Table of Contents
What is On page SEO?
On page SEO is optimizing the content & discoverability of your website for users and searchers. With the goal of increasing your page rankings in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and increasing your website’s organic traffic. On page SEO typically includes the optimization of keywords, page contents, page titles, meta tags, header tags, internal & external links, path URLs, and images.
Why Does On page SEO Improve The Performance Of Your Business?
For search engines like Google to identify the context of your pages, they will use basic signals such as keywords. Search engines try their best to provide the most relevant website to each search query entered by a searcher. Hence, the practice of on page SEO is making the elements inside your webpages to be as relevant as possible to a search query. The more relevant your website is to a search query, to more likely that you’ll rank higher. And the higher you rank, the more discoverability and exposure it will get. The graph above shows that higher-positioned websites will enjoy more clicks. Your business will gain more opportunity of getting sales from more traffics.
How To Do On page SEO Optimization For Your Webpages
We will break down the elements of SEO Optimization so that it’s easier for you to follow. Let’s go!
Keywords
We have previously mentioned the word relevancy before and we will mention it again now. Relevancy! All of your web pages require to have a focus keyword (also known as a seed keyword). Search Engines will detect your keywords to identify the context of your website, and deliver it to the most relevant query.
It is however important to remember not to flood your webpage with your keyword. This is a practice (called keyword stuffing) that is identifiable by search engines and will result negatively on your web page rankings. Keyword density (% of how many times you use your keyword compared to the total words in your page or content) is something you need to look out for. We recommend having around 1 – 2% keyword density.
Tips: Use semantic keywords (keywords that are related to your focus keyword) to help search engines identify your page.
Many SEO experts recommend using your keyword in the first 100 – 150 words of your content. This is because the first words of your content hold more weight in determining what the whole page is about.
Lastly, you need to understand the intent behind a search and ask yourself this question: Does my page serve and meet the intention behind a search? The 4 basic search intents are informational, transactional, navigational, and local. We’ve discussed this topic on a blog about keyword optimization.
Read More: SEO Keyword Optimization To Benefit Your Business In The Long-term & Short-term In 2023
Tips: Avoid having multiple pages competing against the same keyword. This will confuse search engines and might hurt your page rankings. This negative practice is called keyword cannibalization.
Page Contents
At the end of the day, you are writing your content for people, not robots. Your content needs to prioritize your readers, not search engines. Therefore, rich content is very important for a page. Rich content is often associated with the quality of information and word count. Although this is not a ranking factor in search engines, rich content gives you more opportunities for backlinks as well as people sharing your content. Backlinks and social shares are important ranking factors.
Although a word count is important, we believe that the depth of your content is more important. Your blog needs to cover as many topics as possible. Furthermore, you can use top pages on SERPs as a benchmark. You have to compare your web pages to these top pages and try to offer more value to your readers.
Page Titles, Meta Description & Meta Robots
Page title (also known as title tag) is a short group of words that represent your page on SERPs. For SEO, the best practice is to keep it under 70 characters. Above 70 characters will result in your title tag being cut off and this won’t be optimal for your page. For PPC (pay-per-click), the best practice is to keep it under 30 characters for each headline (Google can show up to 3 headlines in one title). Page titles have to contain your keywords, it is a ranking factor of most search engines, and it provides searchers with a context of what your page is about.
Insight: It is not necessary to have your brand name in the page title. However, it is a good brand awareness tool. If your business name is well-known, having your brand name in the page title becomes a really good idea as it will increase CTR (click-through-rate).
A meta description is a snippet that summarizes your page content. Your meta description can be as long as possible, however, this may result in a cut-off, similar to page titles. The best practice for SEO is to keep it around 150 – 160 characters. For PPC, the best practice is to keep it under 90 characters for each description (Google can show up to 2 descriptions per ad).
Meta robots is an HTML code that gives instructions to search engine crawlers on what they can and cannot do inside your page. This function includes Noindex, Index, Follow, Nofollow, Noarchive, Nocachce, and so on. For example, if you do not wish to index your page on search engines, you may use this HTML code:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
Header Tags
A header tag is an HTML code that separates the headings and subheadings inside your page. Header tag ranges from H1 – H6, H1 represents your biggest heading (usually the title of your content) whilst H6 is your smallest heading. For example, you are writing a blog about technical SEO.
Here is an example of how you would want to structure your page:
<h1> Technical SEO <h1>
<h2> What Is Technical SEO <h2>
<h2> Technical SEO Optimisation <h2>
<h2> Usability <h2>
<h3> Core Web Vitals <h3>
<h3> Page Speed <h3>
Your page structure will look like this:
Technical SEO
What Is Technical SEO
Technical SEO Optimisation
Usability
Core Web Vitals
Page Speed
Internal & External Links
Internal & external links are hyperlinks placed on an anchor text that take users from one page to another. Internal links will take users from one page of your website to another page of your website while external links will take users from your web page to someone else’s webpage.
Internal links are important for your website because it drives traffic to other pages on your website. Additionally, it will assist search engine crawlers to find other pages inside your domain. Optimizing your internal link will increase engagement of your website, increase user-friendliness, drive traffic around your pages, and will make sure that your pages will be indexed on search engines. We’ve written an introductory guide to internal linking and how it helps with your on page SEO optimization.
Read More: Introductory To Internal Linking in SEO – Definition & How It Helps Your On Page SEO
External links, specifically backlinks, are hyperlinks from another website to yours. Backlinks are one of the top-ranking factors for a website in many search engines. They are basically an upvote for your website’s credibility. Getting a backlink from a credible website will increase your website’s domain authority. And the more credible your website is, the higher your position will be on SERPs. We’ve written an introductory guide to backlinks and how to receive more backlinks.
Read More: Introductory Guide To SEO Backlinks – How It Benefits Your Website In 2023
URL
URL shortens for Uniform Resource Locator, is your webpage address. Although not a big deal for your web pages’ ranking, an optimized URL will increase users’ experience. Your URL needs to be concise, short, and easy to read. Including your keyword on your URL is a good idea as it helps search engines and users to identify the context of your page.
Here is an example of a good URL:
https://www.satuvision.com/social-media-advertising/
Here is an example of a bad URL:
https://www.satuvision.com/social%med%ads=922/
Tips: Do not use space on your URL. A space will be read as %. Instead, use – (dash) to separate your words.
Images
Your image optimization covers 3 main things: image alt text, image size, and caption. Image alt text (alternative text) is a text that will appear whenever an image failed to load. Your image alt text needs to accurately describe what the image is about. This is beneficial for users to understand an image when it fails to load and helps search engines to understand what images are present on a webpage. Image size affects user experience due to page speed. As discussed previously, page speed is a critical factor in SERPs ranking. The best practice is to compress your image to under 100kb. Additionally, a huge image often is unfriendly to mobile users. A caption is a text that describes your image. The difference between caption and alt text is that caption will be shown simultaneously with your image while alt text will only show whenever your image fails to load. Similarly, your caption needs to accurately describe your image to increase user-friendliness. What’s better for the user is always better for your page rankings.
Conclusion
If you address everything that we mentioned in this blog, your website will start seeing an increase in performance. A well on page SEO optimized website is often associated with increased organic traffic, better SERPs ranking, increased CTR, and better crawl rate.
Good luck!
