Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of a websites’ traffic for a higher SERP ranking. (Google Search)
In today’s digital world whether you have a big or small business, it is important to optimize a website’s on page SEO to improve the websites’ organic search result.
What is On page SEO?
On page SEO also known as on-site SEO is the practice of optimizing a websites’ content to rank higher on SERP. It includes various tactics that help the web pages’ content rank higher for a target keyword and deliver search results that meet user intent.
Why is On page SEO important?
In order to understand your websites’ content and determine whether the content is a relevant result for a particular search term, Google checks some of the following:
1. Fresh Content –
Google prefers if your content is always up to date.
2. Keyword Usage –
The number of times it has been used in a piece of content
3. High-quality content –
While writing any blog or for that matter any piece of content for a website it is important to main quality.
4. Internal & External Links –
Thus, On-page SEO becomes important.
Without this, your website could be missing out on opportunities to rank higher for relevant search queries related to your business.
Without a search engine optimization strategy your website would get pushed down in search results by your competitors.
Therefore, developing an effective on page SEO strategy to improve your rankings in search results becomes necessary.
Here are the key SEO factors you should focus on to create an effective on-page SEO strategy :
1. Target keyword and its frequency:
On page SEO starts with finding the right keyword for a particular blog or article. The target keyword should be relevant to the main topic or theme of the content and should have a high monthly search volume & relevant to your target audience so that it improves your websites’ search ranking.
You should select one primary keyword for your content. You also need to make sure your primary keyword isn’t assigned to any other piece of content.
Once, you have selected your primary keyword you should develop a content plan for your keyword. This would help you in knowing how and where you will use your keyword. You can also decide whether the keyword would be a timely blog post, evergreen content, or a landing page.
After all this, you need to perform keyword optimization to improve keyword rankings. Here’s a quick checklist for that:
- Include your primary keyword in the title of your blog post or article.
- Use your primary keyword once in the first 100-150 words of your article.
- Avoid keyword stuffing.
- Use the primary keyword to create a 2-3% keyword density.
- Adding the primary keyword to Meta Title & Description
2. Title and Subheading:
Wrap title in an H1 tag:
The title of your page should be wrapped in an H1 title tag. An H1 title tag is an important ranking factor and is used by search engine bots to figure out what a page is about.
Wrap subheadings in an H2 tag:
Wrapping the subheadings in an H2 tag helps search engines identify the subheadings in your content and the main points of your content. Break the content into sections and use descriptive subheadings (H2-H6) for hierarchy.
3. Meta title and Meta description:
A meta title is the first thing that users look at and it is also the blue colour title that appears on Search Engine Results Pages.
Here are a few good practices for creating a good meta title
- It should have fewer than 60-70 characters,
- Include the primary keyword at the beginning of the content
- Add a unique title for each page
- Write for the customer
- Avoid duplicate title tags.
A meta description is a piece of information that summarizes and describes the content of your web page to help users and search engines understand the content better.
Google often shows a web page’s meta description as a descriptive snippet in the SERP.
You can use these tips to write a compelling description:
- Match search intent by providing relevant content for what searchers are looking for.
- Use active voice in the content to address the searcher directly.
- Be concise.
- Include your primary keyword.
- Have fewer than 160 characters
4. Internal and External links:
Link building is an important component of SEO. Linking to relevant internal and external sources can help you direct visitors to sources of information. Example: Facts, Statistics etc.
Adding relevant internal links from blogs or pages to other potential pages helps drive traffic to new content, additionally, it is recommended the anchor tag is set to a target keyword to build relevancy.
Links leading to other websites (external links) also helps search engine robots understand your content. Therefore include relevant, valuable, and high-quality backlinks can help direct relevant visitors to your site.
5. Content:
The most important element of SEO is content. Even when you are creating SEO content for ranking, you should always remember that your primary focus should be your readers.
Both readers and search engines like content that is easy to understand. You should aim at creating high-quality page content that is useful, valuable, and well-written.
Having low-quality content or irrelevant content with good quality backlinks on a mobile-friendly site won’t help you to rank on SERP as effectively as reputable sites.
To gain a higher search ranking in 2021 you should focus on the following factors:
- The uniqueness of Content: A unique content doesn’t always mean avoiding duplicate content, it involves various other content elements too. The uniqueness of content is defined when something new is added to a piece of content. This something new could be a new strategy, improved design and UX, a new case study, and so on.
- Valuable Content: Making content unique to stand out in the competition is necessary, but it’s not enough. So, to make your content more noticeable you need to make it valuable to users.
Here are some of the ways in which you can create user-friendly content:
Details: Adding details such as images, screenshots & videos help improve visual content on a website, this also improves readability
Updates: Regular updates of new strategies, and steps make content valuable.
Experts: When content is written by an expert who has expertise in a particular field, that content holds more value to users.
- Search intent: Content that is unique and valuable can help you rank higher on search engines. But, if you want to stay at a higher ranking your content must satisfy search intent. The content on your page should be able to satisfy what a Google searcher is looking for.
6. URLs for SEO:
A Uniform resource locator is mostly known as a “web address” that specifies the location of a web page on the internet. A SEO-friendly URL helps in enhancing user experience and thereby improves the websites’ search engine ranking.
Some of the best practices for URLs for SEO are:
- Keeping URLs simple, relevant, and accurate is the key to make both your users and search engines understand them (a prerequisite to rank well).
- To improve the readability, you can use hyphens to separate words. URLs should not have underscores, spaces, or any other characters to separate words.
- Avoid the usage of URL parameters, as they can create difficulties with tracking duplicate content. If parameters need to be used, use them separately.
7. Optimization for CTR :
CTR refers to the Click-through rate that is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. Organic click-through rate is important as it is one of the Google ranking factors and increasing CTR helps in increasing more organic traffic to your website.
Organic CTR can be improved in the following ways:
1.Identifying keyword cannibalization:
Keyword cannibalization means all your blog posts and articles on your website rank for the same or similar keyword. For example, if you have two posts on the same topic, Google won’t be able to distinguish which article should rank higher for a particular query.
As a result, both the posts will rank lower. You can identify and fix keyword cannibalization by using keyword cannibalization tools by SEMrush and Ahrefs.
2.Utilize schema markup:
Schema Markup is a structured data vocab that helps search engines understand the content on your website. The user can easily check the details of your websites’ page at a glance which would help them decide whether to click on or move on to a more relevant one.
Good schema markups can even lower your bounce rate and help you get more relevant clicks to your website.
3. Structure content for the featured snippet:
Featured snippet is the search result that is featured on top of Googles’ organic search results, below the ads in a box. It aims at answering a users’ query. Featured snippets can offer higher visibility to searchers and can drastically improve organic CTR.
8.UX signals:
UX means User Experience. UX signals are the behavioural patterns considered by Google to determine the user‘s experience on your website. When your UX is good, more users visit your website and this will increase the chances of your website rank higher on SERP.
Click-through rate (CTR) and bounce rate are two of the most crucial of these behavioural metrics.
- Click through rate: CTR is the number of users who click on your website divided by the impressions (numbers of times your site is visible) on SERP for a particular keyword.
A higher CTR helps you to rank better on the search engine results page (SERP)
Thus it becomes important to monitor each page’s CTR. This would help in identifying the loopholes and improving them to have a higher CTR.
- Bounce Rate: The bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then immediately exit the site without any engagement with the site. A high bounce rate indicates that your websites’ actual content isn’t engaging or valuable to create user interaction.
You can improve your websites’ bounce rate by
1. Optimizing page loading time
2. Structuring content for mobile users
3. Using Internal links
4. Image optimization
- Google Analytics: Google analytics can be of great help when it comes to measuring UX signals. With Google Analytics, you can easily monitor CTR and bounce rate. You can also see how long users stay on each page of your website.
Conclusion
An effective On page SEO strategy will help you optimize your content well so that Google improves your visibility on SERPs.
But to get your website to rank better you would also need a complete SEO checklist that means adding off-page SEO and technical SEO checklist to your strategy.
We have upcoming guides on off-page SEO and technical SEO which are coming soon.
What are your thoughts on On page SEO?
If you have questions let me know in the comments below and I will be sure to answer them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) :
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO vs. off-page SEO: What's the difference?
What are the best on-page SEO tools?
Some of the best SEO tools are:
a. Keyword Planner (keyword research tool)
b. Google Analytics
c. Google Search Console
Here is a guide on free SEO Tools to help you get started
What are On-Page ranking factors for SEO?
Some of the most important on-page SEO ranking factors are:
a. Keyword Research
b.URL optimization
c. Meta tags
d. Header tags
e. Content optimization
Is on page SEO compulsory for off-page SEO?
What do you want from your content?
How do I increase my site speed?
How do I know if my website is fast?
Here's how it works head over to google page speed insights:
Step #1: Enter Your URL and Click “Search”
Step #2: Click “Analyze” in the Left Sidebar
Step #3: Scroll down to “Site Speed”
You're shown the loading time for both desktop & mobile devices and ways to improve it.
How does SEO work?
SEO boils down to 3 crucial factors:
a. Crawlability: The search engine begins to scan all types of content on the internet
b. Indexing: This where the search engine analyzes, categorizes, stores and presents the data on SERPs
c. Ranking: The search engine presents the results on different pages SEPP by looking into the index.
Here is a detailed blog on how SEO works.
