The Free On Page SEO Template for Beginners

On-page SEO is a fundamental element for marketing a Franchise. It helps organize website pages according to the topics it will rank for in search engines. Additionally, it aligns page-level elements, such as Meta tags, with those selected topics. So, while you aim at ranking higher in Google, ensure to use our free on-page SEO template for beginners to track your daily SEO tasks.

If you’ve done an in-depth SEO course with Semrush, Yoast, or Udemy, this free SEO Template guide might not be the tutorial for you. You probably need an advanced SEO course covering more technical SEO elements. This one is for beginners who are just starting their SEO careers. Hence, we will use the simplest SEO terms possible in this guide.

Topic Coverage for this Free On-Page SEO Template

Our Free On-Page SEO Template guide for beginners highlights the most critical elements you should focus on whenever you’re optimising a website. We will use a checklist to keep track of these elements, including Target Keywords, Page Content, Meta Tags, Permalink & Slug, Internal & External Links, and Schema Markup data.

We have also created a Google Sheet document containing our free On-Page SEO Checklist. So, to have a thorough understanding of this topic, you will need to download this checklist. Then, feel free to use it for your next project to cover all your monthly on page SEO tasks.

What is On-page SEO?

For starters, on-page SEO (On-site SEO) is the process of optimising the parts of a website that are within your control, such as pages, products, services, and content. It mainly revolves around the page’s keyword and topic of focus.

Search engines are continuously studying website pages to understand their purpose, the topic of focus, and content, such that they refer users to those pages. So, addressing the key on-page SEO elements above will help Google understand better what your page is all about. As a result, you will rank higher than before.

So, having understood the meaning, relevancy, and purpose of this free on-page SEO Template guide for beginners, let’s dive into the key elements of our checklist below:

The Beginner’s On-Page SEO Template Guide

1. Target Keywords

An SEO Keyword (Search term) is a phrase that describes what your page is about. Hence, it’s the main topic your content or website page is rotating around. A keyword is the building block of all SEO strategies you will use. So, that is why it’s the first element on our free On-page SEO template.

Here is how keywords work. First, when a user searches for something, Google will look through all its indexed pages to find the best match. Then, it will return those pages that rank for the keyword the user searched for, arranged in order of relevancy. That means the more you optimise for a given keyword, the higher your chances of ranking number one. There are two types of keywords used in SEO and are crucial fort his free On-page SEO template guide:

• Primary keyword: The main phrase you want to rank for in Google.
• Secondary keyword: Any other word closely related to the primary keyword (synonyms of the primary keyword).

Free On-Page SEO Keyword Tools for this Template

Since we are dealing with Keywords and pages, we will need to use keyword research tools and SEO page optimisation tools. So, here are the free on-page SEO tools we strongly recommend for this template guide:

Semrush

Semrush is one of the best SEO marketing tools in use today. It comes with various free SEO capabilities we need in our monthly SEO tasks. These may include keyword researching (Keyword difficulty, Volume, and intent), keyword tracking, competition analysis, SEO auditing, Backlink tracking, and many more.

This guide recommends using Semrush to find the best-performing keywords and topics, which you will use to direct your On-page SEO strategy. It would help if you always used Semrush before moving on to the on-page SEO tools. To start using Semrush today, just signup for a free or premium account and get the best out of your daily SEO strategies.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO tool is the number one WordPress plugin for your daily website SEO tracking. This SEO tool helps you optimise website pages for specific keywords without competing for the same topic. It has various features that will help track Paragraph and sentence Structure, Keyword Density, Meta Descriptions, Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, etc.

So, that is why we strongly recommend using Yoast SEO if you’re to benefit from our free On-page SEO template guide. Yoast is available in free and premium packages. So, you can download and install it’s WordPress plugin into your website to ease all your ongoing Monthly SEO maintenance tasks.

Rank Math

Rank Math is another brilliant on-page SEO tool for daily SEO tracking based on AI. It can provide an in-depth SEO analysis of your site, which you may use to improve the on-page SEO elements of your website.

It come with useful features such as Google Search Console integration, and makes importing other Plugin settings, such as Yoast SEO settings possible. Get Rank Math Plugin Free or Premium package to make your on-page SEO monthly tasks a breeze.

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More on Page SEO tools:

• Google Search Console
• Screaming Frog
• GTmetrix
• Copyscape
• Ahrefs
• Moz

In conclusion, the above on-page SEO tools will assist in the daily tracking of your keywords. And they will ensure those keywords appear in the most critical sections of your page. For instance, below is how you will distribute your keywords across your website page:

2. Meta Tags

Meta Tags are simply snippets of text that tell search engines what your page is about. Technically they are part of your website’s HTML code. And search engines use them as a source of information about your website pages.

So, having your keyword in the Meta Tags is signal to search engines that your page is relevant for a given search term. Below are the four types of Meta Tags we’ve found relevant in our free On-page SEO template. So, you must consider them while distributing your keywords:

Title Tags

This is a part of the Meta Tag that gives your page a title (Name). And search engines like Google will use this identifier to list your page on the search engine result page (SERP). For example, below is how Google identifies our TikTok SEO blog post.

So, you can clearly see that putting your keyword in the blog or page title is beneficial. It is the best way Google will know that your page has relevant information about that topic. As a result, Google will include your page among the search results it returns when people search for that keyword. That being said, below are the things you must also put into consideration:

• Make page titles shorter not to be trimmed off on the results page.
• Include a number in the page title where necessary (For example “Top 10 fashion styles”)
• Add emotional and power words to make your title catchy for users to click.
• Create a sense of urgency
• Let your title be unique from those that already exist in Google.

Heading Tags (H-Tags)

Heading Tags help in defining HTML Title and subheadings on your web pages. They range from 1-6 (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6), representing the text hierarchy where H6 defines the least important heading. So, a page will have only one H1 tag (Title) and many subheadings (H2….H6).

Like the Title Tags, H-Tags are also vital while performing on-page SEO for your website. For instance, they help in breaking down longer articles into subtopics for easy understanding. Additionally, H-Tags act as extra sections where you can include your keywords. As a result, Google will understand you have covered the relevant subtopics that might be necessary for answering a user’s question.

For example, if your page is about Nike brand products, then subtopics like Nike bags, Nike Socks, Nike gloves, Nike bats, etc, will improve the quality your page. In that case, Google will rank you higher for “Nike brand products” keyword.

ALT Tags (Alt Text or ALT Attribute)

ALT Tags are texts used to describe web images (texts you see when an image fails to load or display completely). They are part of image SEO best practices that ensure images are well-optimised for search engines. There are many other things to consider, of course, while optimizing images, for example eliminating duplicates. A topic for another day!

The primary role of Alt Texts is to describe what the image is about. And they are usually used by screen readers (Visually impaired users) to understand web content. So, having an ALT Text based on your keyword or synonyms on all your images improves your page accessibility, which tells Google your web page is high quality.

Meta Description

A Meta description is simply a summary displayed as part of the search snippet, which gives users a highlight of what a page is about. I am sure you have seen that summary under each title whenever you search for something on Google. If you haven’t, we have an example of our TikTok SEO blog post below. That is the page’s Meta description appears in Google searches.

The title and Meta description have a great impact on why users click on some links and ignore others. So, we recommend optimising your Meta description to match your keywords and their synonyms. Additionally, write convincing Meta descriptions that hint at the main topic.

3. Page Content

After ensuring all your Meta Tags are well-optimised for search engines, you should move your focus down to the page’s content (Body Text and layout). Study the formatting of your content to confirm the correct usage of subheadings.

Yoast has a readability analysis tool that will assist in highlighting sentences and paragraphs that need formatting. These include too-hard-to-read words, longer sentences and paragraphs, Transitional words, and consecutive sentences.

In addition, you must confirm that your keyword or its synonyms appear in the first paragraph. Having done so, continue using the key phrase throughout the rest of the paragraphs where necessary.

However, avoid keyword stuffing (overusing the main keyword). In other words, only insert a few keywords into a page’s content. You must note that Google updates its algorithms now and then to eliminate such Black Hat SEO practices. So, these algorithms will penalise you once they notice keyword stuffing on your page.

The best way to avoid keyword stuffing is by using keyword synonyms. Hence, use your primary keyword and synonyms interchangeably where need be. Again, Yoast will guide you on how to use keyword synonyms.

4. Page Permalink & Slug

A page’s permalink in the full URL you see in the address bar whenever you visit a given site. For example, [https://marketing.digtingug.com/how-to-do-seo-on-tiktok-to-rank-higher-in-google]

It comprises two parts. That is the domain name (marketing.digting.com) and the slug (how-to-do-seo-on-tiktok-to-rank-higher-in-google). But what we are interested in here is the Slug, which is automatically generated from the page name or title.

Well-optimised Slug are:

• Short but descriptive
• Include relevant keywords
• Don’t have dates
• Free from stop words (is, a, the, etc.)

5. Internal & External Links

Internal and External links are another vital on-page SEO elements we can barely leave out in our free template guide. While you do all those things above, it’s also essential to confirm that your page has relevant links to high-quality resources explaining other related topics. That is, resources that provide additional information about your topic. Here, we want to consider two types of links as illustrated follows:

Internal Links

These are hyperlinks that point to the same domain. In other words, the links point to other pages or content you’ve previously created on your website.

Google uses internal links to understand which pages of your website are more important and relevant. So, search engine crawlers use them to move from one page in your cluster to your pillar page. Thus, you would to drive traffic from the best performing page to the rest of the pages that are not working well through internal links.

External Links (outbound link)

External links are hyperlinks that points to a source from another domain. They are called outbound links since they lead search engine crawlers out of your website.

So, the primary role of External links is to direct users to an external source that explains a topic you haven’t tackled in your content. In other words, you are telling your users to find more information from a specific resource that you trust. However, you shouldn’t include more than 5 external links per page.

6. Schema Markup

While you help users understand your page’s content, you must also help search engines by using Schema Markup. For starters, Schema Markup is the language search engines use to read and understand the content on your pages. In other words, Search engines don’t understand human language but structured data. That makes Schema Markup very essential in our on-page SEO template.

Schema Markup includes lines of code representing structured data used to organise your page’s content to make it readable for search engines. So, Schema Markup is responsible for the rich snippets you see in Google search results. For instance, the image below shows the featured snippet DIGting ranks for in Google.

You may also achieve the same when you use Schema Markup on your website pages. Other examples of rich snippets (enhanced search results) may include:

• Sponsored features
• Local business features 
• Knowledge features 
• Media features 
• Search query features

Yoast and Rank Math SEO plugins come with a Schema Markup feature that allows you to add structured data to your page. However, you will need to purchase the premium version of one of the plugins to access more advanced schema settings such as Reviews, job postings, and more.

However, you may also use the structured data generator tool to come up with schema data for your page. It’s also helpful to check out Schema.org to understand the different Schema Markup data available for web content.

Conclusion

Finally, we’ve reached the end of our free On-Page SEO Template guide for Beginners. We are now sure you know the different On-page SEO ranking factors. And you can carry out On-page SEO for your website. However, remember that SEO is not a one-time thing. It involves daily SEO tracking and managing all your monthly SEO tasks.

If this guide has helped you, please, refer a friend who needs to get started with Practical SEO. This guide is also part of our complete SEO series for Franchises. It will benefit you through all your ongoing SEO maintenance tasks.

Frequently Asked Questions