Your site's ability to rank on search engines rests on the shoulders of your on-page search engine optimization (SEO).
How good your on-page SEO determines where you'll rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). If done correctly, you can enjoy higher rankings and more organic traffic.
The operative word here, however, is "correctly."
This post aims to provide everything you need about on-page SEO, from what it's all about to its best practices. using different tools.
Let's begin!
On-Page SEO: A Quick and Dirty Introduction
Just so we're all on the same page, let's first discuss what on-page SEO means.
In a nutshell, it refers to tactics you can perform on your website to help influence its search rankings.
What Makes On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO Different from Each Other
Unlike on-page SEO, off-page SEO is a collection of tasks you do outside your site to increase SERP positions for its target keywords.
Off-page SEO is synonymous with link building, the most influential ranking factor (alongside content, an on-page SEO factor).
Both are necessary to help make your site rank higher on search engines. But the great thing about on-page SEO is you have complete control over the changes you make here.
For instance, if your site dropped its rankings because of something you did on the page. Simply roll the website back to its previous version before the change to recover your rankings.
Undoing the changes made in your off-page SEO is much more difficult. Let's say you unknowingly built bad backlinks to your site. There's a good chance Google will penalize and devalue your website.
And even if you can disavow these links, there's no guarantee the search engine will get your rankings back up again.
Why Is On-Page SEO Important
More importantly, on-page SEO serves as the foundation of your website. Even if you don't have authoritative backlinks to your site, you can still rank for your keywords and rake in thousands of monthly traffic.
The same can't be said vice versa. If you have thin or poor content on your site but have good backlinks pointing to it, Google may penalize your website.
It's because no properly managed website would link to a spammy site. This also means that the site getting the link is gamifying the algorithm.
On the other hand, websites love to link to high-quality pages from fast-loading websites that cover topics relevant to their audience.
Take Jon Dykstra as an example, He earns $70,000+ a month from his niche sites by focusing on creating good content. He doesn't deliberately build links to them. If he does get links, people voluntarily link to his pages due to their quality.
This goes to show the power on-page optimization wields. As long as you make your website useful to your audience by making it the best it can be, your site will get links naturally and rank on top of search results!
Top 10 On-Page SEO Techniques for Higher Rankings
Now that we've discussed on-page SEO, it's time to delve into how you can implement its best practices onto your website.
We've limited the below list to ten actionable items to boost your on-page SEO process. Other techniques may not be included in the list, but it's not about the volume.
It's about making your website as valuable as possible to your audience and search engines. And you can't go wrong with any of these tactics:
Make Your Website Secure
The first order of business is to show your audience and Google that they can trust your website.
That means your site protects the personal information they may enter on the site.
Due to malware that hacks into online databases and steals information, if not wreck havoc inside them, you must set up a security system that will prevent this from happening.
There are lots of anti-virus tools that monitor website activity and determine threats even before something bad happens. You will need this sooner than later, even before your site blows up and generates tons of traffic.
But from an SEO perspective, you must install an SSL certification on your domain. It encrypts user information entered on your site's forms and login pages.
A secure website via SSL has been a ranking factor since 2014. While it's not as weighty as a ranking factor compared to backlinks and content, it's something you should always consider when setting up your website.
A site with an SSL certificate has a padlock icon beside its address bar.
Those without one have a "Not secure" warning in its place.
There are even instances when your browser will discourage visitors from getting to your site.
By setting up SSL certification, users will feel safe browsing and entering their information on your site.
Most domain registrars and hosting providers offer SSL certification as part of their plan. They usually have Let's Encrypt hand out these certifications.
Setting the certification is a breeze. Depending on your domain registrar or hosting provider, you can simply enable the SSL with a mouse click. Here's what it looks like on Cloudways.
There may be times when the site remains insecure even after activating the SSL certificate. If this happens on your WordPress website, you must download and activate a plugin like Really Simple SSL.
It fixes mixed content and ensures all URLs redirect to the HTTPS version instead of HTTP.
Optimize the "Three Kings" of On-Page SEO
Coined by Matt Diggity, the three kings of on-page SEO are:
- URL
- SEO title tags
- Page title (h1)
These are what search engines look at when indexing which pages to appear on organic search.
The URL and SEO title tag are the first things users see about your page (assuming it ranks on SERPs).
Once they click on the page, they will see the page title found on top of the page.
If you check the page's source code, the page title is wrapped around the tag.
In most cases, the SEO title and page title are the same. But let's say you want to write a different title to appear on SERPs to increase click-through rates (CTRs) while keeping your page title.
This is possible and won't be a problem. But it's just as good to have the same SEO and page title for simplicity's sake.
Regardless, you must include your target keyword in all of them to optimize them for Google search. This allows search engines to know what the page is about without browsing through its content.
Optimizing a page's URL structure depends on your content management system (CMS). For instance, WordPress allows you to change it while editing its content.
You can also change it using the SEO plugin installed in the CMS. Here's what it looks like on Yoast SEO.
But to make changes, you should set your site's permalink structure on the Settings page.
Going back to the plugin, you can input a different SEO title for the page.
Since changing your SEO title is to get more clicks from it on SERPs, you want to track its performance over time.
From your Google Search Console account, you can see the percentage of clicks for the page based on the number of impressions it's getting.
From here, you can decide whether to update your SEO title or not.
Using Nelio A/B Testing plugin, you can create variations of your SEO title and run them simultaneously.
Over time, you will see which among the variants received the most clicks. You can then run another test for the winning title with a different one to find ways of improving CTR.
Mention Your Keywords in the Meta Tags
Meta descriptions were once ranking factors that increased your page's search rankings by mentioning your target keyword.
Nowadays, they don't affect your site's ability to rank on SERPs.
However, it's also one of the first elements users see about your web page on search results. So, you want to write your page's meta description in a way that would make users want to click on it.
Similar to your URL and SEO title tag, you can edit them on your chosen SEO plugin. Here's what it looks like on SEOPress:
The great thing about these tools is it tells you how long you should write your meta description.
While there's a 160-character limit for meta descriptions, you also need to consider the size of its characters.
So, even if you don't exceed 160 characters, your meta description will be truncated on SERPs if your characters take up lots of space, i.e., round letters with o, b, d, etc.
To counter this, use Counting Character Google SERP Tool. It helps you keep track of its pixel count, which should be around 900.
You can also use this tool to use your SEO title tag if you're not using an SEO plugin or extension for your CMS.
Write Content According to Search Intent
Once you're ready to create content for your web pages, always write content based on your target keyword's intent.
There are four types of user intent you must know before writing content on your web page:
The guidelines above allow you to orient your content's topic based on its intent and what people want to know about it. You shouldn't write about anything irrelevant to the search intent.
For instance, if your keyword or topic has informational intent, the content's goal is to educate your audience by proving accurate and updated information.
If you plan on selling something as the content's end goal for the same keyword, you're not providing visitors with a good user experience. As a result, they'll leave your page and go to a different page with their best interests in mind.
To know a keyword's intent, type it in Google and check the top web pages on search results.
For example, if the majority are sales pages, its intent is commercial. This means it's okay if you plan on listing down different products to make affiliate commissions for every successful sale.
If you're still in the process of researching your target keywords, you can use Semrush's Magic Keyword Tool. Type in your seed keyword, and the tool will break down the intent of all its related searches.
Granted, it won't be as accurate compared to manually looking at the SERPs of each term. Nonetheless, it helps you speed up the research process by reducing the suggestions to the most relevant ones.
Make Your Content Valuable
Most marketers and site owners mistake writing content for search engines.
For instance, the article mentions and talks about related terms to your keywords, which helps Google understand the content much better. However, it neither says anything new about the topic nor provides any value to readers.
If people aren't reading the content, Google won't rank you on top of search results, even if you satisfy user intent.
So, you must balance writing content geared towards your audience and search engines.
For this, you'd need a tool like Surfer SEO or Clearscope terms and phrases related to your target keywords.
But if you're looking for a more cost-efficient but equally effective solution, Audiit is your tool.
It performs a SERP analysis for your chosen keyword and takes the averages for each of the most vital on-page ranking factors.
From here, you have all the information you need to create content comparable to the top-ranking pages for your search term.
The process above satisfies the search engine side of content. The next part is writing content that readers want to read.
This is arguably the most difficult part of on-page SEO because of the following:
- You must profile your target demographics to determine who the audience for your content is.
- You need to be an expert in the topic, or at least hire someone with the knowledge and experience.
- The content must observe the best formatting practices and be presented in a compelling way that people want to read it.
Worse, there's no tool to automate these three tasks. So, you must roll your sleeves and get down and dirty with the writing process.
Determine your Target Demographics
To find out who the target audience of your audience is, refer to your top articles ranking for it on SERPs. Read each piece and see who the authors are talking to and their pain points. This enables you to hone in on the target audience of your topic keyword.
To help refine your research, you can align your topic's audience with the one you currently have on your site.
Go to your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) account and check Users > Demographics > Demographics overview.
It shows you where most of your audience is from, their gender, interests, tech, and others.
Use the information here to ensure that your audience for your target keyword is similar to the existing ones on your site.
This helps you create content focusing on a specific audience, thus building your site's topic relevance.
Have the Necessary Expertise and Experience to Write about the Topic
Next, you must write content that your audience can trust.
You don't just want to regurgitate content about the same keyword published on other sites. You want to provide unique insights about it that your audience won't find anywhere else.
Your ideas—and how you present them—will help separate you from other writers or site owners in your niche.
A perfect example of expertise at work is Brian Dean.
He has built his name as the person behind Backlinko by churning out high-quality content about SEO. In particular, Brian publishes case studies of his techniques to show people that he doesn't just talk the talk—he walks it too!
Even better, he comes up with new terms for his SEO techniques. He made the Skyscraper Technique a thing in 2014 and has coined other terms like "Linkreators" in his SEO That Works online course and "Reverse Outreach."
To be clear, you don't have to coin new terms to be considered an expert in your field. How you present your knowledge to your audience in a clear and engaging way is what truly matters.
Write Content for the Web
To put this into perspective, you only have eight seconds of your visitors' time before they decide to read your content or leave the page.
So, you want to do whatever it takes to keep them on your page and read the entirety of your content. Below are ways you can do this:
- Write a killer introduction. Use Pain-Agitate-Solution (PAS) copywriting formula to engage your readers from the very start.
- Make shorter sentences and paragraphs. Ideally, you must have one to two sentences or three lines per paragraph.
- Introduce subtopics in your content with subheadings(H2, H3, etc.).
- Format your list using bullet points.
- Feature images rich media like images and videos to break the monotony of text.
- Use bucket brigade to draw your audience's attention back to your content.
- Review your content to correct spelling errors and cut long sentences into shorter ones. Use Grammarly Premium to help you spot these issues.
Observing these points makes your articles much easier to read and scan, resulting in higher retention rates.
Now, here's another question:
What if you don't fancy yourself as a writer?
Or what if you don't have time to write content on your site?
The solution is easy—let someone else write for you!
At Legiit, you can hire freelancers with the expertise and experience to write about your topics.
The site also shows you writers who use Surfer SEO in their workflow to ensure that the content is optimized to their target keywords.
Each writer also charges differently, giving you options on who to choose based on your budget. You can also refer to their star rating and customer reviews to filter the best ones to choose from.
Hiring someone who can create content for your audience and search engines will tremendously help your on-page SEO efforts. All you need to do is share with them the keywords you want content, ad they'll take care of the rest.
Speaking of which, you can also assign keyword research to someone from Legiit.
This takes even more burden from you as you focus on growing your online business!
Make Images Friendlier to Search Engines
If your website depends on visuals to communicate its message or generate sales, you must present them in a valuable way to search engines.
But before we discuss this further, let's talk about how search engines rank pages for a search query.
Search spiders (or search engine bots crawling the web) find words and phrases on the page's content. The spiders then use them (and ranking factors) to determine which query to index the page.
Regarding images, search engines can't read them the same way it does written content. They currently don't have a way to understand what the image is about in itself.
However, you can use the image's alt text to tell search spiders what it's about.
You can do this by right-clicking on the image and selecting "Inspect" to see how search spiders view them.
When writing alt text for images, describe what the image conveys.
Most marketers use the alt text to enter the page's target keyword. This practice of keyword stuffing is no longer encouraged as it doesn't describe the image.
You can see examples of well-written alt texts on stock photo sites like DepositPhotos.
They perfectly capture the spirit of the photo, which helps search engines understand its content.
To edit your image's alt text on WordPress, select it on the editor, click the gear icon on the upper-right side of the screen, and look at the right sidebar.
You can also use the image's caption section to elaborate on what the image means concerning the content.
This way, search spiders can know why you used the image as part of the content in the first place.
Also, use custom images as much as possible.
It's tempting to depend on stock photos as images for your content. However, there's a chance that somebody else used the same stock photo on one of their pages.
While having the same image found on different sites doesn't diminish your site's quality, it doesn't make it stand out from the rest.
So, to showcase your expertise to your audience, use screenshots or photos you took instead.
For example, if you're doing product reviews, show your audience how you experienced it using Snagit (if you're using software).
The tool lets you create annotations on your screenshot to make it more unique.
Or, if you insist on using stock photos, might as well customize them using Canva to make them different from the rest.
You can add elements and filters to the images to achieve your desired effect. There's also an option to include your brand assets so that you can take ownership of the content.
Finally, ensure that your high-quality images load efficiently on your website.
One of the problems with images is striking the balance between high resolution and low file size.
The perception is that high-quality images mean the page will load slower because of their file sizes. But if their file sizes are small, loading them on the page much faster, the drop-off in image quality is much more evident.
Thankfully, tools like ShortPixel enables you to reduce the image's file size without compromising its quality.
You can use the tool to compress the images before uploading them.
But if you have a WordPress, you can install the plugin and let it optimize the images upon uploading them to your site.
You can even compress previously uploaded and unoptimized images on your site using the Bulk Optimize feature.
Increase Page Speed
Image optimization is part of your efforts to make your website load faster.
Google officially announced site speed as a ranking factor for organic search and ads in 2018. However, it was only three years after when the search engine established parameters for measuring site speed and the overall experience provided by your site.
The Page Experience Update also introduced the Core Web Vitals (CWV).
Aside from the time for your page to completely (Largest Contentful Paint), you have to worry about the responsiveness of the page elements when users interact with them (First Input Delay) and how stable the site layout is while loading (Cumulative Layout Shift).
You can determine how good or poor your scores are for these factors by going to Google PageSpeed Insights and entering your page URL on the search bar.
The great thing about this tool is that it provides suggestions on improving your site's performance across these metrics. This way, you're not left in the dark when you have a low Core Web Vitals score.
If you set up your Google Search Console properly, you'll see the CWV scores of your web pages indexed by Google.
Some of the solutions Google PageSpeed Insights provides require web development knowledge. This way, you can implement them correctly.
But you can solve most of these issues by setting up the foundations of an efficient-loading site. Here's how you can do it:
Host Your Site on a Fast and Reliable Platform
If your hosting provider doesn't have efficient servers, your site won't have a high Core Web Vitals score, no matter how hard you try.
Searching online for the best web hosts would provide you with varying results. Also, most of the pages that list different hosting providers are incentivized by affiliate commissions. Publishers recommend providers that pay them a lot for every successful referral.
In this case, ask members from Facebook groups like WordPress Hosting for the best providers to choose from based on their experience. In fact, just search for "best web hosting" in these groups, and you'll find different posts with lots of answers.
Aside from the hosting provider's speed and performance, check its customer support. This is important, especially if you encounter problems with your site.
How the support team quickly responds to your query and resolves your issues will make your life as a site owner much easier.
Use a Lightweight Theme
The theme you choose for your website dictates how fast and efficient it'll load for users.
The beauty of lightweight is that they're coded neatly, ensuring they're optimized for maximum loading speed.
Also, unlike most premium themes available, you're not saddled with built-in features you don't need. Lightweight themes provide you with the basics for running a fast-loading site. You then decide later to download other plugins with the features you need.
Among the best lightweight themes are GeneratePress and Astra. Both enable you to create different types of sites suited for your business.
You can also easily customize them to your liking without any design experience.
Finally, they play well with other WordPress plugins like website builders, SEO, and others. This allows you to scale your website as necessary to keep your website performance at a maximum.
Use a Caching Plugin
Web caching enables you to save files from your site to your visitors' browsers. So, whenever they visit your site again, the browser loads the site's content locally instead of downloading them from the web servers.
This allows your site to load much faster than before.
There are lots of WordPress caching plugins to choose from. Most of them do the exact thing mentioned above, but only a handful are effective and provide additional features to improve site performance.
WP Rocket has been a gold standard among caching plugins through the years. Aside from page caching, it can do the following:
- Optimize your CSS and JS files to make them smaller and more efficient.
- Lazy-load images and videos—make them load only when visitors reach the part of the page where they appear.
- Preload your content after installing the plugin to serve your visitors with a faster version of your site.
Link to Relevant Pages in Your Site
Links on a page are another way for search spiders to tell what your site is all about.
You must include two types on all your pages: internal and external links.
Internal links point to other pages within your site, while external links (also known as outbound links) point to pages from other sites.
The former is critical in your on-site SEO process. They help you connect pages that share the same topic.
The idea here is to link pages with each other to form a cluster or a group of pages covering a subtopic on your website.
Let's say you have a website about France. You want to group pages about restaurants in a cluster separate from pages about hotels and vice versa.
Here's what it looks like:
The pages on top, i.e., Paris Hotels, Paris Restaurants, are your site's pillar pages. The ones below them, i.e., Le Meurice and Sofitel Paris under Paris Hotels, are their supporting articles.
The lines represent how each of the pages links to each other. Pages about the same time subtopic in your site only link to each other, thus creating a cluster that resembles a silo.
The diagram above is just one of the many ways to create content. Below is another visual representation of a content cluster:
Unlike the previous example, the supporting pages above don't link out to any other post except the pillar post.
You can play around with different internal linking structures on your site. The goal is to contain related pages with each other to help search spiders crawl your pages much easier. This results in an improved topic relevance for your site over time.
If you need help with your internal link building effort, a tool like Link Whisper helps you automate the process.
First, you can add internal links to relevant pages in your post with a click of a button.
It can also audit your pages for their internal links and identifies which pages in your site link to which other pages.
Finally, the tool helps you identify orphaned pages or those that don't have pages linking to them on your site.
Search spiders will take much longer to find and index orphaned pages. So, by fixing these pages, you can improve their visibility on search engines and get them to rank on SERPs.
The value of external links, on the other hand, in SEO isn't pronounced compared to internal links.
The fact that these links direct your visitors away from your site sounds counter-intuitive, especially since you want to keep them on your site as long as possible.
However, these links are a way for search spiders to understand your new site.
By linking to high-quality and relevant pages from sites that aren't your competitors, you help understand what your page is about. This way, you can get your pages crawled and indexed much faster, even if your site is just months old.
Use Structured Data
Structured data is another way for you to explain to search spiders what your website is about.
How you implement structured data on your site pages manifests in how it appears on search results.
Here's an example of a search results page for a recipe search query:
As you can see, each of the pages with structured data pop out compared to other pages. It's because they have rich snippets added to their page in SERPs, such as rating, number of votes, and time to make the dish.
Here's another example of structured data in action on SERPs. This time, it's for product reviews.
Using structured markup data is beneficial for site owners because it enables you to increase your site's CTR on search results.
For instance, there's a greater chance that a page with a higher star rating and more customer reviews will receive many clicks on organic search regardless of its position.
You can set up structured data on your site pages in many ways. It's a piece of code that appears within your page's tag.
You can create one using Merkle's Schema Markup Generator.
Choose the type of structured data you want to create for your page and fill in the blanks on the page.
Once done, copy the generated code on the page and paste it into its section.
For WordPress users, you can use the WPCode plugin to paste the code on the page without messing up the page's structure.
If you want to make the job much easier for you, use the WP Schema plugin to generate the code from within your site.
This way, you don't have to manually copy and paste the code on each page.
Audit and Review!
As mentioned, the tips above should improve your site's crawlability and indexability.
However, your job doesn't stop there. SEO is a dynamic process requiring close and constant monitoring of your site's activity.
Even if you do observe the best practices above, it's still possible for your site to incur problems along the way.
In particular, your site might drop its search rankings for something you may have done, indirectly or otherwise.
Worse, your site might not be able to recover its rankings back, especially if the damage done is beyond repair.
So, you must perform a website audit to see any issues that spring up on your site over time.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is arguably the best free solution to this issue. Sign up your websites by verifying ownership to run an audit on each.
The tool provides you with all the information about your site, especially the top issues you must address.
Each point provides you with details on how to resolve the issue so you can improve your site's overall score and performance.
The tool is run weekly audits to let you know about your site and whether its score decreased.
From here, you can take action immediately before things get worse.
Another excellent tool is Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It's a desktop-based software that delves deeper into your site's set up.
The free version lets you crawl up to 500 URLs on your site but without the ability to save and export the results.
It also helps visualize your website for you. For example, you can see which site pages link to which using its Site Visualization feature.
The paid version gives you everything in the free plan enables you to run as many pages as your system can handle. It also gives you the ability to integrate Google properties (Analytics, Search Console, PageSpeed Insights) to beef up the data.
On-Page SEO Checklist: Summary
To wrap up this massive post, below is a checklist of all the on-page SEO techniques you must observe on your site:
How secure is your website?
- Did you install an SLL certificate on your website through your hosting provider?
- Did you resolve mixed content issues on your WordPress site using a plugin like Really Simple SSL?
Did you optimize the "Three Kings" of your site pages?
- Did you mention the keyword in your URL, SEO title tag, and page title?
- Did you optimize your SEO page title to increase its click-through rate?
- Do you monitor CTRs of your indexed pages on SERPs using Google Search Console or Nelio A/B testing?
Did you include your keyword in your meta tags?
Is your content written for the keyword's user intent?
Did you write your content for your audience and search engines?
- Did you research the top-ranking pages of your target keyword to determine the averages of all the top ranking factors?
- Have you determined who the target demographics of your content topic is?
- Are you qualified to write about the subject? What are your credentials for readers to consider you as an expert?
- Is your content formatted according to the best writing practices for better readability?
Are your images optimized for greater crawlability and loading speed?
- Did you refrain using stock images and use custom images created with an image editing tool or taken using a screen-capturing tool instead?
- Did you compress all your images to lower their file sizes while maintaining their quality?
Are your site pages loading fast? Do they have high Core Web Vitals scores?
- Is your site hosted on fast and efficient servers?
- Do you have a lightweight theme installed for your site?
- Are you using a caching plugin to help optimize your site's loading speed further?
Do you have an internal linking strategy? Are you created content silos in your website?
Are you linking out to non-competing site that provide value to your audience?
Do you use structured data on all your site pages to make search spiders understand what your site pages are about?
Do you audit your website regularly for issues and problems that are preventing search engines from crawling and indexing your site?
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