the tag; X falls back to your Open Graph title, description and image for the rest.

13. Favicon#

• Good: a favicon link in the head, plus an apple-touch-icon for phones.
• Fix: add both. Google also shows favicons next to mobile search results, so a missing one looks unfinished.

Can search engines understand the content?#

14. Structured data#

JSON-LD structured data describes the page in a format search engines read directly, and it's what makes rich results possible.

• Good: at least one JSON-LD block that parses, matching what the page is: Article, Product, Organization, FAQPage and so on.
• Watch for: JSON-LD with a syntax error. A single stray comma makes the whole block unreadable, and nothing on the page looks wrong.
• Fix: validate the markup and fix the error, or add the type that fits the page.

15. Image alt text#

• Good: every meaningful image has an alt attribute describing it.
• Fix: add short, literal descriptions. Purely decorative images can have an empty alt="".

16. Content depth#

• Good: enough visible text to answer the question the page targets. Pages with under about 100 words of text rarely rank for anything competitive.
• Fix: add the explanation, specifics and answers a visitor actually needs. Length is a symptom; usefulness is the goal.

17. Internal links#

• Good: the page links to related pages on your own site, and those links are followed.
• Watch for: internal links marked rel="nofollow", which stop link value flowing between your own pages.
• Fix: remove nofollow from internal links and link related pages to each other.

Run all 17 checks in one click#

Checking all of this by hand means reading through the page source line by line. The MyKavo Chrome extension does it in about a second on any page you open:

1. Install it free from the Chrome Web Store and pin it.
2. Open the page you want to check and click the MyKavo icon.
3. Read the score out of 100 and work through the issues, which come first, each with its fix.

It needs no account, and the page never leaves your browser. Prefer not to install anything? The free Meta Tag Checker checks the core tags of any URL from mykavo.app.

A checklist only tells you about today#

Here's the catch with every checklist, this one included: a page that passes all 17 checks this morning can fail three of them by Friday. Pages change without anyone deciding to change them. A plugin update rewrites titles, a theme update adds a second H1, a developer copies the staging robots settings to production, a tag manager change removes structured data.

That's why the checks matter most on a schedule, not once. In the extension, press Protect on a site you own and MyKavo keeps checking its key pages in the cloud. When the title, description, canonical, noindex, redirects or anything else important changes, you get an email showing what changed and how serious it is, with before-and-after values. The free plan covers one website and five pages.

The bottom line#

Work through the indexability checks first, then the title and description, then everything else. Run the full list on every page that matters, and after every update. And for the pages that pay the bills, let something check them for you on a schedule, so the next stray noindex is an email on Tuesday rather than a traffic drop you discover in a month.