Publisher SEO Improvement Checklist

Search engine visibility is essential for AdSense approval. Review this 15-point on-page SEO checklist to ensure optimal crawlability and heading hierarchies.

1
Single Primary H1 Tag per Page

Every article and landing page has exactly one H1 tag defining the primary topic.

2
Unique & Descriptive Title Tags (30–65 characters)

No duplicate <title> tags across sampled pages; each page is distinctly identified.

3
Compelling Meta Descriptions (120–160 characters)

Every article features an informative meta description tag summarizing core findings.

4
Self-Referencing HTTPS Canonical Tags

Canonical tags point to absolute HTTPS destinations matching exact trailing slash conventions.

5
Mobile Viewport Meta Tag Configured

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"> is present in the HTML head.

6
Zero "noindex" Directives on Public Articles

Meta robots tags and HTTP X-Robots-Tag headers allow indexing on all public posts.

7
Valid XML Sitemap Linked in Robots.txt

Sitemap is published at /sitemap.xml and declared via Sitemap: ... in robots.txt.

8
Descriptive Image Alt Attributes

All informative images feature descriptive alt text; decorative graphics use empty alt="".

9
Contextual Internal Links (2–4 per post)

Articles link to related subjects across your site, preventing orphaned pages.

10
Clean URL Slugs Free of Extraneous Parameters

URLs are human-readable, lowercase, hyphenated, and exclude session IDs.

11
Structured Data JSON-LD Markup

Valid Schema.org Article, Organization, and BreadcrumbList markup in HTML head.

12
Fast Server Response (TTFB < 1.2s)

Server delivers initial byte quickly without gateway pauses or database freezes.

13
HTML & Asset Compression Enabled (Gzip / Brotli)

Content-Encoding confirms text payload compression on HTML, CSS, and JS files.

14
Zero Broken Internal Hyperlinks (404/500)

All contextual body links and footer menu paths point to live 200 OK pages.

15
SSL/TLS Encryption without Mixed Content

All subresource scripts, images, and fonts load over secure HTTPS.

Audit These 15 Signals in the 54-Point Technical Scan →