DEV Community: Usman Javed

On-Page SEO Checklist Every Developer Should Run Before Handing a Website to a Client

Usman Javed — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:05:36 +0000

You spent weeks building the site. The design is clean, the code is solid, the client loves how it looks. You hand it over and two months later they come back asking why nobody can find them on Google.

It happens constantly. Not because the development work was poor — but because on-page SEO is one of those things that lives in the gap between what developers build and what SEO specialists configure. And when nobody owns that gap, it stays empty.

Running through this checklist before handover takes less than a day. What it prevents can save weeks of awkward conversations later.

Title Tags — The Single Most Important Element

Every page on the site needs a unique, descriptive title tag between 50 and 60 characters. This is the headline Google displays in search results and it carries more ranking weight than almost any other on-page element.

The most common mistakes are duplicate title tags across multiple pages, title tags that just say the business name with nothing else, and title tags that are so long Google truncates them mid-sentence.

Check every page individually. A homepage title, a services page title and a blog post title should all be completely different from each other and should each contain the primary keyword that page is targeting.

Meta Descriptions — Often Ignored, Always Worth Writing

Meta descriptions do not directly influence rankings but they directly influence click-through rates — which does influence rankings indirectly.

A well-written meta description between 150 and 160 characters tells the searcher exactly what they will find on the page and gives them a reason to click rather than scroll past. Leaving them blank means Google generates them automatically, usually pulling whatever text appears first on the page — which is rarely the most compelling sentence on it.

Write a unique meta description for every page. Include the primary keyword naturally. Make it sound like something a human wrote for other humans.

Heading Structure — More Than Just Visual Hierarchy

Every page should have exactly one H1 tag. Not zero, not two — one. It should contain the primary keyword for that page and clearly describe what the page is about.

Below that, H2 tags should be used for main sections and H3 for subsections within those. The structure should read logically from top to bottom — if you stripped out all the body text and read only the headings in sequence, you should be able to follow what the page is about.

Search engines use heading structure to understand the scope and organisation of a page's content. A page with a logical, well-structured heading hierarchy consistently signals better than one where headings are used purely for visual styling with no regard for hierarchy.

URL Structure — Keep It Clean and Descriptive

URLs should be short, descriptive and readable by a human without needing to decode them.

Good: yoursite.com/on-page-seo-services

Not good: yoursite.com/page?id=4927&cat=12&ref=nav

WordPress defaults to the second format unless you change the permalink structure to Post Name before the site has any indexed pages. This is one of those settings that needs to be configured at the very beginning of the build — changing it after launch breaks every URL that has already been indexed and requires setting up redirects.

Hyphens separate words in URLs. Underscores do not. This is a small detail that matters.

Image Optimisation — The Easiest Win Most Developers Leave on the Table

Every image on the site needs three things: a descriptive file name before upload, an alt text attribute that describes what the image shows, and a file size that does not add unnecessary weight to the page load.

File names like IMG_4823.jpg tell search engines nothing. hero-section-web-design-services.jpg tells them quite a lot.

Alt text serves two purposes — it describes images to screen readers for accessibility and it gives search engines additional context about the page content. It should describe the image accurately without being a keyword stuffing exercise.

On file size — a full-width hero image should not be a 4MB JPEG. Compress images before upload or use a plugin that handles this automatically. The difference in page load time is significant, especially on mobile connections.

Internal Linking — Often Underdeveloped, Always Valuable

Internal links connect pages within the same website and do two important things. They help search engines discover and crawl all the pages on the site, and they distribute page authority from stronger pages to weaker ones.

A homepage typically accumulates the most external backlinks and therefore the most authority. Internal links from the homepage to key service or product pages pass some of that authority along. Pages that receive no internal links are harder for search engines to find and rank.

Every important page on the site should be reachable from at least two or three other pages through natural, contextually relevant internal links. Not a footer list of every page — actual links within the body content of relevant pages that give searchers and search engines a reason to follow them.

Canonical Tags — Prevent Duplicate Content Problems

Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a URL is the preferred one. Without them, a page accessible at both http and https versions, or with and without a trailing slash, or with and without www — all look like separate pages with duplicate content to a crawler.

WordPress handles some of this automatically with certain SEO plugins but it is worth checking manually, particularly on eCommerce builds where filtered product pages can generate dozens of near-identical URLs.

Schema Markup — Underused and Genuinely Helpful

Schema markup is structured data added to a page's HTML that helps search engines understand what kind of content is on the page — a business, a product, an article, a review, an event, a recipe.

It does not guarantee rich results in search but it makes them possible. A local business page with proper schema markup has a better chance of appearing with a knowledge panel. A blog post with article schema has a better chance of appearing in Google's top stories.

The implementation is straightforward with most SEO plugins handling the basics. Custom schema for specific content types requires a bit more work but it is well worth the effort for clients in competitive local markets.

Page Speed and Core Web Vitals

Google measures three Core Web Vitals as ranking signals — how fast the largest visible element loads, how quickly the page becomes interactive, and how much the layout shifts while loading.

Run every page through Google PageSpeed Insights before handover. Anything scoring below 70 on mobile deserves attention. The most common culprits are unoptimised images, render-blocking scripts, missing caching configuration and an overloaded plugin stack.

Fix what you can during the build rather than leaving it as a post-launch task. Page speed problems are always easier to address before a site is live than after.

The Handover Point

On-page SEO is not a one-time task — it is an ongoing practice as new pages get added, content gets updated and search algorithms evolve. But getting the foundations right before handover means the site starts with a clean, optimised base rather than a backlog of technical debt the client will eventually pay someone to fix.

Run the checklist. Check every page. Document what you have done so the client knows what is in place when they take ownership.

Tags: #seo #webdev #wordpress #tutorial #beginners

WordPress Website Checklist — Everything Developers Miss Before Going Live

Usman Javed — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:03:29 +0000

You have spent days building the site. The pages look good, the fonts are right, the logo is in place. You click publish and tell the client it is live.
Then three days later they message you — the contact form is not sending emails, images are loading slowly on mobile, and Google Search Console is throwing errors you have never seen before.
It happens more than most developers want to admit. Not because they are careless, but because going live feels like the finish line when it is actually the starting line. There are things that only matter once a real user is sitting in front of the site, and a lot of them are easy to miss when you are deep in the build.
This is a checklist of the things that genuinely get overlooked — not the obvious ones like testing your navigation, but the ones that come back to bite you a week after launch.

Your Permalink Structure Needs to Be Set Before Anything Gets Indexed

This one catches people badly because it feels like a minor setting. Go to Settings → Permalinks and make sure you are using Post Name or a custom structure before the site goes live. If you change permalink structure after Google has already indexed your URLs, every link pointing to those pages breaks. You end up with 404s everywhere and have to set up redirects manually to recover.
Set it once before launch and leave it alone.

SSL Is On But Is It Actually Working Everywhere

Installing an SSL certificate is not the same as having a fully secure site. Mixed content errors happen when some elements on the page — images, scripts, stylesheets — are still loading over HTTP while the rest of the page is HTTPS.
Check the browser address bar. If there is a padlock with a warning triangle instead of a clean lock, something is loading insecurely. A plugin like Really Simple SSL handles most of this automatically but it is worth manually checking key pages, especially ones that have embedded media or external scripts.

Caching Without Thinking About It Creates Problems Later

Caching plugins make a real difference to load speed but they need to be configured properly. Out of the box settings on most caching plugins are not optimised for every site. If you are running WooCommerce, cart and checkout pages need to be excluded from caching. If you have a logged-in user experience, that needs separate handling.
The other thing people miss is browser caching headers. Setting appropriate cache expiry for static assets like images and fonts means returning visitors load the site much faster. Most caching plugins handle this but you need to actually go in and configure it rather than just activating the plugin and assuming it works.

Image Sizes Are Probably Larger Than They Need to Be

This is one of the most common issues on WordPress sites and also one of the easiest to fix before launch. Images uploaded at 4MB are not suitable for web. Most WordPress themes do not compress images automatically unless you install something specifically for that purpose.
Run the site through Google PageSpeed Insights before going live and look at what it flags under image optimisation. Tools like Imagify or ShortPixel handle compression and can convert images to WebP format automatically. The difference in load time is significant, especially on mobile connections.
Speaking of mobile — check every page on an actual phone, not just using browser developer tools. Responsive design sometimes breaks in ways that only show up on a real device.

Your Forms Are Not Actually Sending Emails

WordPress uses the PHP mail function by default to send emails. Most hosting environments either have this disabled or have it flagged by spam filters, which means contact form submissions, order confirmations and password reset emails never arrive.
Install WP Mail SMTP and connect it to a proper sending service — Gmail, SendGrid, Mailgun or your hosting provider's SMTP. Send a test email before launch. This takes about fifteen minutes and saves enormous headaches later.

Basic SEO Setup Takes Ten Minutes and Most People Skip It

Yoast or Rank Math should be installed and configured before launch. The specific things that matter most at this stage are setting your site title and tagline, writing a homepage meta description, making sure your XML sitemap is generated and submitting it to Google Search Console.
Also check Settings → Reading and make sure the option that says "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" is turned off. It gets left on from development mode more often than you would think.

Security Is Not Just Installing a Plugin

WordPress sites get targeted constantly. The basics take no time at all and they genuinely matter. Change the default admin username if it is still admin. Use a strong password and a password manager. Install a security plugin like Wordfence or Sucuri and run an initial scan. Enable two-factor authentication on the admin account.
Limit login attempts. The default WordPress login page allows unlimited attempts which makes brute force attacks easy. Loginizer or any security plugin handles this.
One more thing — keep a record of all your plugin and theme versions at launch. When something breaks after an update you will want to know exactly what changed.

Backups Need to Be Automatic From Day One

Not from the day something goes wrong. From day one.
UpdraftPlus is free and takes about five minutes to set up. Connect it to Google Drive or Dropbox and set automatic weekly backups for low-traffic sites, daily for anything with regular content updates or eCommerce. A backup sitting on the same server as the site is not a proper backup — store it somewhere external.

Check What Google Actually Sees

Before you call the project done, go to Google Search Console and use the URL Inspection tool on your homepage. This shows you exactly how Google crawls and renders your page. You might find that JavaScript-heavy elements are not being seen, or that certain content is being blocked by your robots.txt file.
Fix these before launch. They are much harder to deal with once the site has been indexed incorrectly.

Maintenance Does Not End at Launch

A WordPress site needs ongoing attention. Plugin updates, theme updates, WordPress core updates — these need to be monitored regularly. An outdated plugin is one of the most common ways WordPress sites get compromised. Security patches get released and if nobody is applying them, the vulnerability stays open.
Uptime monitoring is worth setting up too. Free tools like UptimeRobot send you an email the moment your site goes down. Without it you might not know for hours.
If ongoing maintenance is not something you want to manage yourself — or something your client cannot handle alone — having someone handle plugin updates, security checks, backups and performance monitoring on a regular basis is worth looking into. Wally Web Maintenance handles WordPress maintenance for businesses that need it done properly without adding it to their own workload.

Going live is not the end of the job. The sites that stay healthy long-term are the ones where someone is paying attention after launch — checking that everything is working, keeping things updated and catching problems before users do.
Run through this list before your next launch. Most of it takes under an hour total. The time you spend on it now is a fraction of the time you will spend fixing things after the fact.

Inches to Pixels: The Free Tool Designers Need

Usman Javed — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 10:49:39 +0000

Every designer hits this wall at some point. Your client sends over a brief with dimensions in inches. Your design software wants pixels. You know it is not a simple multiplication — resolution is involved somewhere — but unless you deal with this daily, you pause and try to remember the formula.
That pause costs you time. The Wally Inches to Pixels Converter at Wally Editing Service was built for exactly that moment.

Why the Same Inch Value Gives You Different Pixel Counts
This is the part that catches people off guard, and it is genuinely worth understanding once properly.
An inch is a fixed physical unit. It does not change. But a pixel depends entirely on resolution — specifically your PPI (pixels per inch) or DPI (dots per inch). A 6-inch canvas at 96 PPI gives you 576 pixels. That exact same 6-inch canvas at 300 DPI becomes 1,800 pixels. Same physical size, nearly three times the pixel count. Get this wrong and you end up with blurry prints, oversized files, or a design that looks nothing like what you planned.
This is why any serious inches to pixels converter has to put resolution control in your hands — not assume a default and hide it from you.

What This Tool Does Differently
The converter runs live. The moment you type a value, your result appears — no Convert button, no page reload. Type 3 inches at 96 PPI and 288px shows up before you have finished the thought. Change the PPI and everything recalculates in the same breath.
It also works both ways. Inches to Pixels when you have physical specs and need digital values. Pixels to Inches when you have a pixel dimension and need to confirm the print size. One swap button at the top flips the whole interface — input, formula, and reference table all update together.

Five Presets and a Custom Input
Most basic converters give you one resolution value and leave you to guess the rest. This one comes with five presets built in:
72 PPI — The legacy screen standard. Still relevant in certain web contexts.
96 PPI — The modern web default. Most browsers and operating systems run at this. If you are designing for screens, start here.
150 PPI — Mid-range print. Good for large-format materials like banners and posters viewed from a distance.
300 DPI — The professional print standard. Business cards, brochures, magazines — anything going to a commercial printer starts at 300.
600 DPI — High-resolution output for fine art prints, detailed technical work, or anything examined up close.
Need something outside those five? There is a custom PPI field right alongside the presets. Type any value and the converter adjusts instantly.

The Formula Shows Right Below Your Result
After every conversion, the tool displays the exact calculation it used. Convert 3 inches at 96 PPI and you see: 3 × 96 PPI = 288.00 px. It is not just handing you a number — it is showing you the working. Useful for documentation, useful for client communication, and genuinely useful for building your own instincts around how resolution and pixel counts relate over time.

One-Click Copy and a Live Reference Table
Once your result appears, one click on the output bar copies it to your clipboard. No selecting text. No keyboard shortcut. Paste straight into Photoshop, Figma, Illustrator, InDesign, Canva, your CSS file, or wherever your project lives.
The built-in Quick Reference Table handles the dimensions you reach for repeatedly. Show it or hide it with a single button. It responds to your selected mode and resolution setting — switch from Inches to Pixels to Pixels to Inches and the table flips its data to match. Change your PPI and every value in the table updates live. It is a working chart, not a static one you need to cross-reference separately.

Who Uses It and How
Web designers and front-end developers translating physical specs into pixel values for layouts, images, and CSS at the 96 PPI web standard.
Graphic designers preparing print files at 300 DPI who need exact canvas dimensions before they open their design application — because upscaling a canvas halfway through never ends well.
Photographers confirming their files have enough pixels for a quality print. A 5×7 inch print at 300 DPI needs 1,500 × 2,100 pixels. The converter confirms that in seconds.
UI/UX designers working across multiple device screen densities using the custom PPI field to handle any spec without needing a separate tool for each device.
Social media managers and content creators on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok who constantly move between pixel specs and physical print dimensions for banners, covers, and thumbnails.

Part of the Wally Tool Kit
The Inches to Pixels Converter sits inside a broader collection of free tools at Wally Editing Service — all built around saving you time on the technical side so you can stay focused on the actual creative work.
The same toolkit includes the Fancy Text Generator, TikTok Downloader, DNA to mRNA Converter, and a growing range of text and media tools — all free, all fast, all in one place.
Try the Inches to Pixels Converter at wallyeditingservice.com — no sign-up, no download, just open and use.

Wally Editing Service covers Document Editing, SEO & Article Writing, Graphic Designing, Web Design & Maintenance, and free Service Tools — all under one roof. You think the concept, we lead you to completion.