SEO stands for search engine optimization which is the practice of improving the quality of a website to improve the quality and quantity of traffic. It directly targets organic traffic that isn’t generated by any paid ads or forms of marketing. This practice has become more popular in recent years with the rise of digital marketing and now requires a specialist to perform. There are three types of SEO; on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. Here is all you need to know about on-page SEO:
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the process and techniques used in optimizing a website’s content for search engines. It targets certain front-end and back-end components that helps in bringing more traffic to a website. It’s what makes your site speak the language of search engine crawlers, enabling them to ‘read’ your content and understand it to index it. On-page refers to certain elements on a website’s page that are optimized like the HTML code, content, title tags, internal links, and URLs.
On-page SEO vs. Off-page SEO
So how is on-page SEO different from off-page SEO? On-page SEO’s foundation is to take direct measures within the website like using valuable keywords or optimizing content and meta tags and other factors like mobile accessibility and page performance. On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to factors that are outside the website. While you can control on-page SEO, off-page SEO is more about exposure and brand awareness. It includes the practice of link building, domain authority, local SEO, and pay per click (PPC), which is directly connected to social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
How to Apply On-Page SEO?
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Make Your Site Fast
Site speed is one of the most important ranking factors in on-page SEO. This is the era of speed, so no one has the time to wait for a page to load to view its content. You can use Google Pagespeed Insights to check each page’s speed on your site and test it to make the necessary adjustments. A faster and more professional tool to test site speed is Ahrefs’ Site Audit, which will scan your website pages and highlight which ones need to be optimized for speed. Reducing image sizes and minimizing HTML are useful tricks to make your page load quicker.
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Update MetaData and Heading Tags
It’s important that you know about updating metadata and heading tags. If you want to optimise your website for SEO efficiently, these two elements are essential to focus on. Metadata consists of a meta title, which is the page’s title, and the meta description, which gives a brief about the page’s content. To optimize your pages for search engine results pages (SERPs), it is best to use your main keyword in your meta title as long as you keep them within 50-60 characters. The meta description gives visitors an idea of your content, and while it does not directly affect on-page optimization, it still helps in driving traffic to your site. As for heading tags, they are what divides up your content to H2, H3, H4, etc., making it easier for SERPs to ‘read’ your page.
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Keep URLs Short and Simple
Consider your website’s URL like an address that you want people to always visit, so you need to make it easy to remember. There are two aspects to work on; URL optimization and URL structure. URL optimization entails including your main keywords, keeping your URL less than 255 characters, and using hyphens to separate it with a permanent link (slug) at the end of each unique URL. As for URL structure, it should be similar to the website’s actual structure, using categories and subcategories to group the different pages of your site. Here is an example of a well-structured URL: https://www.example.com/category/subcategory/keyword.html
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Create High-Quality Content
Content is the heart and soul of your website; it tells both your visitors and search engines all there is to know about your business or activity. It gives visitors the answer they originally searched for and search engines the context to help them index it. Creating unique valuable content, not duplicated, is SEO friendly, and satisfies search intent is how search engines can understand and therefore rank your pages. Content optimization is a vast aspect of on-page SEO and has many techniques, but there are some basics to stick to for the best results. Researching your keywords to find new topic ideas, including your keywords in the first 100 words of the page in headings and paragraphs, optimizing it with images, and adding internal links are just some of the techniques that can go a long way in helping you rank in search engines.
There you have it. These are all the basics of on-page SEO and how to apply it. However, each technique and aspect needs its own thorough research and testing before applying it to your site. You’ll want to perfect each technique before trying it for your business. With the right application of these techniques, you can guarantee a huge difference in your site traffic as well as the site’s ranking on search engines.
