On-page SEO is the process of making sure the content is useful and gives the user a great experience. In the past, many businesses just used keyword stuffing, which means they put their keywords as many times as they could in the content. This made it hard for people to use. Today, smart keyword targeting is part of on-page optimization. This means that keywords are used in key elements while still giving the user a good experience. This means that your content is easy to understand and gives the user what they want.
A Content Management System (CMS) is used to make changes, so even someone who isn’t technical should be able to keep it up to date. There is work to do right away and work that keeps going on. If you use a modern CMS like WordPress, it should be easy to target keywords in key elements. This includes making images, headings, the main body of text, meta description tags, and title tags.
Read our blog What is Search Engine Optimization? that will help improve a website to increase its visibility when people search for products or services.
Pre-Click and Post-Click Optimization
On-page optimization can be broken down into two groups: pre-click and post-click.
Pre-click on-page optimization is what a user can see on the search engine results page (SERP) before they click on a result. The title tag, the URL, and the meta description are all part of it. The goal of pre-click optimization is to get the user to click on your listing. This is why it’s important to make sure your SERP listing is optimized so you can use Rankbrain to improve your organic performance.
Post-click on-page optimization is what the user sees when they click on your listing and land on your website. It has the main text, the main heading, and any subheadings. It also has links and pictures.
Title Tags
Title tags are the most important thing to get right on a page after the main body copy. They are the first thing a user sees when they do a search, and search engines pay close attention to the words that are used. This, in turn, will affect how well your website ranks. If you right-click on a web page in Chrome and choose “View page source,” you can see the title tag in the source code. Corporate Training | Digital Marketing Institute will be the title of this website page.
Title tags are a very important part of on-page SEO.
- Heavy Weight: They are the most important place to put keywords and are a strong SEO signal.
- Higher Rankings: If a web page is done right, it will be ranked higher.
- First View: They are the first thing a searcher sees. They are shown as blue links that can be clicked on.
- As part of your SEO plan, you must put your most important keywords in the page title tag: When optimizing title tags, it’s essential to get the right mix of keywords. Title tag optimization is one reason why keyword research is so important. If your title tag looks like a long list of keywords, you might be thought of as a spammer. If, on the other hand, it includes your main keywords and is written in natural, interesting English, it should work well.
Here are some tips:
- Include main keywords (both primary and secondary)
- Put the most important words closer to the beginning.
- Use “Primary Keyword—Secondary Keyword—Brand Name” as the best format.
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Use the Blank Space: There is only so much room in a title tag, and this space is used differently on mobile and desktop devices. Also, this length can change over time, so before making any changes, it’s important to find out what the best length is. To make title tags that work well, you can use tools like the Portent SERP Preview Tool.
Be descriptive and interesting. Use natural language to describe the page and give the searcher a reason to click through. Again, Rankbrain cares about CTR.
Meta-Descriptions
Meta description tags can only be seen in the search engine results pages and in the source code. When you look at a page’s main content, you can’t see them. A meta description tag is a short piece of descriptive text that appears under the URL in a SERP.
On-page optimization includes meta description tags, although they don’t affect page rankings. Keywords in your meta description won’t directly affect clickthroughs like title tags do, but they will affect listing clickthroughs.
Meta description tags encourage searchers to click on your item. The meta description tag bolds search terms, making them more clickable.
Google will sometimes write its own meta description tag for a web page if the owner has left it blank or if it doesn’t seem relevant enough. However, there are ways to make your meta description work better.
- Keep it brief and to the point. Make sure it’s no more than two short sentences.
- Max desktop: 156 characters (this may vary)
- Max mobile: 115 characters
- Use the SERP Preview tool to check the length
- Be careful with the words you use. You’ve probably already used a lot of keywords in your title tag, so don’t use them all again in your meta description. This is called keyword stuffing. Since keywords don’t affect rankings, it’s best only to include your P1 keyword, which will likely be bolded when it’s searched for.
- Be clear and interesting. Make sure your meta description is both clear and interesting. If your page has anything that makes it stand out, list it here to get people to click through.
URLs
URL stands for “Uniform Resource Locator,” which is another name for a web address. Between the title tags and the meta description tags are the URLs. Over time, a page’s URL will get a reputation for trust and authority. If you change a URL without redirecting it in the right way, you could lose trust. Because of this, it is best not to change a URL if you can help it. Instead, try to get them right from the start.
Why do URLs matter? URLs aren’t very important for SEO on a page. They get people to click on them from search results and help search engines find and index pages.
URLs are often made out of the page’s main heading. This is a good default because it adds relevance. But the problem is that they often get too long and boring and need to be cut down. When making a web page’s URL, you should:
- Include your P1 keyword or a similar word
- Keep it brief and to the point (around 70 characters before truncation)
- Put the URL at the very start
- Keep to the rules, like using dashes and lowercase letters.
Headings
The most important parts of post-click on-page optimization are the headings, the main body copy, and the images.
Headings help give an overview of what a page is about. They are used on a website in the same way as they are in Microsoft Word. The main heading should go in an H1 tag, secondary headings should go in H2 tags, tertiary headings should go in H3 tags, and so on up to H6 tags.
In the past, it was thought to be bad form to have more than one H1 tag, so it’s best to use H2 tags for secondary headings and H3 tags for tertiary headings.
H1 elements for secondary and tertiary headings are search engine friendly since HTML5. Hierarchical header tags, which have been used for years, are best for this.
The headings on a web page are very important. Users look at the headings of a page to decide if they want to read the whole page or not. They are a medium-weight SEO signal on the page and make the page more relevant. There are six header tags, H1 through H6, that can be used to show how the content on a web page is organized.
- An H1 tag should be used for the main heading.
- H2 tags should be used for subheadings that come next.
- H3–H6 tags aren’t used as much in body copy, but they still work the same way as subheadings in a hierarchy.
- When making headings for a web page, it’s important to make sure they make sense to the user and aren’t just for SEO. But it’s also a good idea to use your P1, P2, and P3 keywords in your headers. The key is to use them naturally instead of stuffing them in.
Keywords
The keywords should be chosen based on the type of page. Depending on the type of page, adding keywords can work in different ways:
Transactional pages tend to focus more on keywords and usually include the main keyword or a close version of it.
Informational pages, like blog posts, tend to focus more on the user and sometimes include the main keyword or a close version of it.
The keywords should also be used in the right way. Look for places where you can put your targeted keywords or words with similar meanings in the heading.
Length: There are no hard and fast rules about how long the main copy of your website should be, but it should meet the user’s expectations and give them what they were looking for. It should also be long enough that search engines can figure out what the page is about. Informational queries can be over a thousand words long, while e-Commerce queries can be as short as 100 words.
Keywords: Don’t repeat keywords too often in the main copy, but do use synonyms or close variations of keywords if you can do so while keeping the language natural and easy to read.
Hyperlinks
In SEO, linking to a page helps that page. How you link to pages on your own site is a big part of how search engines rank your site.
Relevance: Anchor text that is easy to understand and describes the linked page will pass more relevance to the receiving page. Make sure you link to your most important pages often.
Reputation: Linking to internal pages is a good way to build reputation, so the more internal links a page has, the more important it is thought to be and the better chance it has of ranking.
Images
Image optimization is important because it is a lightweight on-page SEO signal and makes your page more relevant. Alt text should be added to images because screen readers often read it out loud to people who can’t see it. Search engines look at the alt text for images, which gives you a good chance to add more keywords to your website.
Three easy things you can do to make your images better are:
- Add a caption to the picture. Alt text in the CMS of your website
- Try to describe the picture as best you can, which sometimes means using keywords.
- Make them short, usually between two and five words.
- Give the pictures on your website’s media library names that make sense. CMS
- Make them short, usually between two and five words.
- Filenames and Alt text don’t always have to be the same.
- Make images web-friendly
- Use .gif, .jpeg,.png, and .svg
- Find the right balance between file size and quality.
- SVGs are becoming more popular. Since they are scalable vectors, they have high image quality and small file sizes, but they are mainly used for computer-made images instead of photographs.
First, the Alt text and file names should be clear and accurate. Then, they should include keywords or related words.
Optimizing for user satisfaction is an important part of your on-page optimization strategy and has to do with the rank brain. Optimizing your website to make users happier means making sure your content gives them the answers they’re looking for on search engines. Among these are:
- Getting a lower bounce rate
- Improving dwell time
- Getting more people to click through
- Getting things done better
