Complete ON PAGE SEO Guide for Website Optimization
“Search engine optimization is not about tricking Google!
It’s about partnering with Google to provide great search results for Google users! aka your customers!”
I know you already have heard a lot about keywords, back-linking, Off Page SEO, On Page SEO etc etc!
BUT, if you want your website or web page to rank higher you will need to pay attention to these techniques very carefully.
Don’t worry I won’t tell you only about keywords and back-linking, I will try to cover all the factors, technical as well as non-technical. That will help you bring your SEO A-game to the field.
Firstly, what is on page SEO?
On-page SEO Services is all about content and how to present it. How Google sees and understands the page and how relevant and unique your content is, most importantly on what search terms it should come up on.
Let me give you an On Page SEO Services,
- Broken Links
- Responsive
- Bounce Rate
- Optimize Page Load Time
- Thin Content
- Image & ALT Tag Optimization
- Social Media Sharing Buttons
- Inbound Links
- Outbound Links
- URLs
- Xml Sitemaps
- Robot.txt file
- Heading Tags
- Meta Description
- Keywords
Seems A Lot, Right?
It’s not! It’s easier once you get a clear understanding of it.
So, let’s dive in!!
1.Broken links
Audit your existing page first! If there are any broken links, repairing it should be your first concern as user experience is one of the most important factors in increasing your bounce rate (explained in a later section).
Also, if you’re linking to any external pages which are broken, it makes you look bad in front of Google’s web crawlers. So, it’s recommended to keep checking up the links on a regular basis. You can use chrome’s check my links or Ahrefs for auditing your links, depending upon your website scale.
2. Responsive
Make sure your website is responsive that is optimized for computers as well as mobile Devices because these days more and more users surf the internet through mobile.
This Point is crucial for On page SEO Services, as your layout and content should be responsive to various gadgets.
3. Bounce Rate
If a user exist your page immediately, it sends a signal of the low-quality page to Google.
The time the user spends on your website is dwell time, and the bounce rate is how many times users jumped right back from your website.
So, you should try to lower the bounce rate and increase your dwell time.
You can do that by providing engaging content, or videos. As videos not only increase user’s interest but they also drive traffic to your other platforms like YouTube etc, and provides a better user experience.
4. Optimize Page Load Time
Page load time is another crucial aspect of On-page SEO as if your website takes more than 2-4 seconds to load, users tend to click the back button, increasing your bounce rate, or they might not come back to your site. So, Website Speed Optimization is considered important in Google’s ranking system, they have stated this on record!
You can check your speed and how to minimize it by Google page speed insights. It would score your website out of 100 for both mobile and laptops, and guides you on how to get a 100 on the score too.
Some basic ways to optimize page load time are:
- Compressing images on the website
- Using a better Hosting provider
- Using a CDN.
5. Thin Content
Google dislikes thin content!
Any website with larger content tends to get higher ranking in search engines as it’s more informative and has more value than any thin content or short content. A minimal of 1000 words is considered a good start, and your content should be unique and relevant to the page and keywords.
Plus, you should provide your users a good quality content which is more engaging, so they visit your website for more time, and again and again, which in return increases your dwell time as well as click through rate.
In fact, larger content brings in long tail keyword traffic too, so what’s the loss here.
6. Image Optimization & Multimedia
First of all! Put Images and videos, not lots of it. But ya, of the considerable amount so the content is more engaging, as well as users, get to spend more time on it.
Well, for image optimization, you should make sure of certain things like,
- Images should be compressed.
- They should have Alt text and Title tags
- The image description should have keywords.
As keywords and tags give your images more relevancies and tell Google about what they are, also if your image doesn’t load on time, the user can read and understand what was supposed to be there. But images not loading on time might give you low rankings! That’s why compress your images for better results.
7. Social Media Sharing Buttons
Social media might not be a direct ranking factor in On Page SEO, but it brings more attention and traffic to your website, which indirectly is a ranking factor!
Don’t know how?
Duh! Engagement! Google might not care about clicks as they are going on a different platform but surely cares about the engagement your page gets. So, when more and more people share or see your page it indirect helps your SEO ranking.
You can also add social marks so that you can check how your page will be displayed on various social media platforms.
8. Inbound Links
Internal linking or inbound links is a very important SEO ranking factor. You should always add 2-4 internal links so that the crawlers can crawl and understand your content more. As well as making users jump on other pages of your website only, increasing dwell time.
9. Outbound Links
Linking your content to other high-quality content which is related to your page, gives you more credibility and helps Google understand what your page is about.
But, also prefer authentic and high quality pages only, as external linking can lead to both positive and negative impact on your webpage. Remove or nofollow any spam or low quality or irrelevant sites.
People usually don’t provide any external linking, as they think it will drive traffic or link juice away, but user experience and relevancy from high-quality content gives you more traffic.
10. URLs
For SEO friendly URLs I have only 3 words: Short, Readable and keyword
Your URL should be short like 3-5 words, as short urls tends to provide higher rankings. It should be clearly readable, and not include any special characters or signs.
Third is obvious, it should contain your keyword. One keyword is enough as the url should be short and on point.
11. XML Sitemap
XML Sitemap is the listing of all your indexed pages, which are user-accessible. You can set up which pages to index and which should go in No-index. This does not affect your on-page SEO ranking, But it is important for SEO as it mentions indexed pages and also shows which links are more important than others.
It also tells Google how frequently you update your website.
12. Robots.txt
This file is made to tell crawlers or spiders, the pages which are to be indexed and which ones should be ignored!
As you don’t want Search Engine Crawler to index the broken pages or work in progress pages. So, it’s better to mention which pages are ready and which are not. Because this affects your SEO ranking, and you don’t want to lose you’re ranking due to pages that aren’t even available now.
13. Heading Tags
Every page needs a heading, right?
Search engine’s think the same. If you use the H1 tag for your heading, it provides the context of the page very easily. In fact, you should always use your keywords or some variation of it in your headings, for better SEO rankings.
But, don’t get too excited! Never put too many H1 tags, 1 or max 2 would do, or don’t put too many keywords. one is enough.
The same goes for H2 and H3, use them for subheadings and sub-sub headings, with keywords. But, then again don’t overdo it. There are other tags too if you want to use them.
Meta Tags or Description
Well, some people argue that Meta description doesn’t co-relates with SEO rankings, but I disagree.
It affects your rankings, how?
CTR! Meta description affects your click-through rate, which is an SEO ranking factor.
So, now let’s work on your Meta description.
Meta descriptions should always contain your keywords, but to make it more interesting, you can add some power words which catch the reader’s eye and also some number. Like 10 ways or 50 tips etc. This would automatically get the attention and provide you better results.
Always make sure you cover the context in 160 characters, more than that would be shown and it would look incomplete.
Remember, a short but interesting Meta description is the path to your CTRs and Rankings!
15. Keyword
So, lastly, let’s talk about it.
I will just say that don’t stuff your content with keywords. Try to include your main keyword at the start, like the first paragraph, and in the last paragraph. Other than that normally use it whenever it comes in the context, and don’t worry it will always come in context.
Other than this, try using LSI keywords (i.e., latent semantic indexing). These would normally popup if you have long content, but to make sure you can type in your keyword in Google and the suggestions that come at the end of the page are LSI keywords.
Try to infuse both types of keywords, But never ever overdo it! As it would look really unorganized and it takes away the credibility too.
yay!! your on-page SEO checklist is done!
On-Page SEO optimization is easy. You should just include keywords in your engaging content, while making important files to index your pages and try to get more user satisfaction. Remember never use negative keywords in permalink or title.
User intent should be your first priority, always remember you are making content for humans. So, try to include more about what they want to know. Try to take feedbacks and questions from your users. Make content according to their wants. As human-readable content is what search engine wants, this will provide you with automatic better results.
Seems a bit too much? Not a tech-savvy? Wish an SEO expert can take care of it all!
What are you waiting for!
Contact us on info@digitalwebsitedevelopment.com or let’s set up a Phone Call: 2018154348
Tags: On-Page SEO Guide