A comprehensive checklist for On-Page SEO to dominate Dutch search results

If your website is not optimized for search engines, then you should not expect a steady stream of orders for your products or services. There are general requirements for portals that are supposed to rank high, but there are also regional specifics. Therefore, the checklist for SEO optimization of NL pages differs from that compiled for other EU countries, and this needs to be understood. It is worth figuring out in advance what a website should be like in order to reach the top, so that you are not surprised later why you are unable to develop a profitable business.

The main requirements for bringing a resource to the top positions in the ranking

To climb higher in Google Netherlands, you need to carefully work on:

• headings and subheadings, which should be meaningful and reflect the essence of the text;
• titles and descriptions – they should be unique and attract the target audience, contain local identifiers;
• content structure — texts should be understandable, informative, interesting, and contain elements of the semantic core in such quantities that they can be identified by the search engine without overwhelming readers. Particular attention should be paid to the use of local vocabulary;
• Technical settings, including submitting an XML sitemap via Google Search Console, setting up robots.txt, ensuring page loading speed in accordance with Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations.
• linking to Google Bedrijfsprofiel.
• placing cookies and privacy policy in accordance with AVG.
• image optimization – use WebP and compress images while maintaining quality, and don’t forget about the correct dimensions;
• ensuring internal linking;
• structuring information;
• presence of the company name, number (NAP), and address on each page;
• presence of a blog with articles on relevant topics;
• installing Google Analytics and indexing pages in Google.nl;
• ease of navigation and interface in general.

Conducting an SEO audit is the best solution for creating a checklist

No SEO optimization guide will help you conduct an in-depth analysis, so you shouldn’t limit yourself to a general checklist. It is better to turn to specialists who will conduct a comprehensive audit and compile a list of what your website should have for successful promotion on Google. By turning to professionals, you will significantly save time and spare yourself stress, because after launch, you won’t have to worry about increasing your customer base.

What exactly do experts do during an audit:

1. They study the content and evaluate its compliance with Google’s search engine requirements.
2. They find technical issues that interfere with ranking, such as errors with redirects or indexing.
3. They determine how well the content matches the intentions of the target audience in the Netherlands and whether keywords and phrases are used correctly.
4. Analyze the UX and structural features of the portal, identifying illogical links and pages that are not useful from an SEO perspective.
5. Compare with leaders in the selected industry in the Dutch market.
6. Create a personalized checklist that takes all nuances into account.

The duration of the audit may vary depending on the scale of the project and the focus of the portal, but in general, the process takes from 1-3 days for a basic analysis to 10-20 days for a comprehensive study that includes On-Page and Off-Page, as well as strategy and local SEO.