On-page SEO techniques

In this online guide, you would be learning about the different aspects behind on-page SEO techniques. You will be learning about the definition and importance behind using on-page SEO. A list of techniques and trends will be discussed as under. This will be concluded with pitching in with respect to how the firm can provide its clients with a result-oriented SEO. Hence, stay tuned, to reading the article until its very end!

Topics covered in this article for on-page SEO techniques are:

What is on-page SEO?

Why is on-page SEO important?

List of trends and techniques for on-page SEO

• Publishing good content
• Optimize page titles with relevant Meta descriptions
• Meta descriptions
• Optimization of page content
• Effective heading and content formatting
• Images and other multimedia elements
• URL optimization
• Internal Links and External Links
• Page loading speeds
• Mobile friendly
• Including Blog Comments

What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO is basically anything that you do on your website for SEO purposes. Unlike this, off-page SEO is anything you do anywhere except your own website.

It can also be referred to, as the process of optimizing the structure as well as the content of the web page.

What is the goal of on-page SEO?

The goal of on-page SEO is to optimize the website for ranking in search engines. For this, you must draft content in a professional manner that it understands the search engine’s language. The content must reveal a beautiful usage of optimized techniques. This way, you allow search engine crawlers to understand the meaning as well as the context of your pages.

Why is on-page SEO important?

You find that on-page optimization is important for reasons more than one. The content provides search engines with valuable signals in terms of what it is all about. The search engine crawlers associate web pages with keywords that users can associate with. These are the keywords; users mainly type on the search box.

Not only that, but well-optimized content also has a rich blend of on-page SEO elements. This way, your content contains keywords, web browsers are exactly looking for. This way, you enhance your website’s ranking position via the top search engines of the world, namely Google, Yahoo Search, and Bing. 

List of trends and techniques

There are about 10 on-pages SEO techniques to help you catapult to higher rankings on Google Searches. Helping you unveil each of them:

Publishing good content

To look at it from a generic point of view, you need to design your website and build fantastic content. But what are the elements you keep a track off to get the content you are looking for?

To achieve the trend, these are the tips and ideas you keep a track of:

Original Content

You must make sure that your content looks original. You can use articles, texts, videos, images, info-graphics, audio clippings and a lot more. But make sure, you do not add content just by copying or re-writing from existing articles. You need to add your own flavor to it.

New Pages and their content

You can have a look at the ‘About Us’, FAQ, Contact Us, team page on your website and add some more content on regular basis. You can mix and match ideas so that you create content that doesn’t look similar or replicated from another site.

Use infographics

Support the website content with aesthetic elements like a video or an infographic snippet? Give a description box briefly mentioning what it is all about. Again, for images, try giving a text overview of what the image is all about. You can give image credits for every image you use on the site. This way, you give credit or acknowledge the work of the freelance photographer who had uploaded that picture on YouTube, Pinterest or free-ware image sources.

In-depth content

Give content that is useful for your web audiences. An online guide on cars must cover end to end aspects of what a car-buyer or a car-seller is looking for. You need to research your content well before you portray the ideas in print.

Longer articles are proven to rank better over short-scripted blogs.

Make unbiased content. Say, if you are covering the aspects of a topic that is debatable in nature, then you must try to cover both sides of the coin.

Optimize page titles with relevant Meta descriptions

This is one of the most important techniques for on-page optimization.

While search engine crawlers read the content of your webpage, they check the page title and the description of the page. The crawlers do this to enhance their understanding of what the content is all about.

 If you want to catapult your site to higher rankings, you will have to position your keywords at the right spots.

Page title optimization tips

Here are a few highlighters on how page titles can be optimized:

• You must add the relevant keywords at the beginning of each page.
• Write interesting and descriptive titles that can increase the reader’s curiosity to go through the content. The titles shouldn’t exceed 60 characters.
• Include numbers and power words to make the titles catchy and interesting. You can include words like Ultimate, Actionable, amazing, checklist, etc. as part of your titles.

 Meta descriptions

Besides the title, Meta descriptions are used in website on-page SEO and you see them in the Google search results.

You must have optimized content covering Meta descriptions in a fabulous manner. The content mustn’t exceed 160 words.

To optimize meta-descriptions, these are the tips:

• The meta description should be 150 -160 characters only.
• Use keywords at the start of the description.
• Do not use auto-generated descriptions. Try to create a unique and interesting description.
• The meta description should be action-oriented and make the user click on the URL.

Optimization of page content

Page content needs to be optimized for SEO without breaking its informative integrity.

Thorough keyword research will be the first step to understand what keywords the page is targeting. You must draw up the main keywords and semantic or secondary keywords. You can create LSI (Local Search Indexed) keywords and long-tail keywords covering the content, Meta descriptions, etc.

• Place keywords systematically. 1-2 in the first paragraph, 1-2 in the concluding paragraph in end, 1 keyword every 100 words in the main body of the content.
• Use SEO-rich keywords in the page content freely.
• Use original content, web images, info-graphics, video clippings, and other attractive peripherals. 

This is mainly because Google looks for keyword specific content. It is based on the content that your pages are indexed on top of Google’s search pages.

Effective heading and content formatting

There are 6 heading tags from h1 to h6 and the paragraph tag used generally in HTML of websites. The priority for these tags decreases from h1 to h6.

• Use Heading 1 or H1 for the main title. You must only have one H1 tag for each page. Place this h1 tag as the top of the page as possible.
• Use h2 tags for the subheadings. There can be as many h2 tags but the points covered should be a heading to justify the usage.
• Any other subheadings within h2 tags can be wrapped in h3 tags

Steps for effective content formatting:

• Convey the gist of the content via a heading. You can use 12-14 words for a long keyword-based header. This way, you allow readers to skim-read the article too.
• You can use bold, underline or italics for highlighting important aspects of content.
• Use a good font-size so that your readers or clients read them on mobile phones, laptops or desktops.
• Use three to four lines to convey info for a paragraph. You can create further subheads under the main sub-head. Else, you can bullet the points for an easier degree of understanding from the reader’s point of view.
• As a part of on-page SEO steps, this is an important highlighter. Use enough spacing in between paragraphs. Say, you use a paragraph containing 200 words; you can type the first 100 words. Give space. Then, you can continue typing the remaining portion of the paragraph.
• Create sections and break the data into easier chunks, for readers to read through.

 Images and other multimedia elements

Creating a stunning set of images definitely adds value to the content.

But you have a major drawback added to it. Search engines do not understand them. Hence, these images add to the loading speed of the webpage.

Effective ways to use images and info-graphics for SEO purpose: 

• You must make use of original images and cite their references.  
• You can optimize the size of the images. The smaller these are, the better it is! You can use photo-editing software like Photoshop or Snag It to trim or crop images.
• Check the dimension of the images being used. They should not be too big to reduce the page load speed and too small in size to pixelate.
• Prefer the use of SVGs for icons as they are light and do not pixelate.
• Use an ALT tag to describe the images. This way, search engine crawlers can understand what the image is all about. 
• Use descriptive file names. Say, you portray a handbag made from the skin of a pineapple; mention it as a Vegan Handbag or a Non-leather handbag. Do not name images as Image1.png, image2.png and so on.  
• When you have a lot of images to portray upon content, you can use a Service namely CDN. Stands for Content Delivery Network. Using this software, the pages can load faster even with images. 

URL optimization

Amid valid on-page SEO steps, URL optimization follows an important role, while you try portraying SEO rich content. You can optimize the permanent link or what is known as the Permalink. The permalinks are the unique URL of every page of the SEO content.

Good URLs should be less than 255 characters. You can use hyphens to create different parts.

Examples of good URL’s

1. https://www.studyspectrum.com/teach-online-and-earn-money-in-india
2. https://www.indiaenigma.com/things-to-do-in-india

Here, you mention the keywords too. You can, therefore, use your SEO URLs as descriptive ones by including the targeted keywords too. 

Now, you are going to learn about URL structure:

You must create URL structures in such a way that they mimic the actual structure of the website. In order to achieve the feat, these are the steps involved:

• You must group your pages into categories. This way, users and search engine crawlers understand data/content better. Your web users can also get info faster. 
• A classic example of a structured URL would be Homepage> Social Media > Facebook > Article. In other words, the users get citation articles from the Facebook page of the website.  
• Creating too many subcategories or levels can be confusing for the readers to deduce data. 
• You can add breadcrumbs to helps users navigate your webpage in a structured manner. Look at the internet to figure out how you can add breadcrumb menus.  

Internal Links and External Links

Building effective links form the backbone of a content that is well-optimized. Here are the reasons why you need internal/ external links for the content.

• Having a good set of internal and external links is like a web-building exercise of spiders. They would take both internal and external links while indexing your webpage. 
• If you highlight important links, you can use them as citation sources. Readers also go through various pages in the website through these URLs. 
• You can tell the search engines about the pages they have not yet discovered. This is one of the most interesting aspects covering on-page optimization techniques. For the simple reason, you allow your website points to those sections of the content that is worth catching the reader’s attention.
• When you have an optimized set of internal/external links, it reduces the bounce rate among users. In other words, your web users spend more time reading through the content.

These are some of the best practices for linking your content

• Do not use keywords for your internal/external links. 
• You need to add relevant links so that users get the info they are exactly looking for. 
• Do not add more than 5 links (3 Internal and 2 External) per page of 1000 words. 
• Add links on the main body of the homepage. It is not advisable to use links on the footers or sidebars. 
• Use proper external links to enhance the trustworthiness of your site. 
• You can use external links so that Google understands the topics you have covered throughout the content.

Page loading speeds

Page load speed is an important criterion in SEO and should be emphasized.

A slight delay or a snag on the web loading speed can increase the bounce rate by almost 90%. In other words, if your web page doesn’t open within the first 2-3 seconds, web users will leave your page.

This can have an adverse effect on your sales conversions too.

Hence, on-page SEO techniques include higher page loading speeds, as one of the top-most priorities.

Mobile friendly

You must optimize your website to be responsive to mobile phones and other small screens. Mobile responsiveness and page speed are a crucial factor in Google SEO ranking.

Having mobile-friendly techniques can help you create business deals, increase sales conversions and help readers go through your blog snippets too. They can do this while traveling or while they are out there on the move.

Including Blog Comments

You can optimize content via leading social media sites. Some of these include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For this to happen, you must include the comments section. This way, people can post their comments after reading a section of your content.

• Here are the best practices on how you can add user-friendly blog comments:
• Have a moderator to moderate comments before you publish the same on the site. 
• Avoid publishing comments that are too generic. 
• Only approve those comments that are site-specific and add value to content. 
• Approve comments of users who use real names.  
• You must make an earnest effort to reply to comments. This will encourage more people to comment. 

You have seen some of the top on-page SEO techniques to optimize web content, description links, URLs, images and a lot more. Having a well-optimized content can provide you with a result-oriented SEO. You can help your site rank ahead of mediocre ones. This way, you can help your business grow. You can enhance conversion rates. You can capture a lion’s share in the market for your fleet of products or services. Hence, following up with these techniques are the need of the hour. 

If you have a website that requires On-page SEO optimization, you certainly know whom to call. Contact us today!