In on-page SEO, you optimize your individual web pages, so they rank higher and get more relevant search results. Rather than relying on on-page SEO, which refers to the links and signals on a page, we talk about “off-page” SEO, which involves optimizing both the content and HTML of a page.
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO (search engine optimization) is about making your site more search engine friendly by optimizing your pages.
Off-page optimization is the opposite of on-page SEO, optimizing elements outside your website. You can do this with backlinks and social media.
On-page SEO includes these things:
- Title tags
- Internal links
- HTML code
- URL optimization
- On-page content
- Images
- User experience (UX)
Why Is On-Page SEO Important?
Every few months, Google updates its algorithm, improving both its understanding of what a user wants and how they feel on a page. You should learn SEO and stay up to date with best practices.
Furthermore, Google prioritizes user experience, so it’s essential to implement on-page SEO strategies in your overall marketing plan.
A well-optimized page gives Google more info about your content to organize and rank it better. So you are essentially helping Google perform its tasks better.
- Linkable content is good:
A linkable article is as good as any on the Internet from an SEO perspective. The content won’t drive traffic to the given website if no one links to it, so search engines won’t rank it. That’s a lot more common than you’d think. You’ve probably seen AJAX-powered image slideshows, logged-in-only content, and content you can’t share. In the eyes of search engines — and probably some people, too — content that doesn’t fill a need is bad.
- Use External (Outbound) Links
External links to related pages can determine your page’s topic. This shows Google you have a good amount of information on your page.
And it’s not just a theory. Reboot Online recently conducted an experiment to determine whether external links could help to improve search engine rankings.
Ten new websites were created. About half of them were linked to authoritative websites (such as the Oxford University website). There were no external links on the remaining half.
- Image optimization
SEO-friendly images are also important. It would help to give them descriptive file names with hyphens between them. You’ll also want to optimize the file size to load quickly while keeping the quality. You’ll have a slower page load time if all your images are over 400kb, which will hurt your Google ranking.
You can optimize images with TinyPNG, WP Smush, or ImageOptim.
Last but not least, add text to the alt tags of the images, incorporating the appropriate keyword from time to time. Search engines use alt text to make sense of images.
- Checking the on-page SEO of your competitors
Identifying your strongest competitors doesn’t require much thought. However, they’re also trying to gain a foothold in your field, so you can bet they’re just like you using on-page SEO.
You can find out better ways to do things by checking out their websites and seeing what they’re doing. You can get tons of info if you look at a few pages, even though they probably have some secrets up their sleeves. Looking at your competitors’ websites can also help you improve your website, improving your overall business. As you begin to improve your site’s on-page SEO, you will likely see its page rankings rise over the coming months.
