How to Check Your Website SEO
You do not need an expensive tool to know whether your site’s on-page SEO is in decent shape. Most of the important signals are plain text that browsers and crawlers read the same way you do: the title tag, the meta description, headings, canonical links and a few files at fixed URLs. This guide walks through a free, repeatable check you can run on any page — starting with the SEO Checker and then verifying by hand.
What “on-page SEO” actually covers
On-page SEO is everything on the page itself that tells search engines what the page is about and how it relates to the rest of the site. It does not include backlinks, authority or content quality judgments — all of which matter enormously but can’t be read from the HTML. Keep that boundary in mind whenever you look at a checklist.
Step 1: Check one page with the SEO Checker
Open the SEO Checker, enter your URL, and run it. The report parses the live HTML and flags dozens of items in groups:
- Page identity: title length and uniqueness, meta description, canonical tag, language and viewport.
- Structure: heading hierarchy (one H1, H2s in order), internal and external link counts, noindex/noindex directives.
- Accessibility of the checks: robots.txt retrievable, sitemap.xml retrievable, Open Graph and Twitter cards present.
- Technical basics: HTTPS on, image alt attributes, structured data present.
Each item shows what was actually found and how the tool decided. Fix the items marked “Needs attention” first — they are the ones with a clear visible problem rather than a suggestion.
Step 2: Verify the title and meta description by hand
Open the page in a browser and look at the browser tab. That text (or a truncated version) is your title tag. Good titles are under about 60 characters, unique per page, and state what the page offers. The meta description does not affect rankings directly, but it is the text search engines often display — a clear, honest, under-155-character description improves click-through.
Common template bug: every page shows the same site-wide title like “My Business | Home”. Search engines then have to guess which page answers which query. Give every meaningful page a unique title.
Step 3: Check headings flow correctly
A page should have exactly one H1 (usually matching the visible headline) and then H2s for main sections, with H3s only inside those sections if needed. Skipping from H2 to H4 or stacking pointless H1s confuses screen readers and makes the outline of the page harder to parse. The SEO Checker lists every heading it found in order, so you can scan the hierarchy at a glance.
Step 4: Verify canonical and redirect behavior
If the same content is reachable at several URLs (with and without www, with tracking parameters, or under old paths), search engines see duplicates. The canonical tag tells them the one version to treat as the original. If you use redirects instead, confirm non-www redirects to www (or vice versa), and old URLs redirect with 301 to their new location — the HTTP Status Checker shows you the full chain.
Step 5: Confirm robots.txt and sitemap.xml are at the right place
Search engines look for robots.txt and sitemap.xml at the root of the domain, so the URLs are exactly https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt and https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. The SEO Checker tries to fetch both and tells you if they are retrievable. The sitemap should list only indexable pages — no 404 pages, no redirect targets-only URLs, no noindex pages — and should be referenced from robots.txt with a Sitemap: line.
Step 6: Don’t chase warning flags blindly
Some flags are informational. For example, a missing canonical is only a real problem if duplicates exist, and missing Open Graph tags don’t affect regular search rankings at all — they matter when the page is shared on social platforms. Before changing anything, understand whether the item affects your situation.
Compare pages, not just one URL
Templates replicate mistakes. Check your homepage, one blog post and one product or service page. If the same issue shows up on three different types of page, fixing the template fixes the whole site at once.