What is On-Page SEO? 5 Strategies to Create a Well-Optimized Content
On-page SEO is the process of making sure that every page on your site is optimized so that it is as effective as possible for search engines to find and rank. As you know, a page can stand out from the pack when you optimize it. While others think that on-page SEO is just about writing a bunch of keywords on every page, it is actually more than that and a series of changes to your website. It is a process that takes time and effort that you need to give attention to.
On-page SEO is essential in creating an effective and targeted website. It is also a powerful tool in the SEO toolkit. If you are not giving much attention to your on-page SEO, then you are losing your opportunities to get noticed and be on the first page of search engine page results (SERPs). You don’t want this to happen, right? Then, you better stay on this blog because I will be sharing some tips and tricks that you can use to improve your site’s on-page SEO.
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is vital for every site that wants to be found by the billions of people that visit the internet every day. It is the practice of optimizing your website to get a higher ranking in the search engine result pages like in Google. It is also the process of making sure that a website performs optimally when users look for something on the site.
To put it simply, on-page SEO is a technique of making sure that your website is looking as good as it can when the search engines detect it. It is also essentially how to make your website faster and easier for users to navigate through. Some of the factors you need to consider when optimizing your on-page SEO include meta tags, keyword density, article headings, internal and external linking, as well as meta description. I will also be tackling all these factors in this blog.
Why is On-Page SEO Important?
Search engines use algorithms to determine the best and most relevant content to show to the searchers. When a person types a query into the search engine, the engine will analyze the page that’s being shown to them according to a set of rules known as “algorithms”. In general, the more relevant a page is to the search, the better it will rank among the other pages for that particular search. This means that a website that receives a lot of traffic will rank better than a website with lesser traffic.
Read also: Does Off-Page SEO Matter? 7 Tips on How to Get Powerful Backlinks for Your Website
That is why on-page SEO is important. It creates the initial contact to the searchers and builds trust by making your website more attractive and better to them. Aside from that, it ensures that your website is well-optimized to rank well in the SERPs. As a result, it drives traffic to your website more organically.
5 Benefits of On-Page Optimization in SEO
There’s a lot of buzz around on-page SEO, especially its ability to attract and maintain a user’s attention while they are browsing your website. The reason is simple: well-optimized websites have a higher chance of getting found by search engines and become more visible to the searchers.
When on-page SEO is done correctly, your website can enjoy the following benefits:
- Better Crawl Rate
- Rank Higher in SERPs
- Boost Organic Traffic
- Improve Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Increase Conversion Rate
Better Crawl Rate
Crawl rate is the percentage of web pages that are viewable to search engines. While the “crawl” is the process of indexing the web page which identifies what content is on the page and where it is located on the site. Google uses the “crawl” to determine which pages to index and whether they are relevant to a search query. If a page is not indexed, then Google cannot include it in the search results. With a better crawl rate, your latest content will show up in the search results much faster.
Rank Higher in SERPs
Having a better ranking in SERPs is an advantage. Based on statistics, over 25% of people click the top-ranked website that appears in the search engine results. And an efficient way to capture the attention of search engines and keep it is through on-page SEO. Aside from that, it also ensures that the visitors of your site can find the information they are looking for and navigate to the pages they want.
Boost Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is good for long-term SEO. On top of that, it is the best kind of traffic because it is free. Unfortunately, 90.63% of published websites in Google do not get organic traffic simply because these are not well-optimized.
In SEO, on-page optimization is important for organic search engine traffic. Searchers use search engines, Google, for example, to find websites and the first thing they check is the on-page content. If your content has information they are looking for, they will click, visit, and stay on your website. Also, if they find your content useful, they will keep coming back to your website.
Improve the Click-Through Rate (CTR)
On average, top-ranked websites can get a 31.7% click-through rate. That is why on-page SEO is a ranking factor that improves your site’s click-through rate. When you optimize your on-page SEO, your website can rank higher and get into the first page of the SERPs. Thus, you can expect improvement to the click-through rate of your pages and can bring a significant impact on your business.
Increase Conversion Rate
According to Google, 39% of buyers have purchased products because they were influenced by relevant searches. This is the reason why SEO can help you convert leads into customers and increase the number of sales you make. The relationship between these two is pretty simple. When your website ranks higher in Google or other search engines, you are increasing your chance to get noticed and drive more traffic.
So when you are optimizing your on-page, it is better to gain insights on the keywords you should be targeting, the best landing page as well as the best placement of your call-to-action buttons.
On-Page Strategies to Improve Your Website Ranking
As I have discussed in my previous article on SEO, optimizing your site for search engines is an essential part of growing your business online. Unfortunately, many are still not familiar with the on-page search optimization process and they are missing out on some really simple yet effective tactics.
In this section, I will be sharing my strategies to help you boost your website’s ranking and ranking.
Optimize Your Site Speed
Optimizing your website helps you get the most traffic, the most profit, and the best rankings. This is because your site speed matters to the search engines especially for Google. Your website is considered fast when your loading page time is not more than two seconds.
But how do you optimize your site speed? First, I recommend that you use JPEG files or Photoshop’s “Save for Web” method for the images because these have the smallest file sizes that will not affect your loading page time. Or you can use Shortpixel, EWWW Image Optimizer, WPCompress, and WPvivid Image Optimizer if you want to further reduce your file size.
Check out my video below on why Shortpixel is the best image optimization plugin to help you speed up your site.
Whenever possible, avoid using GIF and PNG because these are larger files that will definitely slow down your website.
I suggest also that you try to reduce redirects and fix broken links because these also affect your loading period. Once you have redirected your site to HTTPS, do not direct any links to HTTP anymore. Lastly, for WordPress Hosting, use only reliable, stable, and fast-loading servers like Exabytes and Racknerd.
Check out my article comparing SiteGround with Exabytes here.
Optimize Your Content
Optimizing your content is the most effective SEO strategy according to marketers. It helps your website rank higher in the SERPs for this simple reason: search engines can easily find your page and show it to the searchers. By having relevant and high-quality content, you can entice the searchers to visit your website.
In content optimization, I suggest that you consider these factors: page titles, header tags, alt tag, meta tag, and keywords. Search engines use these factors when doing web scraping. For the page titles and header tags, use what people always search. For the keywords, make sure to use the right and important keywords in your content. You need to make sure also that your product page is ranking for the product keyword instead of the home page. But it is important also to bear in mind to not overuse product keywords on your home page.
Use Relevant Keywords
Keywords are an extremely important part of on-page SEO. Search engines can easily find your website and index it if you use relevant keywords. So if you want your website to have a better ranking, use the right and powerful keywords that would best represent your topic, website, and product. These should appear in your product page title, title tag, header tags, meta tag, meta title, alt tag, product description, URL slug, and other HTML elements that are used to identify your website’s content.
Also, I recommend using long-tail keywords for your headings. It is better as well to use “How-to” strategies, benefits, and tips that people usually type in the search bar when searching for information. You can also use the suggested keyword or keyword phrase by Google SEO keyword generator, People also ask, and related searches to get ideas. But for your keyword research, I recommend using Google Keyword Planner, Keywords Everywhere, Ahrefs, and Semrush.
Improve your Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are also an essential SEO strategy to rank higher and gain more traffic. But what are these? Featured snippets are short descriptions on certain pages that rank on search engine results pages when it is being searched for. This is a free feature from Google for increasing your search visibility and it is simple to use. To improve your featured snippets, you need to use powerful keywords in your title tag and URL slug as well as write highly converting meta descriptions to attract more clicks.
Fix Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile-friendliness is your site’s ability to perform well on devices such as phones and tablets. It is important because, most of the time, people use their mobile devices when engaging in online activities. Based on the surveys, 58.5% of searchers worldwide use their phones and tablets when searching for information online. While 65% of buyers use their phones during their “I-want-to-buy” moment. When your website is mobile-friendly, it can give your visitors a good experience and can keep them longer while they are on your site.
In fixing mobile friendliness, my advice is to make sure that your images and videos are mobile responsive. Get a good theme like Blocksy or Kadence that automatically makes your images mobile optimized. If not you can use the Just Responsive Images plugin or Embed Responsively. I suggest that you mobile test your web pages and check your non-mobile-friendly pages from errors detected in the Google Search Console occasionally.
Factors to Consider When Optimizing On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is one of the most effective ways in optimizing your website. It encompasses a wide range of techniques that can be employed to ensure that your site performs well on search engines and other online platforms. However, on-page SEO is not just a matter of writing content, coming up with keywords, and submitting it to the right places. There’s still more to SEO than that.
To achieve long-term SEO success, you need to consider the following factors in your on-page SEO.
URL Permalink Optimization
URL Permalink Optimization is the process of making the URLs of the pages on your site shorter, easier to read as well as be more SEO-friendly. This is vital to Google’s algorithm which looks at the length of the URLs and then penalizes them accordingly. This simple yet powerful process to rank up your page involves the following:
- Re-writes the internal links on a page to take advantage of keywords phrases in a URL.
- Enables the use of a canonical URL
- Produces a more descriptive URL while still allowing the page to rank for the keyword phrases.
Overall, the key idea behind it is to not repeat words that are in your entire URL string. Also, short URLs are key to building a better SEO strategy because the shorter, the better.
Meta Descriptions
The cornerstone of optimizing your site for search engines and improving your on-page SEO is to use descriptive meta tags. Meta descriptions are bits of information that tell search engines what your site is about. They do not influence search engine rankings directly. Instead, they are an essential tool used by search engines to index the content properly and make a better guess about the page’s content which can lead to better rankings in the search results. A maximum of 155 characters is good for meta descriptions.
Keyword Density
Search engines use keywords as signals to determine the relevance of a website. They calculate the keyword density of a page by determining the ratio between the number of times you mentioned a keyword within the content of the page and the total number of words in the content. This concept is essential in your on-page SEO because it is the element that helps search engines such as Google to review the quality of your content and rank it in the search result.
When you review your content, it is better to take into account the length of the post and its level of specificity. Content with higher keyword density is more searchable and helps your site rank higher. However, lower keyword density may indicate that the page is stuffed with irrelevant keywords that are not helpful to the overall topic of the page.
Article Headings
The key to getting high rankings for any given blog post is to write a good and captivating title. Article headings are one of the most fundamental elements of an on-page SEO. These are also the most important web page elements to think about when you are creating a blog post because these can affect the ranking of your website. Their role is to give Google, for example, a concise idea of what your page is about and to help searchers to decide if your page has information they are looking for. When creating your headings, it is recommended to include relevant keywords that match the content of your page.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is another key factor in on-page SEO yet often gets overlooked. It is the practice of linking from one webpage to another within the same website via anchor text. The purpose is to organize the navigation to make it easier for users to find their way around your site while maximizing your chances of getting a high ranking on the SERPs and increasing your site’s authority. In internal linking, it is better to always include editorial links in your content and use specific keywords to link to another content page. Also, the more internal link from your own, the more likely your page will appear near the top in the search results.
External Linking
External linking is also a part of the link-building process that plays an important role in on-page SEO. It is the way of pointing to or referencing other web pages. It helps the site to look more trustworthy and authoritative in search engines. Just like internal linking, the goal is to help search engines index your content and to make it easy for people to find relevant information when searching online.
Since all pages on the internet are interconnected, most websites make use of external linking to improve their rankings. Most of the time, this technique is used for organic rankings. But it can also have a huge impact on your rankings in paid search. Here, you are providing a second connection between your site and the sites that you link to. In doing external linking, however, you need to make sure that what you are linking to is a reliable and authoritative site that does not have any unnatural links pointing to it.
Recommended On-Page SEO Tools
On-page SEO is an important part of building a strong website. The more relevant your site is, the higher rank you can get. That is why having a reliable set of tools to use is necessary in order to get the most out of your on-page optimization.
If you haven’t found a good tool or are looking for a better alternative to the current tool you are using, the following are my recommended on-page SEO tools. Please note, however, that all the pricing I mentioned here is based on the companies’ current pricing. This might change in the future.
Frase
Frase is an AI writing assistant SEO tool that helps you do keyword research and analysis while beating writer’s block. You can use this to get better-targeted keyword suggestions when you are working on your on-page SEO and make it faster when you are working on a blog post.
Start-up websites can avail themselves its free version. But if you want to get better content and SEO optimization, you can upgrade your plan to their paid versions: Basic, Team, and Enterprise.
MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a tool that helps marketers improve their own on-page SEO by understanding and analyzing competitors’. It is also a content marketing tool that allows each team to work more efficiently by giving them the ability to manage their social media and content marketing efforts from a single interface. It offers a gamified workflow for social media managers by assigning tasks to different team members. The system also provides better reporting and analytics that are valuable in evaluating if the efforts are performing well or not.
If you want to crawl your website for organic keyword rankings but you are on a tight budget, you can avail of its 7-day free trial. After that, you can choose your paid subscription between Plan and Premium.
Scalenut
Scalenut is a content research tool that enables you to quickly explore content online and generate ideas, then it makes SEO-focused content outlines for you. It also provides analytics data of your pages that you can use to see your top pages and keywords as well as your markup. You can also discover what parts of your site are really driving traffic. On top of this, it allows you to create high-quality and long-form content that can increase page authority and improve website reputation.
If Scalenut is the tool that you need, you can choose your subscription among these plans: Individual ($26/month), Growth ($74/month), and Pro ($112/month).
WriterZen
WriterZen is another on-page SEO tool that can be used by all kinds of writers. It is developed by a team of experienced SEO specialists, tested, and refined the techniques in order to help you optimize your content so that it can rank higher in search engines. It analyzes the keywords within your content, your page structure, internal links, and more.
Just like MarketMuse, it offers a 7-day free trial. Should you wish to continue using this tool, you can upgrade your plan to a Premium or Platinum version.
Copywritely
Copywritely is an SEO content tool that allows you to improve your content optimization. Aside from that, it is also a content checker that helps you identify plagiarism, detect keyword stuffing, and test the readability score. Once it detects the problem in your content, its online editor will provide suggestions that you can follow to rewrite or rephrase low-quality sentences and paragraphs. With this, you can create high-quality content that not only ranks well in the search engines but also increases your conversion rate.
For Copywritely, you can start your free trial by providing your email address. Then if you think that this tool is the one you need, you can upgrade your plan to Personal, Startup, Company, and Enterprise as well as decide whether you are going to pay it monthly or annually.
SurferSEO
SurferSEO is another platform that can help you create and optimize your content in a short span of time. It has the following features:
- Content Editor: That allows you to produce quality content
- Content Planner: To better categorize your ideas through intent and search volume
- SERP Analyzer: For keyword density and link building opportunities
- SEO Audit: To get more search traffic
- Keyword Research: To find keywords and phrases that are relevant to get a better ranking
- Keyword Surfer: A Chrome extension for content and keyword research
- Content Editor Extension: A tool that can be integrated with WordPress and Google Docs
SurferSEO offers a 30-day free trial. After that, you can pick a plan among their paid plans namely Basic, Pro, and Business.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is software that helps you understand SEO even if you are a beginner. It is a backlink checker that helps you discover your competitors’ backlink profile and compare it on your own, then show you exactly what you need to do to improve your backlink profile and growth. It is also a keywords generator and explorer that allows you to analyze the competitiveness of your target keyword. Aside from that, it provides SEO reports and analytics so you can see if your page is driving the most traffic.
If this tool is the one you are looking for, you can pick one plan among its four offered paid plans Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Agency.
Brand Overflow
Brand Overflow is a keyword tool to fasten your optimization process so that your website can rank well in search engines. Within this software, it has tools for the rank tracker, semantic terms, long-tail keywords, keyword explorer and generator, ad explorer, bulk domain data and search volume, Youtube keywords, ranked keywords, PPC keywords, SERP checker, backlink checker and monitor, traffic checker, and SEO Audit. With this, you can get ideas about keywords that trend globally and java a hyper-local search volume. You can also track your backlinks while maintaining your profile. On top of that, you can get daily ranking updates that would help you understand the performance of your website.
You can get this tool for free that is upgradable to either a Basic, Advanced, or Business plan.
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free tool that helps you find relevant keywords to use when blogging and writing content for your website. It has a feature that allows you to get an overview of your domain performance and discover your competitors’ pages why they rank well in SERPs. Aside from these, it also gives content ideas that social shares and backlinks.
Ubersuggest has a 7-day free trial. When the free trial expires, you can choose and subscribe to their paid plans: Individual, Business, Enterprise/Agency.
Final Thought
On-page SEO is an essential ingredient to your overall Search Engine Optimization. It has the ability to direct people to your website and increase your organic traffic. It also helps search engines index your website so that it will be more visible to the searchers. If your site is easy to read, has images that allow people to intuitively find information, and is free of eros, you can rank higher on the search engine results page.
In optimizing your on-page SEO, you indeed need to allot time and effort to build it. It can also be a tricky subject to approach especially if you are a beginner. However, thanks to a number of amazing advancements in digital marketing, you can use tools to help you. You can also promote and improve your website rankings by understanding how on-page works and by employing all the tips that I discussed above.
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