Higher search engine result page (SERP) rankings are essential for every website to increase visibility. On-page SEO techniques improve the SERPs rankings of a website and its web pages by optimizing on-page elements and enabling the search engine to understand their relevance to the users.
Websites optimized for on-page SEO offer enhanced user experience and visitor engagement and generate higher organic traffic and revenue. It improves the readability and navigation of content and encourages visitors to stay and explore the page and its content for longer. It also increases the website’s potential to receive return visitors.
On-page SEO enables search engines to crawl and index web pages and their content with ease. It increases the website’s visibility before the right audience and increases its potential to drive higher organic traffic and conversion. On-page SEO is crucial to increase website awareness, credibility, user experience and overall performance.
Which on-page element carries the most weight for SEO
1. Title Tag
The title tag is a crucial element as it gives search engines and users a brief description of the content on the web page. Optimizing title tags with relevant keywords ensures it accurately highlights the content because it significantly impacts the search rankings and the click-through rate (CTR) it drives.
How to write an effective title tag:
- Research: Competitors and their higher-ranking title tags in SERPs can provide an idea and understanding to create title tags for similar search queries.
- Character limit: Limit the title tag to 60 characters for better readability in search results.
- Power words: Use relevant power words to emphasize and highlight the quality and relevance of content to users. A title tag with efficient power words can encourage users to click through to the website.
- Keywords: Main keyword integration is crucial however, it is also necessary to avoid keyword stuffing as it creates a spam perception of the website.
- Avoid duplicity: Each web page requires a unique title tag to prevent the website from being penalized for duplicate content.
- Brand name: Brand name integration in the title tag can increase its recognition and trust with users. However, it is not always necessary.
2. URL Slug
URL slugs are essential to optimize as they enable the search engines to understand the website’s content and directly impact its SERPs rankings.
Ways to make it efficient for SEO:
- Use focus keywords: Including focus keywords in the URL slug enables the search engine to understand the on-page content and evaluate its rankings for relevant queries.
- Avoid stop words: Stop words add little value to URL slugs and reduce their readability. Search engines consider stop words irrelevant to the query and omit them in their results.
- Avoid including dates or years: Date integration in URL slugs can create an outdated perception of the content and seem irrelevant to users searching for current information.
- Keep it short: A short URL slug with a 50-60 character limit is easier for users to read and remember, which increases its potential to generate higher CTR.
3. Subheading structure
Subheadings organize the on-page content, which enables search engines and users to understand the information hierarchy.
How to create subheadings structure:
- Create structure: A hierarchical structure like h1, h2, and h3 can break the content into readable sections, which makes it easy to scan, and understand. It makes the content user-friendly and increases user engagement and experience.
- Use focus keywords: Use focus keywords in required areas only. Overusing them can affect search rankings as the web page might seem spam.
- Keep it concise: Relevant and concise subheadings emphasize the content and provide a seamless flow of information.
4. Internal Links
Internal links connect one page to another within a website. Relevant links to authority pages are essential as they enable search engines and users to navigate between different web pages. It showcases the content relevance of the current page to another through the incorporated link. It builds website authority by demonstrating topic expertise.
Internal links integration enables users to find and navigate between related pages quickly. It is easier for users to consume the content, gain a deeper understanding of the topic and stay on the website for longer. It increases website engagement and improves user experience.
5. Image optimization
Image optimization improves the website’s performance and user experience leading to better SERPs visibility.
How to optimize them:
- Use proper image name: Using descriptive and relevant names for images that potentially contain keywords helps search engines understand the image content improving its search visibility.
- Use WebP file format: WebP format for images can improve the website’s performance and user experience as it provides better compression and loads faster.
- Use alt text: Using alt text that accurately describes the image content can improve user experience. Avoid using focus keywords in alt text if it is irrelevant to the image.
- Maintain image size: Maintaining image size consistency on web pages optimizes it easily and reduces loading time, which improves user experience.
- Use schema markup: Schema markup provides additional information about the web page content to search engines. Using it for images can improve they are visibility in search results.
6. User Experience
An excellent user experience directly impacts the engagement and behaviour of website visitors.
- Feature section in queries: Providing a snippet of important and relevant information to the query upfront gives quick access to the required information. It provides users with answers and a choice to read further detailed information and improves user experience.
- Improve page speed: Page speed is a highly influential factor for bounce and engagement rates. Users spend a longer time on pages with lower loading time.
- Use short paragraphs: Using bullet points and shorter paragraphs breaks down the content into smaller sections, which makes it easily scannable, readable and consumable.
- Use engaging images and infographics: Using images and infographics can also organize the text into readable sections. They make the content easy to recall and visually appealing, which can improve user engagement and experience.
FAQ’s
- What are the 3 most important elements in On-Page SEO?
The title tag, internal linking and schema markup are three of the various essential elements that contribute to on-page SEO.
- What are the best on-Page SEO techniques to follow?
Conducting in-depth keyword research is the best and primary on-page SEO technique because it benefits website visibility by optimizing its relevance throughout the content, tags and URL.
- Which on-page SEO mistakes should be avoided?
Keyword stuffing, duplicating content, ignoring tags, and providing broken links and images are a few of the on-page SEO mistakes that should be avoided.
