Two factors come into play when optimizing the website or a blog: On-page and Off-page optimization. Off-page optimization involves the optimization of signals external to the website. And on-page SEO is a technique that helps the search engine bots understand what the page is all about.
In this post, we’ll focus on on-page optimization and the on-page SEO techniques you should implement while optimizing your blog posts.
Let’s take a look at some of the most effective on-page SEO techniques:
1. Publish High-Quality Content
A website with poor quality of content will fail with or without SEO. On the other hand, a website with brilliant content does great with or without SEO. And a website with good content does better with the help of SEO and content optimization tool.
Characteristics of high-quality content include:
- Content that’s relevant to search intent
- Original and exclusive content
- Includes text elements, videos, and images
- Useful, well-researched content that adds value to your website and readers
2. Optimize Title and Meta Description
The search engines read your pages to understand what the content is all about before they rank your page for certain keywords. The page title and meta description play an important role here. Therefore, you need to ensure that each of your website pages has a unique title and short meta description of up to 158 characters.
Some page title optimization tips are:
- Use keywords at the beginning of your page titles
- Keep the titles short (below 60 characters)
- Include numbers and power words like “top, ultimate, smart, amazing, best, checklist, etc.”
Some tips for meta description optimization:
- Avoid auto-generated descriptions
- Add your target keyword(s) in the description
- Use the targeted keyword or keyword phrase toward the beginning of the description
3. Post Permalink Structure
A proper URL structure is important for on-page optimization.
Some tips for displaying your URL correctly are:
- Use your target keyword in the URL
- Try not to use symbols, commas, special characters, brackets, etc. within the actual URL
- Differentiate the strings in your URL structure by using dashes
- The URL structure should be similar to the actual structure of a website
- Group your pages into categories
- Have sub-categories, but avoid going over two levels. For example, a good category structure is: Homepage > Social Media > Instagram> Blog
- Add a Breadcrumb menu
4. Format Headings and Content
A page needs to be properly formatted with a heading (h1) and subheadings (h2, h3).
Each page should have only one H1 tag (post title). Keep these things in mind for h2, h3, etc. headings:
- Avoid using only a word for a heading
- Use headings hierarchically i.e. the first <h1>, then <h2> and so on
- Use keywords in the subheadings
Content Formatting
- Break big paragraphs into smaller ones (max 3-4 lines).
- Keep enough space between paragraphs to make the text easier to read.
- Use a good size font.
- Use bold, underline , or italics to highlight important content
- Make use of CSS to create sections
5. Optimize Image
Images make the content more interesting. However, search engines do not understand them, and they also reduce the page’s loading speed.
Tips to optimize images:
- Use original images. If using an existing image from the web, reference the source
- Optimize the size of the images
- Use ALT tag for the image description
- Use descriptive filenames
6. Increase Your Site Speed
If the loading speed of the page is slow, your visitors are likely to bounce.
Tips to increase site speed:
1: Test the current speed of your website.
2: If the performance is not good, compress all your images before uploading—the smaller the files, the quicker the page loads.
3: Use a content delivery network (CDN). It will distribute the pages according to the user’s location, ensuring faster load time.
4: Invest in premium web hosting.
7. Build External Links
An external link points to a page outside the website. When the website links out, it’s an external link, and when the website receives the link, it’s a backlink.
Some tips to follow when linking out:
- Provide external links only when it adds value to the reader.
- Link out to trustworthy websites that have original and unique content.
- If sending the link out to a website, you don’t fully trust, use the ‘no-follow’ tag.
8. Use Extensive Internal Linking
What happens when you link pages internally? The ranking power is distributed across the website. Internal linking improves the usability of the website and increases your chances of acquiring backlinks.
Here are some tips when building internal links as On-Page SEO Techniques
- Ensure every content page has at least 5 internal links.
- Optimize your anchor text.
- Add old content links to recently published content.
- Link to pages that are already ranking.
9. Comments and On-Page SEO
Blog comments are important to boost your SEO. Users usually read the existing comments before their new posting comments. This is a great way to keep them engaged on your website.
Some tips to make the best use of comments:
- Don’t publish all comments. Always moderate them.
- Avoid publishing generic comments.
- Only approve the ones that are relevant and add value to the page content.
- Don’t approve the comments of users without a real name.
- Respond to the comments always.
QUICK On-Page SEO Techniques/ Checklist for 2020
Use this On-page SEO techniques/checklist to ensure that you are doing everything right to rank higher in search engines:
Keywords need to be present in the following:
- Title
- The first 100 words
- Permalink.
- Image alt tag.
- LSI keyword in H2 or H3
- LSI keywords in the body
Ranking Factors 2020: On-Page SEO
- Remove all stop words from permalink.
- Add multimedia (video, slides, infographics)
- Optimize images before uploading (compress and resize)
- Write a meta title of up to 65 characters
- Optimize page load speed
- Write a meta description of up to 158 characters
- Create external links to relevant, high-quality sites
- Internal links to related articles
- Use FAQ Schema
- Use Breadcrumbs
Things Not To Do:
- Don’t put more than one H1 (post title) tag.
- Don’t stuff keywords.
- Don’t repeat the same tags for H2 and H3.
Things To Focus On:
- Add an image for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Provide links to related posts at the end of each post to lower the bounce rate.
- Keep the word length of the content similar to the content word length of the top 10 results for your query.
- Place social sharing buttons at the end or floating on the site of your post.
- End the post with a call to action.
