The on-page SEO checklist AdAstra runs

On-page SEO has not gone away just because AI Overviews exist. Here is the exact 12-item checklist AdAstra runs on every page, and the broader set of standards behind it.

~7 min read . SEO

Before a page can be optimized for anything more advanced, it has to get the fundamentals right. On-page SEO is the set of things you control directly on a page (its title, its structure, its content) that determine whether search engines can understand what the page is about and rank it fairly. AdAstra runs a fixed, automatic checklist against every page it analyzes, and keeps a much larger library of standards behind it for deeper content work. This article walks through both, and is careful not to mix them up.

Why on-page SEO still matters

It is tempting to think on-page SEO is a solved problem, or that it matters less now that AI Overviews summarize content directly. Neither is true. A search engine, and increasingly an AI system, still has to parse a page before it can rank it or cite it: it needs a clear title, one obvious topic, readable structure and enough substance to be worth surfacing at all. Skipping the basics does not just cost you ranking positions, it can keep a page out of consideration entirely.

On-page SEO is also the layer you control most directly. You cannot control a competitor's backlink profile or Google's algorithm updates, but you can control whether your title tag is present and relevant, whether the page has one H1 instead of three, and whether the content is long enough to be useful. AdAstra's SEO analysis is built around exactly that: the checks a publisher can act on immediately.

The 12 checks AdAstra runs

When AdAstra analyzes a page's content, it runs a fixed checklist of 12 items and returns a boolean compliant status for every single one, alongside 2 to 3 of the most impactful recommendations for that specific page. These are the exact 12 checks, in the order the analysis runs them.

This list is deliberately short and binary. Each item is either compliant or it is not, which is what makes it useful as a fast, automatic pass over every page: a clear pass or fail on the fundamentals, run the same way every time, rather than a fuzzy overall impression.

Keyword placement standards

The 12-item checklist above is not the whole picture. AdAstra also maintains a broader, separate library of on-page SEO standards, roughly 25 in total, organized into three categories, that get used elsewhere in the product (for example, when you choose which standards to check a piece of content against during content optimization). The first category is Keyword Placement, and it covers where in a page a target keyword should actually appear.

• Place keyword in Page title (H1)
• Place keyword in Title tag
• Place keyword in Meta description
• Place keyword in first 100 words of page
• Place keyword in H2 headings
• Use keyword in image file names
• Use keyword in image alt text
• Use keyword naturally in body

Notice the overlap with the 12-item checklist: keyword in the title tag and keyword in the meta description appear in both. That is expected. The 12-item checklist is a fixed, automatic pass every page gets; the standards library is a broader, selectable taxonomy used for deeper, more deliberate content work. The two lists share some ground because both are describing real on-page SEO practice, not because they are the same list.

Content quality standards

The second category is Content Quality. Where keyword placement is about location, this category is about whether the content itself is worth ranking at all: original, accurate and genuinely useful rather than padded.

• Ensure original content
• Ensure information is accurate
• Deliver on the headline's promise
• Content is actionable
• Reads like a human wrote it
• Organize with headings
• Break up paragraphs with images, lists, etc.
• Write fluff-free content
• Aim for 1500+ words if appropriate for the topic

That last item is intentionally conditional: not every page needs 1500 words to do its job, and the standard says so. A short, sharp answer to a narrow question can outperform a padded long-form piece; length is a standard to weigh, not a target to hit blindly.

Structure and technical standards

The third category is Structure & Technical. This is where the standards library and the 12-item checklist overlap most: single H1 tag and mobile-friendliness both appear on the automatic checklist too, because they are fundamental enough to check on every single page as well as being part of the broader taxonomy.

• Use only one H1 tag
• Title tag is under 60 characters
• Meta description is 155-160 characters
• Use at least two H2s, with keyword
• Organize information hierarchy
• Make the post skimmable
• URL is short and contains keyword
• Ensure content is mobile friendly

From checklist to fixes

The 12-item checklist and the roughly 25-item standards library serve different jobs, and keeping them distinct matters. The 12-item checklist is what AdAstra's SEO analysis runs automatically on every page: fast, fixed, the same 12 questions every time, returning a compliant or non-compliant boolean for each along with a handful of the most impactful recommendations for that page. It is the fundamentals pass every piece of content gets by default.

The roughly 25-item standards library, split across Keyword Placement, Content Quality and Structure & Technical, is the larger taxonomy behind more deliberate content work, such as choosing exactly which standards a piece of content should be optimized against. It is more granular and more selectable than the fixed 12, which is why it lives separately rather than being folded into the automatic checklist.

In practice, the two work together. The 12-item checklist tells you, fast, whether a page is missing something fundamental, a missing alt attribute, a second H1, no internal link. The standards library gives you the finer-grained vocabulary to fix it well once you know where to look, from meta description length to whether the content actually delivers on its own headline.

The short version

• AdAstra's SEO analysis runs a fixed 12-item checklist on every page, returning a compliant boolean for each item plus a handful of recommendations.
• The 12 checks cover title tag, meta description, single H1, minimum word count, image alts, URL friendliness, keyword in title and meta description, internal links, natural keyword integration, mobile-friendliness and originality.
• A separate, broader library of roughly 25 standards exists across three categories: Keyword Placement, Content Quality, and Structure & Technical.
• The two lists overlap on some fundamentals (keyword in title, single H1, mobile-friendly) but are not the same list: the 12 are fixed and automatic, the 25 are the wider, selectable taxonomy.
• Content Quality standards include conditional guidance, such as aiming for 1500+ words only where appropriate for the topic, rather than a blanket target.
• Use the 12-item checklist to catch fundamentals fast, and the broader standards library to guide deeper content optimization work.