As every Internet user knows, SEO - Search Engine Optimization, is incredibly important. You can’t get visitors without a high ranking with the search engines, and this is where search engine optimization -SEO- comes in.
You have a website because you want to have visitors, and without visitors, there’s really no reason to have a website at all – right? If you want your site to work, you have to know how to make search engines work for you.
Search engine optimization can be used to get you more visitors than you ever dreamed of, and that’s the whole point of the Internet.
Your website consists of many different pages, and every single one of these pages can be maximized for search engine optimization.
But search engines can be a tricky thing, and not everyone knows how to really use them.
Using your search engine techniques on every page will definitely increase your web traffic and your ranking with the search engines.
The tips below will help you turn your site into a number one:
Here is a summary of all on-page SEO techniques:
- Publish high-quality content.
- Optimize page titles and meta descriptions.
- Optimize page content.
- Headings and content formatting.
- SEO Images and other multimedia elements.
- URL optimization.
- Internal links.
- External links.
- Page loading speed.
- Mobile-friendliness.
Publish High-Quality Content
When dealing with SEO, you always need to have in mind the following:
-A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO.
-A website with bad content will not survive with or without SEO.
-A website with good content can become even better with SEO!
So, what is considered good content?
High-quality content has the following characteristics:
- Original content (articles, text, images, videos, presentations, infographics, comments, etc.).
- Content exclusive for your website – Even if it’s your own content, if you have already published it on another website then it’s not good for your site.
- Content that is useful – Don’t publish content for the sake of publishing. Before hitting the publish button make sure that what goes live adds value to your website and readers.
- Content that is well researched – Users don’t want to read quickly prepared posts and neither do search engines. Long articles are proven to rank better than short articles.
- Unbiased content – If you are writing about a certain topic or answering a question make sure that what you write is justified and covers both sides of a story.
Optimize Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page.
Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result and are important for usability, SEO, and social sharing.
The title tag of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page's content.
Optimal title length
Google typically displays the first 50–60 characters of a title tag.
If you keep your titles under 60 characters, our research suggests that you can expect about 90% of your titles to display properly.
The meta description is an HTML attribute that provides a brief summary of a web page. Search engines such as Google often display the meta description in search results, which can influence click-through rates.
Optimal length
Meta descriptions can be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets to 155–160 characters.
so we recommend descriptions between 50–160 characters. Keep in mind that the "optimal" length will vary depending on the situation, and your primary goal should be to provide value and drive clicks.
Optimal format
Meta description tags, while not tied to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from SERPs.
These short paragraphs are a webmaster's opportunity to "advertise" content to searchers, and searchers' chance to decide whether the content is relevant and contains the information they're seeking from their search query.
A page's meta description should intelligently (read: in a natural, active, non-spammy way) employ the keywords that the page is targeting, but also create a compelling description that a searcher will want to click.
It should be directly relevant to the page it describes, and unique from the descriptions for other pages.
Optimize Pagemeta Content
You may have come across the SEO proverb, Content is King. As I told you in the beginning, the SEO industry is so volatile that things change over time.
Content is still a deciding factor, but defining the quality of the content depends on varying factors.
You may have come across scenarios wherein your high-quality content fails to make it to the first page of the Google Search list.
The major reason for this is that the content has been written without much audience research.
If you create long-form content on a topic that is not in the interest of the target audience, chances are you won’t get organic traffic despite the best optimization efforts.
What you as an SEO must do is identify the most searched queries of the targets and try to give them the answers through your content.
Proper keyword research will help you find the most searched query string, and you can use them within the content to rank high on search engines.
Check out our in-depth article on how to do keyword research to learn the various ways of finding keywords that get you to the No.1 position on Google Search.
In addition to this, the best strategy would be to identify the kind of content that is working for your competitors and emulate it on your website.
However, emulating doesn’t mean copying or scraping the content.
Google hates websites that do this and things can go awry if you indulge in such practices. The best way to do this is to identify the content from the competitors and put it down in your perspective by adding more input, data, and research.
Optimize Heading Tags
The heading tags within a page give both search engines and their users a fair idea of the topic that they are reading.
When it comes to crawlers, especially Google’s, the H1 tag comes off as an important ranking element.
Placing the target keyword within the H1, which usually is the page title, carries the same ranking weight as optimizing the Meta Title.
In the majority of cases, Google will consider the H1 tag of a page if there is no predefined Meta title.
using the different variations of the heading tag will definitely provide Google with ample information about the main topics and the following subtopics.
This can add more value since featured snippets are picked up based on the sub-topics listed under each article.
Optimize Images for SEO
Nowadays, web users are extremely distracted while reading the content that you have written and published.
The attention span of people has reduced considerably, and monotonous text is one of the factors why they tend to shift their attention.
Images are one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing and communication as it’s consumed on-the-go, unlike other resources such as video or audio.
In addition to this, there is a high chance that you can garner more organic traffic through Google Image Search.
However, for SEO professionals, optimizing images for search engines is one of the core organic SEO techniques that will help boost the organic presence of websites.
Importance of Optimizing Images for Search Engines
One of the biggest mistakes done by webmasters not optimizing images for search engines.
While most SEOs optimize the other aspects of on-page, including title, description, etc., optimizing images is still considered technical on-page SEO and they leave it for the designer or the developer to implement.
Images should not be ignored if you’re aiming to top the Google SERP. Just think of a website that has high-quality content and good quality backlinks.
The pages within the site have all reasons to rank, but if it has an image that doesn’t follow the image optimization guidelines, it will negatively affect the overall ranking of the website, resulting in wasted optimization efforts.
If you’re someone who used to think that fixing the Alt text of the images alone can help in ranking on the Google SERP, then this guide is going to be a revelation for you.
After reading through the tips that we are about to provide, you will be amazed to know the different ways of optimizing images and finding solutions to some of the pressing issues that are pulling your website down in rankings.
How to Optimize Your Alt Text?
The image alt text is an important on-page SEO factor that website owners leave unattended. The alt text is usually a description of an image added to a website.
This comes in handy for web browsers when the image fails to load on a page. In such cases, the text used within the alt description will fill the image space and provide users with context. Apart from this, a written copy appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user’s screen.
Apart from this, Alt text plays an important role in On-page optimization as search engines value it for helping the visually impaired understand the content.
URL optimization
When it comes to URLs, using ‘clean’ URLs with a simple structure is encouraged by Google.
- Clean URLs are short, simple, and intelligible: as an example, if you were selling yellow bags, it would be advisable to use a URL of http://www.yourdomain.com/yellow-bags rather than www.yourdomain.com/prd/p223/ref1456_zblue_cr
- Break up your URLs with punctuation when needed to make keywords more obvious to both Google and users as for example www.yourdomain.com/white-watches is better than www.yourdomain.com/whitewatches).
- Use hyphens rather than underscores to denote spaces as for example www.yourdomain.com/yellow-bags is preferred to www.yourdomain.com/yellow _bags).
Internal Links vs. External Links
Internal links are hyperlinks that direct the reader to a target page on your website, whereas an external link is a hyperlink that directs the reader to a reputable page on a different website.
External links may seem counterintuitive — after all, you don't want customers clicking on links that direct them away from your site. However, linking to trustworthy material (from authority sites, not sites perceived as spam-like) helps you also appear to be an authority and can help Google figure out what your content is about for SEO purposes.
It's important to keep in mind that other sites for different companies can provide external links to your website in their own content as well.
For instance, if you publish a blog post with useful content, another company may link back to that URL as a source for their own blog. These types of links to your site are key, as they boost your search engine rankings in Google's search algorithm.
on a web page will help a viewer stay engaged with your website longer. This may encourage them to become a customer or follower. These links are more accessible to viewers, and they increase the authority of your web pages and overall site.
Internal links are often used as a call-to-action. For example, they might prompt a viewer to read or learn more about a topic by clicking on the internal link, or else ask a viewer to contact you or schedule a visit.
Internal links You’ve probably already noticed we love internal linking. It’s all over our website and in our blogs. That’s because internal links are invaluable to a business’ website.
and for good reasons:
Site structure Internal links give structure to your website. The more you have, the better Google or other search engines can crawl and index your website.
If your content is linked well, Google’s crawlers will crawl your website faster, your pages will get indexed faster and this will result in better SERP rankings.
User experience: Internal links are great for users. They help users navigate your website, and go from one page to the next. If they visit more pages, read more blogs and learn about your business, there’s an increased likelihood that they’ll convert.
They get a smooth website experience where the information is readily available and easy to find, and you generate more sales and leads.
Spreads ranking power: When one page on your website links to another page, it passes on some authority to that page – increasing the likelihood that the second page will rank in the SERPs. So through links, your pages can help each other rank.
External Links
External links, and backlinks (where another site links to your site) in particular, can significantly improve the chances of your website ranking. They not only significantly improve your Domain Authority, but they drive sales, traffic, and leads.
They do this because:
they Build your online reputation: When a user searches for something, search engines like Google show them the best possible result for their query. Google directs these users to sites that are reliable, popular, and backlink rich – because a popular site is more trustworthy and has a good reputation.
Improve credibility: Similar to the above, external links boost your website’s credibility. If you have backlinks with high domain authorities that are relevant to your site, you build Google’s trust – your website becomes a legitimate player in your industry.
Give referral traffic: A good link from a popular blog or website can help you drive traffic. If your product or business is mentioned on a blog or you’ve written a helpful guest article, readers of that blog are incredibly likely to check you out.
Build relationships and your brand: External links can help you establish yourself in your industry’s community and grow your brand. As your informative content becomes more well-known in your field, others recognize you as an expert, you earn more backlinks and the cycle continues.
In a nutshell, the more high-quality sites that link back to your website, the more likely you are to rank well in SERPs. So, you know how important internal and external links are and what they are.
Page speed loading
Page speed is often confused with "site speed" which is actually the page speed for a sample of page views on a site.
Page speed can be described in either "page load time" (the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page) or "time to first byte" (how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the webserver).
You can evaluate your page speed with Google's PageSpeed Insights
Mobile-friendliness
Mobile-friendliness does matter for SEO. In fact, it’s a ranking signal in both Google and Bing’s algorithms when it detects a user is searching on a mobile device.
So, if your website relies on or targets traffic from mobile users at all, mobile-friendliness is vital for SEO.
Even if your business doesn’t rely on or care about traffic from mobile users for some reason, thanks to Google starting its mobile-first index, mobile-friendliness will soon matter for you as well.
A mobile-friendly site is designed for mobile users
When you build your website, there are 3 ways you can design it to be mobile-friendly.
Dynamic design: This option entails detecting user-agent and serving different HTML codes based on whether the user is on mobile or desktop. Dynamic design requires you to use the Vary HTTP header to prevent caching servers from accidentally serving the wrong version.
This will also tell search engines’ mobile user agents to access the mobile page version.
Mobile subdomain: Also known as mDots, this option involves a significant amount of developer time and resources. It involves building an entirely separate mobile site and hosting it at a subdomain - usually something like m.domain.com or mobile.domain.com.
Google is generally pretty good at figuring out the relationship between content hosted on a mobile subdomain and on the desktop site. However, you can never be 100% sure when it comes to subdomains, so you should include the rel=” canonical” tag pointing to the desktop version.
This method generally isn’t recommended, especially for large and/or complicated websites. It’s falling out of favor.
Responsive design: This option doesn’t require much in terms of developer time and resources, as it doesn’t require any changes to your current code other than the addition of one meta tag.
Creating a responsive site is as simple as adding the meta viewport tag in the page’s <head>. The viewport tells browsers to render a page based on screen size. A responsive viewport looks like this:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"/>
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conclusion
Now, you are well prepared and get Everything you wanted to know about On-Page Optimization Techniques. What do you wait for? go ahead...😉
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