#9 First Steps For On-Page SEO: Start with Page Titles & Meta Descriptions

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Upon hearing “SEO” most people have an action plan in place:

1. Nod understandingly.
2. Later at home start reading about it because is so important!
3. Get frustrated as there are just too many aspects of SEO, and some parts are just too technical, and everything is changing so fast.
4. Shelve it until a better opportunity (or until the situation #1)

Actually it doesn’t have to be scary. If you are a startup founder or a broad profile marketer, you’ll be fine with the basics of SEO. It can be broken into 2 categories and 7 subcategories:

Source: Search Engine Journal (click to see a bigger image)

P.S. There are many great resources that present the 101 basics in understandable language. The team at Search Engine Journal put together a list of 101 guides written by reputable sources (kudos to them!).

Get started!

The easiest first action step would be to tackle the first two items in the HTML subcategory: Page title & Meta Description.

1. Do you know what they are? (Check the link above for more info if needed)
2. Download the On-page SEO template by Hubspot
3. I’d recommend to keep separate tabs for your website and blog if you have one
4. Input all (or at least the main) links you want Google to find in the Column B:
   a. manually
   b. from your sitemap
5. Copy their page titles (the ones you can see as a browser tab name) into Column C. You can find them in:
   a. the page code — Right click the page and select “View Page Source”; search for “title” or “meta name=”title””
   b. via free MOZ toolbar extension — check “Page analysis” tab
6. Do any titles exceed 60 characters? Shorten them!
   Any duplicating ones? Write unique titles for those pages.
   Too short titles might not be very helpful either.
7. Copy their meta descriptions into Column D. You can find them in:
   a. the page code — Right click the page and select “View Page Source”; search for “meta name=”description””
   b. via free MOZ toolbar extension — check “Page analysis” tab
8. Do any meta descriptions exceed 160 characters? Shorten them!
   Any duplicating or missing? Write unique descriptions for those pages.
   Too short descriptions might not be very helpful either.
9. What’s the main purpose of the page? Fill in the Column H.
10. Pick one unique keyword (phrase) of 3–5 words that best describes the page and put it in the Column P. No duplicating or <2 words phrases!
    
    Noticed 3 links in this article? Their keywords were: “seo 101 resources”, “seo toolbar”, and “(on-page) seo template”.
11. Does your link (B) and page title (C) contain the keyword (P)? If no, change.
12. Does your meta description (D) contain a synonym or a description of the keyword (P)? Change if not.

And that’s it for now! It wasn’t that scary, was it?

Shall I do it manually or use an SEO tool?

If your website consists of just a few pages, it can be done manually, especially for the main ones. If you have a big website already, use one of SEO tools like Ahrefs for the whole website scan (but I’d still suggest to do the manual one as an exercise).

Did you execute the tip? Good job 👊

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