In the digital landscape, on-page SEO leads off the optimization process. Even though on-page and off-page SEO go hand in hand together, it is crucial to note that on-page SEO falls completely within your control. In this blog, we look out on the importance of on-page SEO and how to make sure your website gets ready for better rankings on search engines.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the strategy you can use on your website to improve your ranking in search engines. It encompasses not just visible elements, meaning content and images but also coded components, namely HTML tags. Optimizing these improves both relevance and usability on your site for users and search engines.
Why is On-Page SEO important?
Although link building and other off-page SEO practices bring excellent results, the results of off-page SEO are not always in your control. On-page SEO is far more under your control and, hence, one should consider it as a vital part of the overall SEO strategy.
Major On-Page SEO Elements
Improve the visibility of your website with these basic on-page SEO elements:
1. Title Tag
It is, undoubtedly, the most important of all the elements of on-page SEO. It informs search engines what your webpage is about.
Best Practices:
- Use your primary keyword within 70 characters.
- Use it at the top for higher rankings.
- Make it unique so that it stands out in search results
- Meta Description
A meta description is a short description of the content of your webpage to attract users to click.
Best Practices:
- It should be around 150-160 characters.
- Contain keywords to increase click-through rates.
- Describe each page uniquely to prevent copying.
- Headings
Headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) organize your content and enhance the read while assisting search engines in understanding the subject matter.
Recommendation
- Use H1 for your primary title and H2/H3 for subtopics.
- Use keywords organically within the titles.
- Valuable Content
Content is king in SEO. Make sure that your content is unique, informative and engaging, as well as keyword-rich.
Recommendation
- Word Count: The minimum number of words in a content piece should be 500. Long content ( approx. 2,000 words) ranks higher.
- Do Not Keyword Stuff.
- Use synonyms and related keywords.
- URL Structure
Always create a clean, descriptive, and keyword-rich URL.
Best Practices:
- Use hyphens between words.
- Keep it concise and readable.
- Image Optimization
Although search engines do not have an eye, they can read the alt text.
Best Practices:
- Ensure the file name is descriptive.
- Incorporate relevant keywords in the alt text.
- Compress images for faster loading times.
- Keyword Consistency
Consistency with all the on-page SEO elements will make it easier to understand the subject matter by the search engines.
Best Practices:
- Use both primary and secondary keywords in titles, headings, and content.
- Internal Linking
Your content is connected with links, and they will help distribute link equity throughout your site.
Best Practices:
- Use relevant anchor text representing what is being linked.
- Link only the most essential ones that continue to have relevance.
- Sitemap
Search engines discover your webpages with the help of sitemap.
Best Practices:
- Make an XML sitemap and then submit this to the search engines.
- Regularly updated with new content.
- Robots.txt
The robots.txt file informs search engines about which pages are crawlable/indexable or not.
Best Practices:
- Don’t block significant pages.
- Review and update regularly as needed.
- Page Speed
Page loading speed hugely influences user experience and search engine rankings.
Best Practices:
- Target page load time of less than or equal to 4 seconds.
- Use image compression and browser cache.
- Links on Page
Controlling the links on a page is one way to leverage enhanced focus and quality SEO.
Best Practices
- Target less than 100 links to achieve peak performance.
- Page Indexing
Make sure that pages are indexed properly to appear in the search results.
Best Practices
- Track how you’re indexing through your Google Search Console regularly.
- Text/HTML Ratio
A higher text-to-HTML ratio is preferred, meaning the content is more valuable.
Best Practices
- Keep the highest text-to-HTML ratio so that your site will gain the highest value of readability along with much-improved SEO.
- Multimedia
Multimedia features make any website more interesting and increase the time spent on any website, but bounce rates come down.
Best Practices
- Use the video as well as images to enhance the use, but don’tfor slow your site.
- Mastering on-page SEO leads you to bring your website to higher visibility and further up the search engine ranks.
By Optimizing these critical elements so that you can breathe in an ease of use experience both to the visitor and the search engine. You must review and update your on-page strategies regularly lest you start to fall back in the highly competitive digital world.
Contact Digivik Business Solution to implement these best practices on your on-page optimization and watch your website soar in the ranks and a well-rounded performance.