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

Creates Rich Snippets and Semantic Signals: Helps search engines understand and display content in more engaging ways. Learn more about Semantic SEO and Structured Data.
Types: There are many Schema.org structured data types that Google uses to enhance results on it’s SERPs.