If you are serious about your website’s success, you need to put equal effort on both Off-Page and On-Page SEO optimization.
You can be at par with your competitor’s website with Off-Page SEO works. But to overtake him in search engine result pages, you need proper On-Page SEO techniques.
What You Will Learn
- What is On-Page SEO?
- How On-Page SEO helps in optimizing your blog posts?
- Why do you need On-Page SEO Optimization?
- Difference between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO
- What are the Ultimate On-Page SEO Tips and Techniques?
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-Page SEO is the act of improving your individual web pages so that they become SEO-friendly as well as user-friendly.
It primarily refers to optimizing your web content through various standard techniques.
It makes the content engaging and helps to get relevant web traffic from the search engines by obtaining a higher rank.
How On-Page SEO Helps In Optimizing Your Blog Posts?
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On-page SEO practices came into play to optimize your posts so that they become more presentable. It becomes easy for search engine bots to analyze your post and rank it accordingly.
On-Page SEO optimization urges you to do keyword research before writing a post.
It makes sure that you write a keyword-rich title with limited characters without exaggeration.
It dictates you to use your keywords wisely to reach out to the targeted audiences.
You have to frame your URL structure to get a high rank on the search engine result pages.
On-Page SEO guides you to use heading tags and formatting styles to make the post interesting and engaging.
You have to write words and sentences more judiciously so that they do not exceed certain limits.
At the end of it all, your post will become an epic article and your labor will be fruitful. You will get more views, shares, and subscribers automatically.
Why Do You Need On-Page SEO Optimization?
- To make your post or web content SEO-friendly.
- To get a higher position on search engine result pages.
- To edge past your competitors on search engine result pages.
- To make your post more engaging and presentable.
- To get more shares and make your post viral.
- To get relevant web traffic organically who actually wants to read your posts.
- To earn more revenue as organic traffic is the biggest revenue generators.
- To target specific audiences with specific demands to boost product and service sales.
- To get backlinks as On-Page SEO optimized articles are likely to get more references.
- To gain trust and increase brand value by ranking higher on the search engines.
- To get more subscribers and turn your new visitors into long-term customers.
Difference Between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO optimization refers to the act of improving the external factors that influence the rank of your website on the leading search engines.
On-Page SEO optimization refers to the internal factors that are on your website or web page.
Off-Page SEO helps you to get an overall rank for your website whereas On-Page SEO optimization helps in better ranking of individual pages.
Good Off-Page SEO will help you to go from the bottom to a respectable position. But it is your On-Page SEO effort that will determine your relative position among your peers.
In other words, off-page SEO factors determine how high your rank should be whereas On-Page SEO optimization determines what your rank should be on the search engines.
The most prominent off-page SEO technique is to get high-quality backlinks. For On-Page SEO, it is the correct usage of keywords in your content.
List of the Ultimate On-Page SEO Optimization Tips and Techniques
#1) Keywords Research
Keyword research is the first thing you should do before you plan out your entire post. Search engines rank articles according to the keywords used.
Furthermore, it is your keywords that decide your targeted audience for the post. Therefore, keywords are truly the keys to the success of your content.
Google Keyword Planner and Keywordtool.io will help in finding the best keywords for your topic.
You should go for those that have maximum searches but medium to high competition. You should find single keywords, multi-word keywords, and long-tail keywords.
After that, you should decide which one will be your primary keyword and consider the others as secondary keywords.
Then you should find LSI keywords which are words that are closely related to the primary keyword. For example, PS is closely related to Photoshop, and hence, it is an LSI keyword if you are writing an article on Photoshop.
Use LSI Graph for finding LSI keywords. Use of LSI words with your primary words is good for SEO. Your article should be a perfect combination of all the keywords you have spotted.
#2) Post – Page Title
Post title is the main attraction of the entire post.
The optimal length of the title should be around 50-60 characters and it should not be more than 75.
The reason is that search engines or social media pages show only 50-60 characters of your title.
Post title should have the primary keyword at least once and if possible, a long-tail keyword.
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The primary keyword should be within the first three to four words of the title.
You should keep in mind which word or query your targeted audiences might be using to search on the search engines.
Search engines use your post title for better ranking and understanding the relevancy of your post.
#3) Post Permalink
First, you have to set the site URL hierarchy wisely. There are two popular approaches.
First, you will have your site URL and then the category, followed by the post permalink.
Second, you can have your site URL followed by the post permalink.
The combination of site URL and date is not a good idea because sometimes, you will have to update and publish old posts. In such cases, the old date of your post will distract your audiences.
Coming to post permalink, most of the platforms like WordPress, form an automated permalink based on your post title.
You have to modify and remove any stoppage word like articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. It should only contain the important words and keywords in a logical flow as in the title.
#4) Meta Description
The meta description is the text that you see on the search engine result pages just below the title of the posts.
People forget to put a customized meta description and hence, search engine crawlers consider the first few lines of the first paragraph as meta description.
This is a bad SEO practice.
You should always mention the meta description explicitly.
After keywords and title, search engines give importance to meta description for ranking your post. The more it matches the searched query, the better it is.
Meta description should be catchy because quite a few users check it before actually clicking on the link. It should have the important keywords and address the query your targeted audiences are looking for.
#5) Meta Tags
Most of the On-Page SEO optimization plugins in WordPress provide space for entering meta keywords or meta tags.
You need to include all the keywords that you are using in the article for better ranking. This is critical, and many bloggers ignore it and that is exactly where you can score over them.
Meta tags and meta description make it easy for the search engine bots to rank your site effortlessly.
#6) Keyword Density
As we stated earlier that you should sprinkle all your keywords evenly throughout the post. Use the primary keywords in the first paragraph of the post.
But make sure that none of the keywords have keyword density more than 2.5% which is a recommended standard by Yoast SEO.
Secondly, you should avoid keyword stuffing practice. Keyword stuffing refers to the excessive use of keywords in one or consecutive sentences. It is considered a negative point for SEO.
#7) Keywords in Bold – Italic and Underlined
You should always highlight your primary keywords in bold or italic styles.
You can underline your long-tail keywords. It makes the post interesting to read and breaks the monotone of the same style of writing.
Using too many fonts for a post is not a good idea. Instead use bold, italic and underline to your advantage to highlight important words and lines.
You can also use different colors for headings and keywords.
#8) Post Length
There is no ideal post length from On-Page SEO optimization perspective. But it should be more than 300 words for the search engines to rank it.
According to Yoast, one should try to maximize articles to be around 700-800 words.
- Also Read – Ideally How Long a Blog Post Should Be?
Writing articles of more than 1000 words is considered to be a sign of an experienced writer. Basically, you need to vary post length as per your requirement.
You can also write lengthy posts quite often but you have to make sure that you present the article beautifully. According to QuickSprout, epic posts attract more shares.
#9) Headings Tags/Header Tags like H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6
All the headings in a post must have a heading tag (H1 to H6). They increase the readability factors and break the monotony of reading.
Some of the headings must have your keywords especially the primary and the long-tail keywords.
Follow a standard procedure for using the tags wisely. The most important or main headings must be in H1-H2 tag. The less important ones or sub-headings must be in H3-H6.
#10) Image Alt Tag SEO
First of all, you should upload images in optimized size. If you require an image of size 500 x 500 pixels, there is no point in uploading a larger-sized image.
Optimizing the size of the image will increase the page and image loading speed significantly.
Secondly, every image must have an alt text and a caption.
Use your keywords especially the primary keyword in most of the images’ alt text and caption. It helps search engines to understand your content better.
It is a good practice from SEO perspective to put one relevant image per heading because it keeps the post engaging and increases readability.
#11) Interlinking of Posts
Interlinking is the process of linking one post with another and both of them are from your site.
It helps search engine bots in indexing all your posts in a better way. This, in turn, helps in increasing page rank of individual pages.
So, always have an eye on how you can relate your present post with the old ones and pass the link juice automatically.
Interlinking of posts also helps in reducing the bounce rate of your site.
If you cannot find words to link to other posts naturally, you can have ‘Also Check Out’ section at the end of your post where you provide links of other relevant posts on your site.
For Example:
#12) Anchor Text
The text you display for a hyperlink is called anchor text.
Your anchor texts should be relevant to your post and to the site to which you are linking.
For example, most of us have a habit of writing anchor text as ‘Click Here’, it is neither relevant to the post nor does it say anything about the site to which it is linking.
#13) External Outbound Links
Many bloggers think that external outbound links are a complete waste of space because only backlinks and internal links matter in SEO.
Accordingly to Moz, external outbound links has some weightage in On-Page SEO ranking algorithm. But you should only use external outbound links of high-quality sites to get their relevance in better ranking.
In the above paragraph, we have an external outbound link to Moz.com which is a top-quality relevant website.
#14) Theme Selecting and Website Designing
Google always prefer those websites that load faster than the others because it wants to give its users the best experience.
This is where your theme selection and website designing play an important role.
Your theme must have cross-browser compatibility and should be responsive on all devices.
Do not select a theme that is too clumsy and has unlimited functionality. It is always recommended to use a premium theme as it is tailor-made for better search engine crawling and ranking.
Keep your website clean and make it intuitive for easy navigation. Optimize your design to have a faster loading speed.
Use Pingdom to check your website loading speed from different regions. They provide suggestions to improve your site’s loading speed.
Wrapping It Up
Here are the On-SEO Page SEO techniques in a nutshell.
- Choose your keywords wisely.
- Make a perfect combination.
- Use your keywords judiciously throughout the post.
- Keep keyword density in mind.
- Frame your title smartly to make it catchy with keywords.
- Modify and frame your URL structure properly keeping mind the primary keywords.
- Even if you make your post lengthy, make sure it is well presented.
- Highlight the important words and sentence with colors, bold, italics and underline format style.
- Use heading tags appropriately and for every big heading, provide a relevant image.
- Every image must have an alt text and a caption with relevant keyword and the size should be exactly as per requirement.
- Focus on internal linking and quality outbound links.
- Before publishing, make sure you have an interesting meta description and vital meta tags consisting of your keywords.