What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO can be defined as the process or the steps taken to optimize and improve the web pages of a website to make them more user-friendly and search-engine friendly. In on-page SEO, the steps for optimizing the website are taken on the web pages themselves and are not focused towards any sort of advertising or backlink generation, etc.
When on-page SEO is performed, various types of steps are taken on the web pages. Some of the steps include:
- Improving and optimizing the content written on the web pages
- Improving the meta description and meta titles of the web pages
- Optimizing the URLs
- Adding external and internal links
And so on.
The main benefit of on-page SEO is that the user is able to access and navigate the website more easily. Plus, the search engine is also able to crawl and analyze the webpages more effectively.
This can help your website get better rankings in the SERPs.
What is the Need for On-Page SEO?
If on-page SEO is not done, then the web pages of the website are not easy to access or read for visitors.
For example, if the content is not optimized, it may contain mistakes and errors that could create problems for the readers. Likewise, if there are no links added to the content or on the webpage, then the user may feel difficulty in going from one page to the other.
All of these factors will make the reader leave the website and not come back.
The same is true for the search engines as well. When their crawlers will not be able to properly go through the website, and if they don’t find the content/resources on the website to be useful, they will abandon it.
The need for on-page SEO is to avoid these types of consequences.
On-Page SEO vs Off-Page SEO
On-page SEO and off-page are both two types of search engine optimization. However, there are quite a few differences between them.
As we said earlier, on-page SEO refers to the SEO-related measures that are taken on the website pages themselves. On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to the measures that are taken away from the website.
A common example of off-page SEO is backlink-building. In this process, backlinks are created for a website on other sites. This action is not taken on the main website itself but it does help its ranking.
To sum it up, on-page SEO includes steps like optimizing the content, metadata, URL structure, etc. On the contrary, off-page SEO includes steps like creating backlinks, making social media posts, and the like.
How Can You Do On-Page SEO for Your Website? 9 Useful Tips and Techniques
Now that we’re done looking at what on-page SEO is and the steps it includes, let’s take a look at some tips and techniques that you can follow to do it effectively for your website.
1. Make sure to add keywords to your content in the right density
One important step that you should take when doing on-page SEO for your website is using keywords in a moderate number and not overdoing it.
A lot of people, even now in 2024, can end up using a lot of keywords in their content, thinking that it will make their web pages rank higher in the SERPs. This does not work nowadays. Google (and other search engines) can view it as a black-hat technique, and penalize websites that do it.
Keeping that in mind, you should make sure that your keywords are evenly distributed in the content, and are at around 1% density of the whole text.
2. Make sure that your URLs are user-friendly and search engine-friendly
Another thing that you should take care of is the URLs of your website pages. The URLs should be user-friendly, in that they should be simple and easy to remember. They should also be descriptive of the webpage contents.
When the URL is descriptive like this, the search engine is able to understand the nature of the page’s content simply by looking at the slug. For example, if you look at the slug of this page, you will see that it is “on-page SEO.” (Note: The slug is the part of the URL after the actual domain name.)
Since it is short, the slug is easy to remember. The overall URL is also easy to remember, which means that any visitor can directly navigate to this page if they want. They can simply enter the URL in the address bar on their browser.
Here is an image showing another user-friendly slug:
3. Make sure that your pages load quickly
Page loading speed is also an important element of on-page SEO. You should try and make your pages load as quickly as possible. This can help with visitor behavior on your website. If your visitors are able to quickly access the page they want, they will spend more time on your website. And when your users will spend more time on your website, it will mean an increase in the dwell time.
Google uses metrics like these to understand how well your website is serving its visitors. If the metrics are positive, Google understands that your website is useful and that it should be ranked high in the SERPs.
Basically, when your pages take too long to load, the visitors can abandon your website. According to a well-known statistic, 53% of mobile users will abandon a website should it take more than 3 seconds to load.
There are a number of different things that you can do to ensure that your web pages load quickly. Here are some examples:
- Beautifying and minimizing the code
- Adding few or no hover effects and animations
- Compressing the images to reduce their size before uploading
And so forth.
As a webmaster myself, I have to take different steps to make my website load faster. You may have noticed that there are no animations or fancy effects on this page. It is just the blog along with the added images. It provides information, serves its purpose and loads quickly.
4. Make sure that you add internal links to other useful resources on your website
Adding a good number of internal links can also help your website’s on-page SEO. When a webpage contains internal links, it provides two benefits:
- The users are able to go from page to page easily and increase the time they spend on your website. They can learn more about your website, and this can increase the chances of them becoming regular readers.
- The search engine crawlers are able to use the internal links to quickly crawl the webpages of your site and index them properly.
You should, as a rule, add 3 to 4 internal links on each page of your website. If you put any more, it can make things a bit overwhelming.
Here, you can see how this blog post on Neil Patel features so many internal links. Thanks to all of these links, it is easy for users to go to other useful resources on the website.
5. Make sure that you add external links to make your content authoritative and credible
Just as it is important to add internal links to your content, the same goes for external links. While internal links are the ones that point to another webpage on your website, external links are the ones that take the user away to another website or platform on the Internet.
The purpose of external links is to make your content more credible and authoritative. For example, if you are citing a study or some statistics about your subject, you should add external links to the sources that you have taken them from. That way, your readers can know that you’re not talking nonsense off the top of your head, and have actually done your research.
Similarly, another way in which you can use external links is by placing them on certain anchor texts to help your readers find helpful resources other than the content on your website. For example, if I am talking about external links here, I know that I can’t stretch out the discussion for too long. In doing so, some important points about external links may remain unmentioned.
In this case, I would leave a link to another blog post on the Internet that talks about this point in detail. Here is a good post on external link by Marketbrew.ai.
There are some things that you should remember about adding external links. We will discuss them here in brief. Perhaps in the future, we will prepare a detailed guide on them as well. (If that happens, we’ll be sure to link it here.)
- When adding external links, pick reliable and authoritative sites. If you link to random sites on the Internet without checking, it can cause your own content to look unreliable.
- Make sure that the anchor text in the content that you put the links on is descriptive. The text should convey what type of website the link will lead to.
- Don’t add too many links in the text. Adding 3 to 4 links is usually fine.
6. Make sure to add images and optimize them properly
Adding images to your website has a lot of benefits. First of all, images make your web pages look much more colorful and engaging. Instead of eying a large wall of text, your readers will be able to see the images placed in the content and not get bored to death.
But, the thing about adding images is that, while everyone can add images, not all of them are very clear on which ones have to be added and howthey have to be added.
The images in your content should, firstly, be relevant. Even if you are adding images for decorative purposes, make sure they are somewhat related to the stuff that you're talking about on your website.
Ideally, the images you put on your website should have some sort of purpose and illustrative benefit. For example, you can make the images so that they convey to the viewer some features of your website or your brand. You can also use images to give examples and illustrations.
However, apart from using the right images, you have to take care to use them the rightway. There are a lot of things that you have to do in order to optimize the images so that they can help your website’s SEO progress. For example,
- You should compress the images so that they are not too big in size. In doing so, you will be able to keep your website loading swiftly.
- Another thing that you should take care of is adding the alt text of the image. The alt text of the image is basically a piece of text that tells the search engine what the contents of the image are. The alt text, if properly written, can tell the search engine that the image is relevant and helpful to the content.
- You should also try and use the PNG or JPG formats when adding images to your website. These formats load quickly and don’t cause problems for the overall speed of the website.
7. Make sure to use heading tags on the website
Heading tags refer to the H1, H2, H3, etc., HTML tags. These tags can be used to describe the hierarchical progression of the content. For example, you can add an H2 tag for a heading while making the sub-headings H3.
When you do this, the search engine is able to understand the relevancy and connection between the different parts of your content. It is able to understand how deeply you’ve discussed a particular point and how rich the information is that you’ve provided.
8. Make sure that your content provides valuable information
Nowadays, your top priority when writing content should not be to appease the search engines or get them to somehow rank your content. Rather, your focus should be on making the content friendly and helpful for your readers.
Search engines like Google nowadays take into account the helpfulness of your content when ranking it, and not how many SEO elements it contains, such as 10 – 20 uses of the main keywords, LSI keywords, etc. I mean, these things are important and you should take care of them but they should not rise higher in priority to making the content user-friendly and valuable.
Some things that you can keep in mind in order to make your content valuable and helpful are as follows:
- Make sure you do proper research before writing and base your content around facts
- Make sure to use updated information, such as stats, facts, and figures, in your content
- Keep your wording and tone easy and simple to understand
- Provide examples and illustrations in your content to make it easier to understand
- Look for something to discuss that hasn’t already been discussed by your competitors
9. Use schema markup
Using schema markup can also help in the on-page SEO of your website. If you aren't aware of what schema markup is, don't worry. We'll explain it to you.
With schema markup, you can add specific types of information to your website in such a way that the search engine is able to understand what exactly that information is—which allows it (the search engine) to show that information in a rich format.
For example, if you use schema markup to add information about your website’s reviews, Google will be able to show those reviews (the number of reviews it has as well as the average rating, etc.,) underneath your website’s title in the SERPs. Here is an example:
Now, schema markup can be used for a number of different things. You can use it to show the products on your website directly on Google in the rich results. You can also use it to add a search function for your website directly on the SERPs.
We won’t delve into too much detail about this here. We just wanted to make this point so that you can apply schema markup for your website depending on the type of information you’re providing or the services that you’re offering, etc.
Conclusion
And that brings this blog post to an end.
On-page SEO is an important part of your website's overall search engine optimization. You have to make sure that the on-page elements of your website, such as the content, URLs, images, etc., are all added properly.
The benefit of on-page SEO is that search engines are able to assess and understand the relevance and value of your website easily. Then, they are able to rank it higher in the SERPs where it should be.
If you want some help with your website's on-page SEO, you can always reach out to us here at Blogs Nest. You can hire our services at affordable prices and improve your site's SEO performance.