On-Page SEO

“On-page SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the practice of optimizing web pages to improve a website’s search engine rankings and earn organic traffic. It involves both content and the HTML source code of a page (unlike “off-page SEO” which refers to links and other external signals). On-page SEO has several components, each are critical for improving and maintaining a website’s visibility on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Here’s a deep dive into each of the components:

1. Content Quality

  • Originality: Unique and original content ranks higher on search engines.
  • Relevance: Content must be relevant to the searcher’s query.
  • Value: Provides useful and informative content that addresses users’ needs.

2. Keywords

  • Research: Identifying the right keywords that potential customers are using to search.
  • Placement: Strategically placing those keywords in titles, headings, and throughout the content.
  • Long-tail Keywords: Focusing on longer, more specific phrases that are less competitive.

3. Title Tags

  • Relevance: Should accurately describe the page content.
  • Length: Optimized to be within the character limit to ensure full display in SERPs.
  • Keywords: Including target keywords towards the beginning of the title tag.

4. Meta Descriptions

  • Summary: Provides a brief summary of the page content.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): A well-written meta description can improve the page’s CTR.
  • Keywords: Incorporating target keywords can also highlight relevance in searches.

5. Headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.)

  • Structure: Helps organize content for better readability and SEO.
  • Keyword Incorporation: Including keywords in headings to emphasize important aspects.

6. URL Structure

  • Simplicity: Generally, short and meaningful URLs are more effective. They should be clear and easy to read.
  • Keywords: Including keywords in URLs can enhance relevance and ranking. There are many heavier ranking signals, however, including a parts of or exactly the query that a user is likely to search for in the URL of a page is a fundamental ranking signal.

7. Alt Text for Images

  • Accessibility: Helps screen readers understand the image content.
  • SEO: Provides additional text for search engines to index.

8. Page Speed

  • Good User Experience: Faster pages are more user-friendly.
  • As a Ranking Factor: Page speed is a known ranking factor for Google. They measure it via Core Web Vitals, which are a collection of metrics calculated when measuring how fast a page loads. Learn about the business impact of Core Web Vitals.

9. Mobile Friendliness

  • Responsive Design: Ensures the site is accessible and usable on mobile devices.
  • As a Ranking Factor: There was a time when Google had separate indices for both desktop and mobile results. With mobile-first indexing, mobile friendliness is crucial for ranking. Put simply, Google prioritizes ranking pages that have a good mobile experience.

10. Internal Linking

  • Navigation: Helps users navigate your website, and search engine bots find pages. Internal linking directly affects how websites are crawled.
  • Distribution of Page Rank: Starting at your home page, each link passes Page Rank to subsequent pages. Page Rank is received from all of the external incoming links to a website from others on the internet.

12. User Engagement

  • Metrics: Metrics as the amount of clicks a page receives and the amount of time that users spend on a page before return to a SERP affect how a page ranks on Google. Therefore, by optimizing pages for user engagement is important.
  • Improvement: Enhancing content quality and user experience can improve these metrics. We look at many factors such as Organic Click Through rate and Average Engaged Session time.

13. Schema Markup