Home / Blog / Article

Blog · 5 May 2026

On Page SEO Checklist for Nepali Business Websites

The page by page checklist I use on Nepali business websites, covering titles, meta descriptions, headings, content, images, internal links and URLs, based on Google's own guidance.

By Apar Shrestha

An on page SEO checklist is a short list of things every page on your website should get right: a clear title, a useful meta description, sensible headings, helpful content, described images, good internal links and a clean URL. Get these right on each important page and Google understands what you offer. Customers do too.

I’m Apar, a designer in Bharatpur who also handles search visibility for businesses in Nepal and abroad. This article sits under my main guide to SEO in Nepal and how local businesses get found on Google and in AI answers. It covers what goes on the page itself. Choosing the words comes first, in my guide to keyword research for Nepal, including Romanised Nepali searches.

What is on page SEO, and what does it include?

On page SEO is everything you control on a single page that helps search engines and people understand what that page is about. It covers the parts you can see, like text and headings, and a few you cannot, like the title tag and image alt text.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide describes SEO as “about helping search engines understand your content”. On page work is the most direct form of that. It is separate from technical SEO, which decides whether Google can reach and index the page at all. If a page is not indexed, fix that first with my guide to technical SEO basics.

Why does on page SEO matter for a Nepali business website?

It matters because the page title and description are usually the first thing a customer sees of your business on Google, and in Nepal that customer is almost always on Google. Statcounter put Google’s search share in Nepal at 95.78% in September 2026.

Most searches happen on small screens. Statcounter’s device share report showed 65.11% of web traffic in Nepal on mobile in September 2026. Google also says in its mobile first indexing guide that it “uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking.” So always run your checklist on a phone.

The payoff is practical. A clear title earns the click, and a page that answers the question keeps the visitor.

Here is the on page SEO checklist I use for every important page.

I run this before any page goes live, from a clinic department page to a supplier’s product page.

Item	What good looks like	Quick check
Page title	Unique, describes the page, main words first, brand at the end	Does it make sense cut off on a phone?
Meta description	Unique summary with the most relevant points of the page	Is it different from every other page?
Main heading	One clear heading that matches the title’s promise	Would a stranger know what the page is about?
Subheadings	Follow the questions a customer would ask, in a logical order	Can you skim the page by headings alone?
Opening paragraph	Answers the main question directly in two or three sentences	Is the answer above the first image?
Body content	Specific, original, written from real experience	Does it say something a competitor’s page does not?
Language	One language per page	No English and Nepali side by side?
Images	Descriptive file names and alt text, compressed for mobile	Would the alt text help someone who cannot see it?
Internal links	Links to related pages with descriptive anchor text	Is this page linked from at least one other page?
URL	Short, readable, words separated by hyphens	Could you read it aloud over the phone?
Contact path	Phone, WhatsApp or form easy to reach	Can a customer act within one tap?

How should you write a page title that Google will actually use?

Write a page title that is unique to the page, describes it plainly and puts the most important words first. Google’s guide to influencing title links asks for “descriptive and concise text”, says “Avoid keyword stuffing”, warns against “repeated or boilerplate text” and says “Brand your titles concisely.”

The same page says there is no limit on how long a title element can be, but Google cuts the displayed title to fit the device width. On a phone that happens fast. So I write titles for Nepali clients like “Physiotherapy in Bharatpur for Back and Sports Injuries | Clinic Name”, with the service and city at the front and the brand last.

Google can also rewrite your title, building one from the main heading, the og:title tag, anchor text on the page or links pointing to it. When these all agree, Google has little reason to change it.

How long should a meta description be, and does Google use it?

There is no fixed length, and Google uses your meta description only when it describes the page better than the page text does. Google’s page on controlling snippets states “There’s no limit on how long a meta description can be” and that “Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself.”

That makes two things matter. First, write a short, unique summary for every important page, because Google warns that “Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren’t helpful”. Second, make your opening paragraph a clean answer, since Google often pulls from it anyway.

Do headings need to follow H1, H2 and H3 order for SEO?

No, not for Google. The SEO Starter Guide says that from Google’s perspective “it doesn’t matter if you’re using them out of order.” Headings still matter for people, though, so I keep them logical anyway.

Visitors on phones skim headings, and screen readers use them to jump around. So I use one main heading per page, then subheadings that follow a customer’s questions in order. Writing headings as real questions, such as “How much does a root canal cost in Chitwan?”, also gives Google and AI tools a clean passage to quote. My guide to AEO and GEO for AI answers explains why that helps.

What makes the content on a page good enough to rank?

Helpful content ranks when it is genuinely useful, specific and clearly written by someone who knows the subject. Google’s SEO Starter Guide says “Creating content that people find compelling and useful” will likely influence your presence in search more than any other suggestion in the guide.

Google’s guide to helpful, reliable content suggests judging your pages by “Who, How, and Why”: who wrote it, how it was made and why it exists. It names experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness as the qualities it looks for, with trust the most important. For a Nepali business that means real photos, real names, real prices or price factors, and local detail a template site cannot fake.

One Nepal specific point: keep each page in one language. Google’s multilingual sites guide says it uses “the visible content of your page to determine its language” and recommends “using a single language for content and navigation on each page”. If you need Nepali and English, build two pages.

How should you name and describe images for SEO?

Give every important image a short, descriptive file name and alt text that describes what is in it. Google’s image SEO guide calls alt text “The most important attribute when it comes to providing more metadata for an image”, and says to “Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords”.

Google’s own example of good alt text is “Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”. It describes the picture, nothing more. For a Chitwan café I would write “Barista pouring latte art at a café in Bharatpur”, and rename the file from IMG00023.JPG to something that says the same. Large photos also slow pages on mobile data, which I cover in why your website is slow on Nepali mobile data.

How do internal links and URLs help each page?

Internal links tell Google and visitors which of your pages are related and which matter most, and clean URLs make each page easy to understand and share. Use descriptive link text such as “our knee replacement department”, never “click here”.

Anchor text is one of the sources Google can use for title links, so good link text helps twice. I link every service page from the menu or homepage, and from at least one related article. For URLs, I keep them short and readable, such as yourclinic.com.np/back-pain-treatment/, and I avoid changing them after launch without redirects.

What can you leave off an on page SEO checklist?

You can skip the keywords meta tag completely, because the SEO Starter Guide says plainly “Google Search doesn’t use the keywords meta tag.” You can also stop counting keyword density. Google’s title guidance says “Avoid keyword stuffing”, and the same logic applies to body text.

Many old checklists also promise FAQ dropdowns in Google from FAQ schema. Those results are no longer shown, which I explain in my guide to schema markup for small businesses.

How much time does on page SEO take for a small business site?

For a typical small business site with five to fifteen important pages, a careful on page pass usually takes a few days, and the work scales with page count. A product catalogue with hundreds of items takes far longer, because every product needs its own title, description and images.

Most of the cost is writing time. My guide to SEO cost in Nepal explains how this fits into a full SEO budget.

What I learned doing on page SEO for supplier catalogues.

Much of my on page work has been for medical suppliers and distributors with large product ranges, including on page SEO for Swan International, Mediaids and Health Tech Nepal. On those sites, the lesson was consistency. A simple, repeatable pattern for every product title and description beats hand crafting a few pages and leaving the rest blank.

I used the same checklist for Saniaa Construction in the UK; only the local details changed. The list is universal. The skill is writing each page for its customer.

These are the questions business owners ask me most about on page SEO.

Why does Google change my page title in search results?

Google rewrites titles when it thinks another text describes the page better, often pulling from your main heading or link text. Make your title, main heading and internal links agree, and avoid boilerplate repeated across pages.

How many times should I use my keyword on a page?

There is no magic number. Use the main phrase in the title, the opening paragraph and at least one heading, then write naturally. Repeating it to hit a count is keyword stuffing, which Google’s guidance tells you to avoid.

Can I do on page SEO myself on a WordPress site?

Yes. An SEO plugin such as Yoast or Rank Math gives you fields for the title and meta description, and the rest is writing and image naming. Work through the checklist one page at a time, starting with your most important service.

Is on page SEO a one time job?

No. Do a full pass once, then review pages when your services, prices or offers change. Check Search Console for pages that get impressions but few clicks, because their titles and descriptions usually need work.

Does on page SEO help me appear in AI answers?

It helps. Google’s page on AI features and your website says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews, but a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Clear, answer first pages are easier to quote.

Here is what I would do next if I were you.

Pick your three most important pages, usually your homepage, main service and contact page. Open each one on your phone and run the table above against it. Fix the title and opening paragraph first, because they carry the most weight.

If you would like me to review your pages for you, take a look at my search and AI visibility service, or contact me with your website address.

These are the sources I used for this article.

← All articles