If you want faster SEO results, it may not be enough to focus on having well-designed pages and quality content. You need to make sure your webpages are better than your competitors to get the desired results. In order to begin improving your site, on-page SEO is usually the best place to start.
On-page SEO focuses on improving the user experience, and it can go a long way in bringing more quality traffic and securing higher rankings on the SERPs. It is the process of optimizing parts of your webpages so they get higher rankings on search engines. This includes updating website content, title tags, internal links, and more.Search engines look at keywords and other on page factors to check if a web page matches the user’s search intent.
The term “on-page SEO” is used to include both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals.In simple words, on-page SEO is the practice of optimizing your website using quality content and on-page elements such as keywords, titles, good URLs, images, and so on.
Essential On-Page SEO Factors for optimal website performance
Digital marketing agencies use a variety of on-page SEO techniques that can help to increase traffic as well as bring in more customers to a website. There are numerous on-page SEO elements, but we recommend you begin with a small subset of web pages and analyze them for the most significant SEO factors. Here we have listed some of the essential on-page SEO factors that must be worked upon to boost your website rankings.
1. Site speed
Page load speed is one of the key factors in Google’s algorithms. Slow sites usually turn visitors away, while fast sites provide a great user experience for your visitors, and hence, Google will rank fast-loading sites higher than slow-loading sites.
Also, as search engines have moved to mobile-first indexing with mobile page speed as an important ranking factor, it is essential to optimize your website for mobile devices.
2. Title tag
The title is the very first thing you notice about a web page when you are looking for relevant products or services. Here is how it appears in search engine results:
Title tag optimization is the most basic of the SEO tasks. However, no matter how simple it may look, the strategy for title tags is extremely complex. Here are some simple tips for title tag optimization to get the most SEO benefits out of it:
- Write your title tags using the language of your targeted audience, and try to use the exact-match keyword if possible.
- It should speak to the search intent of your targeted audience.
- It should be eye-catching and resonate with the brand.
- It should be descriptive and short.
- The character length for the title tag is usually 60 characters.
- Use long-tail keywords in title tags, as it is easy to rank them because they are more specific and competitive than short-tail keywords.
- Try to include numbers or words in the title tag that can attract people.
- Avoid using all caps in the title tags.
3. Meta tag description
Meta tag descriptions are the short page descriptions that appear below the title of the search results. It gives a summary of a web page to the search engines. Though it is not an official ranking factor, it can impact whether or not your page is clicked on. Here is how it appears in search results:
Your meta description can have a great impact on whether people click it or not and ultimately visit your site. It is important to ensure that it includes the primary (or targeted) keywords and perfectly summarizes the context of a page.
Meta descriptions may not be direct ranking factors, but they do help produce clicks, which then help rank your page higher on Google.
If you want to read in detail about creating perfect meta tags to boost your ranking,
Read more: (Meta Description Tags: A Key Element of On-Page Optimization).
4. Headings
The heading tags will help search engines understand the main content of the web page. There are six kinds of headings in the content, from H1 to H6. H1 will have the highest emphasis and the largest font, and the emphasis gradually reduces to H6.
- Putting your target keyword in a heading or subheading can have a huge impact. Any page can benefit from optimizing subheadings, including templatized pages like e-commerce product detail pages and other standardized listings.
- Target keywords should also be used in your headers and subheadings. It will help search engines understand the structure and content of your page.
- Use keywords in the alt text for your images; it will help search engine crawlers understand the content of your images.
- When sharing a page on social media, make sure to use keywords in the post title and description. It will help people find your page when they are searching for information on social media.
5. Content quality
A website without content is like a vehicle without an engine. It may look nice, but it won’t take anyone anywhere. However, not all content is created equal. Here are factors you need to consider in your content when maximizing your onsite SEO:
The future of SEO lies in semantic search and natural language processing. It means that your content should not be unclear and stuffed with keywords to get attention. It must be deep, meaningful, and relevant. Here are some tips to improve:
- Easy to read and relate to the website
- Use keywords and terms that are semantically related to your target keywords.
- Try to use short, fragmented, and straightforward sentences on the product pages.
- Keep sentences and paragraphs brief.
- Use headings and subheadings.
- Use bulleted lists.
- Use attractive headings and write relevant content.
- Always proofread and check content for plagiarism.
- Use visual assets like images and graphics to doll up your content.
E-A-T
On-page signals are one of the ways Google measures the value of your content. The E-A-T signal stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. The E-A-T concept comes from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines, a 168-page document used by human quality raters to evaluate the quality of Google’s search results. In order to incorporate the E-A-T ingredients into your content, you may follow the given tips:
- Add high-quality external citations to informational content such as blogs and long-form articles.
- Use evidence such as expert opinions and statistics to support your claim.
- Provide the author bios in the content and ensure the author is reputable.
- Get featured in other media, such as interviews by journalists, podcasts, etc.
- Case studies, awards, and testimonials can add credibility to your content.
Keyword
Pages that feature keywords in their content are more likely to be relevant to a search. Keyword research is the first and foremost aspect of search engine optimization.
- Try to put keywords in the first part of the content, but don’t overdo it.
- Use strong tags for the keywords.
- Make sure to include all long-tail keywords in the content.
- Conduct extensive research and use tools to find the most competitive keywords.
You can use professional content writing services to create content that speaks for your brand and makes it stand out from the crowd. Know how content marketing can help build your brand even stronger.
6. Internal links with optimized anchor text
Internal links are high-impact on-page optimization factors. These links help search engines crawl and index your website more easily, and they also help users navigate your website more effectively. Besides, the absence of internal linking on your pages may have a negative impact on the user’s ability to access the helpful links on your site. If users cannot reach it, that directly decreases your conversion rates.
Internal links enable link equity to flow throughout the site and also enable you to optimize anchor text for the destination page. When performing internal linking optimization, make sure to follow these rules:
- Make sure to optimize the anchor text with your target keywords or semantic terms (avoid generic terms like click to know more).
- Choose links from authoritative and semantically related content for link placement.
When you are linking from Top of Funnel Content (TOFU) to Bottom of Funnel Content (BOFU), it is important to use anchor text relevant to the user’s search intent.
By effectively optimizing your internal links, you can improve the SEO of your website and make it easier for users to find the information they are looking for. Here are some more tips for optimizing your internal links:
- Use a variety of anchor text and don’t repeat the same thing again and again.
- Use long-tail keywords in your anchor text. Long-tail keywords are more specific and less competitive than short-tail keywords, which means that they are more likely to help you rank for those keywords.
- Link to important pages. Don’t just link to any old page on your website. Only link to pages that are relevant and important to your users. Don’t link to pages that are not indexed by search engines.
7. Descriptive image Alt Text
Image optimization is crucial and sometimes truly important for SEO. Image alt text tells users and search engines what your image is about, which is crucial because Google now delivers as many image-based results as possible.
Stats reveal that more than 36% of consumers use visual search for online shopping; thus, if you don’t conduct image optimization, you’re missing out on traffic.
If the primary subject of the content is visual in nature, such as an art store, interior design, or fashion trend, image optimization is necessary in such cases. Also, it is useful for visually impaired users. Here are some simple tips to keep in mind when adding image alt text:
- Make it descriptive and specific.
- Keep it shorter than 125 characters.
- Use keywords sparingly and don’t stuff them with keywords.
- Don’t begin it with words like picture of or image of.
- Review for spelling errors.
- Be balanced in using Alt Txt and don’t use it to every image.
8. Page URLs
Page URLs help search engines understand your website structure and how all the pages of your site are related to each other.
These URLs should be easy to accommodate for readers as well as search engines. They also play a crucial role in keeping your site’s hierarchy consistent as you create subpages of it. Here are some simple tips to create SEO-friendly URLs:
- Eliminate the extra, unnecessary words.
- Use only one or two keywords.
- Use HTTPS if possible, as it is now considered a ranking factor by Google.
- It should contain the keywords that describe the content of the post.
- It should have 50–60 characters.
9. Valid schema markup
A schema markup is a group of code fragments that may be added to any part of a website to highlight particular elements of the site in the search results.
When you add scheme markup to your pages, you help search engines index them better, as it provides a better user experience. For instance, a retail store can use schema markup to indicate the hours of operation, location, and contact information.
It will help the store show up for relevant queries, such as “retail stores open 24 hours” or “retail stores near me”.
- It is advisable to use the right schema type for your content.
- It is important to use accurate and complete information so search engines can better understand it.
- Once you have added markup to your website, you must test it to ensure that it is working correctly. For this, you can use tools like Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
10. Responsive website
Smart devices are now widely used by people around the world. Stats reveal that it accounts for more than 56% of all internet usage. As more and more people use mobile devices, Google began to prioritize sites with responsive designs in mobile search rankings.
Mobile friendliness is a confirmed ranking factor and an important component of a good user experience. It is already included in Google’s 2020 upgrade to its page experience algorithm. The page experience rewards content that users can easily navigate and engage with. It usually consists of the following elements:
- Mobile usability.
- Core Web Vitals
- No intrusive interstitials
You can use tools to check the responsiveness of your website, like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you can either get it redesigned or even use a responsive web design plugin.
11. Geotagging (for local search)
We are living in a global world but a large number of businesses work at the local level. Keyword geo-tagging in SEO means optimizing content for local search by placing the name of your target location in your keywords.The geotag can be placed wherever you want, but it should fit the context of the keyword. These keywords may be specific to a city, town, country, etc. Here are some important things to consider for geo-tagging
- Optimize local listings and citations, including name, address, and phone number (NAP), website URL, and business descriptions, using third-party apps, and getting reviews.
- Optimize your local content by including “near me” searches, providing location-based content, or buying a local website or blog
- Use the name of the target location in the keyword and use it wherever it fits the context.
- Geo-tag all of your images, not just the ones that are most relevant to your location. This will help Google understand the overall location of your content.
- Update your geo-tags regularly. If you move your business or add new images, make sure to update the geo-tags accordingly.
ESL Site Audit Tool – Instantly find issues holding back your site from ranking
One of the easiest ways to analyze your page is using a site audit tool. It shows you the page speed, duplicate tags, duplicate content, keyword optimization, broken links, and other common errors in on-page optimization. It takes only a few seconds to do a site audit using a tool, which would have taken hours if you had done it manually. Besides, it also gives you comprehensive SEO data without having to spend thousands of dollars on expensive tools and advanced software.
ESL Site Audit Tool is thoughtfully designed tool to automate the process that would have otherwise taken hours of manual work as well as provide results with more accuracy and rapidity.
It will give you a checklist of improvements that must be made on each page of your website. Once you make all these changes, you can track results in ESL Rank Tracker to see how the rankings for your main keywords change over the coming weeks or months.
Site speed analysis
If your website loads slowly, it may drive web visitors away and have a negative impact on your rankings. The ESL site audit tool provides insights into page loading such as desktop load time, desktop interactivity, and visual stability.
Identifying broken internal links
Broken internal links can have negative impact upon the SEO of your website by redirecting users to dead pages. ESL site audit tool helps you instantly identify broken internal links so you can take appropriate actions to fix them.
Checking for duplicate content
Duplicate content can have a negative impact on your website’s rankings. The site audit tool can help you identify duplicate content so you can remove it or make it unique.
Analyzing your meta-descriptions and title tags
Meta descriptions and title tags are important elements of on-page SEO. They help search engine crawlers know what a page is all about. The site audit tool can help you ensure that your meta-descriptions and title tags are optimized for your target keywords.
Analyzing your organic keywords
This site audit tool can help you identify the keywords that are driving traffic to your website, so that you can focus your SEO efforts on the most important keywords.
Evaluating your backlinks
Backlinks are an important SEO factor, but they are also an off-page SEO factor; in fact, they can be regarded as the heart of off-page SEO. The ESL site audit tool can also help you identify the number of backlinks your website has. Though backlinks are an off-page SEO strategy, they play a crucial role in improving the ranking and credibility of your site. If you want to learn more about how to increase the number of quality backlinks to your website.
Read more: Quality Backlinks: Your Doorway to Ranking, Reputation, and Revenue.
By using the ESL site audit tool to address on-page and off page SEO issues, you can improve your website’s ranking in search engines and attract more organic traffic.
Here are some additional tips for using the site audit tool for on-page optimization:
Focus on the most important SEO issues: A site audit tool may flag a number of issues on a website; however, not all of them are equally important. One should prioritize focusing on the most important issues first, such as broken internal links and duplicate content and create SEO strategy accordingly.
Take action to overcome on-page SEO issues: The site audit tool will provide a list of SEO issues that prevent your page from ranking higher on search engines. It is recommended to take action on these issues as soon as possible. You may need the help of an SEO expert to optimize the various on-page elements of your website to attract organic traffic and secure top rankings on search engines.
Track your progress: It’s important to track your progress over time to see how your on-page SEO efforts are paying off. The site audit tool can help you track your progress by showing you how your website’s ranking and organic traffic have changed over time.
On-page SEO plays an important role in enhancing the website’s ranking and performance. By optimizing your site for on-page factors, you make it easier for search engines to understand the intent of your content, increase the possibility of appearing in the top search results, and enhance the user experience, which leads to engagement and conversion rates.
With its user-friendly interface, ESL Site Audit Tool makes it easy to use it for identifying issues affecting your site’s performance, providing keyword suggestions, and monitoring backlinks.
The ESL Site Audit Tool is an ideal site audit tool for beginners and experts, helping them to instantly check title tags, meta descriptions, content, and a lot more. It helps users quickly identify common mistakes related to on-page SEO so they can take appropriate actions to fix them.
Now is the time to take action. Start using an on-page SEO checker tool and begin refining your SEO strategy and staying ahead of the competition. A site audit tool will save you time and effort and help you get data-driven results. With persistence and dedication, you will surely reap the rewards of improved rankings, increased organic traffic, and higher user engagement. You can get our free on-page SEO checker at ESL Ranks Pro.
