Are you an SEO beginner? If so, gaining some preliminary knowledge regarding on-page SEO would be pretty useful for you. SEO practitioners give more emphasis on on-site SEO than that of off-page SEO.
What is on-page SEO
On-page SEO means optimizing the web pages of a website for improving search engine ranking and getting more organic traffic. A few fundamental rules of on-page SEO rules are writing unique, high-quality content, optimizing images, and HTML tags(title, header, meta)
Why on-page SEO is so important?
To understand why on-page SEO is so important, we need to look at how Google’s algorithm work whenever a search is performed. As soon as someone writes a search query on Google, its algorithm looks at different pages’ content to determine which pages contain the relevant information with respect to the search being initiated. The most basic signal that a webpage contains relevant information is if its content contains the same keywords that the user writes in the search query. Those keywords can be present at the heading of the page or in the body’s text.
However, a keyword’s presence in the webpage’s content is the first step toward its ranking. The second most important factor is the information published on the webpage must be relevant to the search of the user. In simple words, for a better ranking of a webpage in SERP, It must contain the keywords of the search query and present the relevant answer to the query.
What are the 10 important on-page SEO rules?
The three desired goals of a post are- achieving higher ranking, increasing traffic, and conversions. All of these three goals can be achieved by implementing below 10 on-page SEO rules on a post.
Unique high-quality content
Google gives premium priority to sites when it considers ranking that produces unique and high-quality content. One evidence of this fact is there is a relationship between what google considers high-quality content and what appears in the search result.
Title tag
The title tag is an HTML tag that exists in the head section of a webpage. It provides an initial clue regarding what is the topic of the page that it covers. Missing, duplicate, or poorly written title tags can impede getting a higher ranking in SEO results. So fix this element first.
Meta Description
A meta description is a brief description of the page content. It appears in SERP beneath the title of the page. Optimization of meta description got so much importance since the early days of SEO. Correct optimization of meta description helps improve CTR (Click through rate), perception of the quality of the result, and perception of what your web page offers.
Headlines
Your headline needs to draw readers’ attention so that they click on it, and read the entire article. So writing a compelling article is another important on-page SEO rule.
Header tags
Header tags are HTML (H1,H2,H3,H4,H5, and H6) tags. They are used to identify headings and subheadings within other texts of your article like paragraphs. Header tags are not critically important for site ranking but they make reading enjoyable for readers. They also help search engine to understand that your content is keyword rich.
SEO Writing
Don’t misinterpret that SEO writing means doing keywords research and spreading those keywords throughout the content. SEO writing means writing high content(intersperse with keywords) so that it satisfies the readers. After all you are writing for the readers not only for the search engine.
Keyword cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization means targeting a specific keyword and trying to rank multiple pages for the same keyword. Keyword cannibalization is a bad SEO practice because you are competing yourself not with any other else.
Content Audit
One common mistake of most content creators is they are focused on creating new content and forget the old content that they published. This is a mistake and you need to audit your content for the following three reasons
- Your old content may become outdated.
- Determine which contents are working for you, and
- Determine whether the existing content is generating your desired RO
Image optimization
Adding images to content makes it attractive. But since all images are not created equal, some of them may decrease the loading speed of the web page. And, this is bad for achieving a high ranking in search results. Image optimization has the below benefits
- Quick page load
- User appreciation
- More ranking opportunities( may show up in Google image search)
User Engagement
Optimization of different on-page SEO elements means your job is half done. The remaining job is making sure that users won’t bounce. Instead, they will continue to view your content and keep coming. Keeping engaged users is a challenge but possible through content optimization, site speed, and user experience.
Conclusion
On-page SEO is a must if you want to show your website in search results. With a higher ranking, you will also get more traffic and conversions.
