What is on-page SEO? 

On-page Seo is mainly the optimization of your site. It is the practice of using specific keywords to improve search visibility and to gain more organic traffic for your website. It involves several practices like title tags, content, headings, and internal links with significant keywords. It also helps in improving your rankings in the SERP(search engine page result). On page SEO is a booster for improving your website by adding all these aspects.  

Similarly, there are other ranking factors as well that lie outside the owner’s control, this is termed as off-page SEO. Things like backlinks, shares, social media, and brand mentions can all have either have direct or indirect effects on a website’s rankings in the SERP.  

What on page SEO is relying on is the actual content of the page which means that anything within the website can fall into the realm of potentially affecting the SEO of the website. This includes text, metadata, multimedia content, JavaScript, HTML code, CSS, and more. Generally, this is known as ‘content’ although sometimes, marketers use the term ‘content’ for referring to the main text of the page.  In simple words, this is the main area of focus for search engines, which means it should be the main focus of any SEO marketing strategy as well.

Why is on-page SEO important?

On-page SEO is very important for the website because it helps the search engine in analyzing the pages of your website so that they can easily identify whether a searcher’s query is relevant to the content published on your website. The more good your on-page SEO will be, the more it will enable the search engines to understand your content to on page rank the most relevant URLs for the specific keywords.  

If the keywords are not present on the page then it makes it harder for Google to figure out which search queries the content should be ranked for. The keywords should be on the right location on the page and inside the HTML, otherwise, the on page signal won’t be strong enough. This can reduce the chances of your keyword being ranked. 

Doesn’t matter whether a business is small or big, it is important to optimize the on-page SEO of the website. SEO refers to one of the most common digital marketing strategies and it remains the most popular because of its reliable ROI(Return On Investment). In fact, on-page SEO offers the best ROI out of nearly any digital marketing strategy with its relatively low-cost and long-term benefits that can help websites grow and bring in passive traffic for years. 

What are the most important on-page SEO elements? 

Content– The most important and relevant role in the on-page optimization of the page is the content. A website or webpage with unique and high-quality content has always been preferred by search engines over websites with low-quality content. Website content with a high readability score, uniqueness, and usefulness will boost the on-page of a website or webpage to great levels.

Meta Title or Tag– Another important factor of on-page SEO is meta titles or meta tags. The title tag is an HTML tag used to specify the title of the website or webpage. Title or meta title tags is the one shown on the SERPs and each webpage has its title tag. The title should be unique and should contain your most important keywords. The maximum length for a meta title is 70 characters(including spaces)but the recommended maximum length is 60 characters. 

Meta Description– Meta description is also another important element of on page optimization. It is a short description of up to 160 characters(including spaces) about the content of a webpage. A meta description is displayed in SERPs of a web page as well. It should be unique for every page of a website. 

Header Tags–  Here comes another important element of on page SEO, the header tags. Header tags are usually defined to be the most important heading of a webpage. Generally, there are 6 header tags i.e. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. The important keywords should be used in the H1 and H2 header tags to improve the SEO score of your webpage. 

Image Alt Texts– Search engines cannot read images, so the tag which is used to define the images for search engines is called Alt tag or Alt attribute. Alt tags for all the images help in improving the ranking of your website. 

SEO Friendly and URL Structure– The URLs of your website should be SEO-friendly. An SEO-friendly URL contains the main keyword of your webpage and does not have any numeric values and special characters. You should always use underscores(_) instead of hyphens(-) to separate the words in your URL.

Robots and XML Sitemaps– Although these two sound a bit complex but both of them play a very important role in crawling and indexing a website. An XML sitemap helps the search engine bots in understanding which page of your website needs to be indexed and where. Whereas robots.txt files define which pages will be allowed and disallowed for users to be crawled by the users on search engines. These two are meant to be used in collaboration and should not create a conflict in the crawling and indexing of URLs. 

Image Optimization– Image optimization helps in making your website smoother and faster. Image optimization increases your website’s speed. Unoptimized images can make your website slower and unattentive. Optimization of images makes your website load quickly. It also enhances your user experience. 

Keyword Density– Keyword density comes under the content element. Keyword density is defined as the percentage(%) of a keyword used in the content of the webpage. It can be calculated by dividing the total number of keyword occurrences by the total number of the content of your webpage and then multiply it by 100. The average keyword density should be maintained between 3 to 4.5%. 

Text to HTML Ratio– The ratio of Text-to-HTML ratio is to be calculated by the amount of text on the webpage compared to the amount of HTML code needed to be displayed on it. 

Canonical Tag– A canonical tag is usually referred to as the element used to tell the search engines that a specific URL acts as the master copy of the webpage. The canonical tag is also used to prevent problems caused due to identical or duplicate content that appears on more than one URL. It also informs the search engines that which version of the webpage URL should appear in SERPs.  

Internal Linking– Internal linking is the technique of linking one website with another webpage of the same website. It helps in boosting the SEO(Search Engine Optimization) of the website/webpage. 

Structured Data– This element is used for the generation of rich snippets by the search engines for a webpage’s content in their result pages. 

How do URLs help in on page SEO? 

Keyword- Including your primary keyword in your URL helps both search engines and users to understand the content of a page in a better way. 

Placement of the words- You should place the keyword as far as possible to the left in the URL. 

Use of real words- Use real words in your URL as much as possible instead of the unreadable gibberish that some content management systems pump out. 

Keep them short and easy to read- Ideally, your URL structure should be short and easily readable by both search engines and users to understand. The easier it is for Google to understand the type of content on the page, the better. Also, Google often shows URLs in search results. If a page URL is a long string of random letters and numbers, that doesn’t help users understand your webpage. The better response they’ll be getting by your side, the better response they’ll give back to you. 

Use hyphens- Hyphens help in making URLs easily readable. They are used for spacing between words. 

Avoid session IDs- Avoid the inclusion of session IDs in your URLs when possible as they produce a barrage of URLs for the same page. Instead, the use of cookies is advised by Google. 

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