‘SEO is crucial for business success online.’

• 53.3% of all website traffic is a result of organic clicks. And organic search traffic generates 40% of the total business revenue.
• 94% of searchers prefer to click on organic search results over paid results most of the time.

Now that you know the importance of SEO services and wish to optimize it lets understand that SEO is divided into two categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

Every SEO strategy aims to help a business rank as high as possible in the SERPs. As a result, it allows businesses to gain the highest possible organic search traffic.

Now, an ideal SEO strategy requires you to focus on both the on-page and off-page factors. Here, we will understand what on-page SEO is and how it is different from off-page SEO. Next, we will learn the most crucial elements of on-page SEO.

Let’s walk down the article together:

It refers to the action of optimizing the website pages to rank higher in the SERPs. It includes optimizing the technical aspect, content, HTML source code, and UX of the page.

Contrary to off-page SEO, on-page SEO is limited to your own website’s elements. And you have full control over on-page optimization.

One who knows to make SEO-related edits to a website and is good with research can make a good on-page SEO expert.

Focus on E-A-T Framework

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. And it is a crucial on-page ranking factor.

Google understands that the search results it offers are influential for the searchers. And it wishes to deliver the best and the most authentic results for search queries. Therefore, it introduced the E-A-T ranking factor.

Most businesses confuse ‘high-quality content’ with ‘high E-A-T.’ However, E-A-T isn’t just about the highest quality content but delivering the right information. And therefore, the on-page content you produce should meet the E-A-T parameters.

Expertise : Does the content exude expert knowledge about the topic, and is it hyper-relevant? Does the content deliver value to the user?

Authority : Is the content authentic and from a reliable source? And is it the best answer to a particular search query?

Trustworthiness : Can the searcher trust this content? Is this content un-biased, and the author isn’t promoting biased information?

The Google algorithm does not reveal how it calculates the E-A-T score. However, it holds significant value in deciding the ranking positions in SERPs.

For example, take a look at this Author's bio from Investopedia, showing the Authors expertise in Finance.

Add Unique Title Tags

Another important element of on-page SEO is the title tag. It is an HTML tag that constructs the SEO title of a web page. It also forms the clickable headline to a given search result in the SERPs.

The title tag is crucial for the click-through-rate of a page and its search engine ranking.

• An ideal title tag for a service page would look similar to:

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name

• An ideal title tag for a blog would be the blog’s title itself. It offers the readers a consistent experience.

The optimal length of a title tag lies between 55 to 60 characters. Google will display anything under 60 characters on the results pages.

The important considerations for an optimal title tag:

• Include primary keywords of the web page at the beginning of the text itself
• Write a catchy title tag for your content to increase the click-through rate (CTR)
• Create a unique title tag that is specific to that webpage
• Do not stuff the title tag with keywords; it will hinder its readability and CTR.
• Add your brand name to the title tag if it is for a service page

Here’s an example of a title tag containing a brand name.

Create Understandable Page URLs

Your page URL impacts your on-page SEO and also the click-through rate.

How to create the right URL for your webpage?

Let us understand the right URL structure using two examples.

a) Ideal URL Structure

For example, an ideal URL structure would look like this –

http://www.example.com/mobile-app-service/retail-app-development

http://www.example.com/mobile-app-
service/retail-app-development

It helps the search engines clearly understand the website’s category hierarchy. It tells that the “retail app development” page falls under the “mobile app service” category.

It tells the search engines that the page is relevant for the “retail app development” keyword. And it should be nominated for searches related to this keyword.

It also allows the users to understand the topic of the particular webpage. It increases the click-through rate.

b) A bad example of URL structure would look like this –

http://www.badexample.com/pagetitle/100834fW

http://www.badexample.com/
pagetitle/100834fW

This bad example does not tell anything about the website’s category hierarchy. Moreover, it does tell what the topic is about as it has just mentioned “page title.” Search engines can only understand that it comes from the ‘Badexample’ domain.

Google does not appreciate the use of odd number-alphabet combinations in URL.

Since this URL does not reveal the page’s topic, it scores low in relevancy. It will reduce the webpage’s ranking power.

Searchers are not likely to appreciate the improper structure of the URL. And it will lead to a low click-through rate.

Add Relevant Meta Description Tags

Meta description or meta tag is an HTML tag that adjoins the title tag. It is visible underneath the title tag in a given search result listing on SERPs.

Meta description has been a crucial factor for on-page optimization. Google says that meta tag doesn’t affect search engine rankings. However, some researchers say good meta tags help a business perform better in SERPs.

The ideal length of a meta tag falls between 50 to 160 characters.

How to optimize your meta description?

• The meta description should be hyper-relevant to the page content.
• It should include the main keywords used in the webpage to boost relevance.
• The right meta description would help you increase the CTR significantly.
• It should be informative, and it is advisable to include a CTA in the meta description.
• It should be catchy and engaging enough to agitate users to click on the snippet

You can use this tool to generate Meta Descriptions.

Relevant : How to Use Schema Markup Values on Local SEO?

Focus on Image Optimization and Alt Text

Images are important for a better user experience. However, some images can slow down your page load speed. And therefore, you need to optimize each image you upload on your webpage.

You can use tinyjpg to reduce the size of your images.



Moreover, each image needs to have an Alt Text. Alt Text or ‘alt attributes’ is added to the HTML code to describe an image’s context.

The alt text helps the search engine understand what the image is about. The use of relevant keywords in the alt text allows the image to rank in Google Image Search.

Alt text is important for on-page SEO, and it allows viewers to understand the image, if:

• A visually impaired person browses the page. Someone can read him the alt text to explain the image.
• The image fails to load in any case, and the alt text is displayed.

Besides the alt text, one must also create the text description or image titles for images. One must use relevant images that add value to the page’s content.

Write High-converting Page Headlines

It would help if you optimized your page headline for the users and the search engines. The users must find the headline appealing and valuable. Moreover, it should include the primary keyword of the page.

In most cases, your page headline forms your title tag. And it is visible as a part of the preview snippet in search engine result pages. So, your page headline must be able to convert impressions into clicks. The viewers must find it valuable to click and read the rest of the content.

Strategically-created, catchy headlines offer you a higher click-through rate. With this, you must not forget that the headline is relevant to the page’s content.

You can use the Headline Analyzer to assess the quality of your page’s headline.

Give Importance to Header Tags (H1-H6)

Header tags are HTML tags that define the different heading formats on your page. These tags differentiate the paragraph text from the subheadings and the main heading. Thus, allowing the users and crawlers to read through and comprehend your content easily.

The header tags are not as crucial for search engine rankings as the other tags and factors. However, header tags’ proper use is still important for website visitors and SEO.

Here’s an example of an H1 tag.



Optimizing the header tags impacts the SEO indirectly:

• It enhances the user experience as the content looks more presentable and engaging.
• It helps define the right content structure.
• It optimizes for the content to rank in the featured snippet (position zero).
• The use of keywords in header tags helps boost the overall keyword context about the page. Thus, growing the keyword relevancy and indirectly impacting the search rankings.

So, create catchy and relevant header tags that compliment your content’s quality.

Create Original Content for your Page

You might be already aware of the maxim – “content is king.” And content is the fuel of your SEO strategies. Your content should be valuable to the users, and it should perform in the search engines.

From the SEO perspective:

• The content should include relevant (or hyper-relevant) keywords.
• It should include the long-tail and intent-based keywords.

Google’s auto-suggest feature is a great tool for finding long-tail keywords.





• It should be unique, original, quality-oriented, trustworthy, and authentic.
• One must define the right presentation structure for the content.
• One must use the header tags such that the crawlers can read a page’s content with ease.
• One should do other SEO-related optimizations for images and visual content.

From a user’s perspective:

• One must create useful, valuable, practical, and authentic content.
• It should be interesting to read and valuable enough to share
• It should be descriptive and score high on readability.
• The presentation format of the content must be engaging and easy to comprehend
• It should appeal to the readers so they can take a call-to-action
• It should solve the user’s query or meet his requirements in the fastest possible manner.
• It should exude high relevancy with the user’s query.
• It must create an impressive experience for the user.

One must also ensure that the content he produces is unique and meets the right length. Search engine algorithms punish duplicate and thin content (shorter length content).

Both users and Google love descriptive content that is well-structured and presentable. Content pages longer than 2000 words generally perform better in the search engines.

Improve the User Experience and User Metrics

Your website user metrics also indirectly impact your search engine rankings. Google notices metrics like lower bounce rate and higher pages per session. And it contributes to the raking power of your website.

To improve your user metrics, you need to:

• Produce high-quality content optimized for the users. It also lowers the bounce rate.
• Develop high relevancy between headlines, title tag, meta tag, URL, and the page content.
• Optimize your page load speed to reduce the bounce rate

The WProcket plugin helps improve page load speed.





• Create easy to comprehend content structure using header tags
• Make sure your website is responsive. Optimize it for the mobile platform
• Use intent-based keywords and long-tail keywords in the content to boost its relevancy. It, as a result, will attract qualified traffic that engages better.

Add Appropriate Internal Links

Internal links allow the crawlers and users to navigate your website.

Developing the right internal link structure is an important part of your on-page strategy. A well-established internal link structure allows crawlers to easily index your site. Without a defined internal link structure, these crawlers might fail to index certain pages.

Moreover, internal links are important for crafting a good user experience. The user should be able to navigate conveniently across your website.

Internal links pass the link equity across the different important pages of a website. And it complements the website architecture.

Increase the Mobile-friendliness of the Page

More than 53% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices.

Google released an update in 2015 where it set up mobile optimization standards. The update had a critical impact on sites that did not optimize for mobile. Most of these sites experienced a drop in their ranks. And some of them got dinged critically.

The update came as a gift for mobile users as Google was now officially pushing mobile optimization standards. And the business following it experienced a considerable surge in their rankings.

Since then, mobile optimization has been important for SEO. Your website needs to be responsive, and you must optimize it for mobile.

There are specific tools to help you check your mobile-friendliness and optimize accordingly.

You can use this tool to check how responsive your website’s design is on different mobile devices.

Integrate Google Search Console

An essential part of on-page SEO is to get your site indexed in the search engines. You need to verify your site at Google Search Console along with a sitemap. It would involve adding various SEO tags to your site’s source code.

Google Search Console offers you abounding valuable data about your website and SEO. You can use this data to optimize your website’s performance in search engines.

Conclusion:

On-page SEO constitutes your website’s profile in the search engines. It is the base on which you build your off-page efforts.

Your on-page efforts are not just crucial for SEO but also for user engagement and conversions. You have complete control over your on-page elements. And you can also utilize the data from Google Search Console and other SEO tools to better optimize your on-page elements.

Above are the key on-page elements that will directly or indirectly impact your rankings. It would be best to regularly optimize the on-site factors to grow your ranks, traffic, and conversions.

Feel free to connect with us for any on-page or off-page SEO consultation and services.

Enhance the Core Web Vitals and Site Speed

Google values the importance of site performance in crafting a superior search experience for the user.

It has been using site performance as a competitive ranking factor for years now. Meanwhile, Google’s Page Experience Update has reiterated the search engine’s focus on page speed.

It has also defined three core web vitals (LCP, FID, and CLS) as crucial ranking factors.

And so, site performance optimization becomes a crucial on-page activity.

Here are some important activities to enhance your site activities:

• Check for the site errors that increase the loading time using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Next, share this error report with your developer to fix the same.

• Reduce unnecessary JS files that increase the site’s size and cause instability. It helps in optimizing for the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

• Use image compression plugins (Optimole, reSmush.it, or ShortPixel) to optimize the site images

• If you are serving a global target audience, use a content delivery network (CDN)

• Reduce the site’s size by minifying the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. Also, defer the loading of JS files.

• Improve page’s responsiveness by enabling asynchronous loading

• Further, improve loading speed through Gzip compression.

Map Crucial Focus Keywords and Long-tail Keywords

On-page keyword optimization is a crucial part of your SEO. This significantly impacts the page’s relevancy with a user’s search query.

Though Google frowns upon keyword stuffing, you need keywords for building relevancy.

The keyword sets you choose are important in defining your position in the search results.

Some important considerations for on-page keyword implementation:

• Build specific keyword sets for individual service/product pages.

• Segregate the ‘purchase’ intent keywords with ‘navigational’ or ‘information’ intent keywords.

Example:

• Purchase Intent Keyword: “Hire a plumber.”

• Navigational Intent Keyword: “Restaurants near me.”

• Information Intent Keyword: “Ways to fix a leaking faucet.”

• Employ Google Keyword Planner and KWFinder tools to research and finalize the keyword sets for your pages.

• You must also enrich your keyword research with competitor analysis. Use Ubersuggest or SEMRush to find the set of keywords drawing traffic for your competitors. You can compete for the same keywords.

• Also, build on the referral traffic by showing up for long-tail queries. You can chime in natural long-tail keywords in your content by researching through:
  
  Google Autocomplete feature and “People Also Ask” segment
  
  LSIGraph tool and “Related Searches” section in SERPs

• Ensure to add these keywords across all the major content elements of your site. Build keyword-optimized Meta Tags and Page Titles. And sprinkle keywords in your sub-headers and paragraph content.

Build XML Sitemaps and Ensure Proper Site Indexation

Google is most likely to appreciate it if you make the crawling path easier for its crawlers. You can do this by setting up an updated XML sitemap.

A sitemap tells the crawlers about the several pages on your site and their hierarchy.

So, update the sitemap whenever you make changes in your site structure or add new pages.

You can submit this sitemap to the search engine via Google Search Console.

Also, create a Robots.txt file to tell crawlers which pages they must not index on your site.

Another important on-page consideration is to ensure that Google has indexed your site properly. Here are some quick things to check:

Search for “site:yoursitename.com” on Google to check all the indexed pages on your site.

a) If you fail to witness any listing from your domain, your site isn’t yet indexed. Here you need to initiate manual indexing.

b) If you find some of your website pages missing from the indexed list, manually check these pages.

• Ensure they comply with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

• See if you have added the Robots.txt file to block these pages. In this case, remove the Robots.txt file from the page you want to rank in Google Searches.

• Check if you have forgotten to remove the NOINDEX tag on these pages after making them live.

c) If you find irrelevant pages indexed, it indicates spam. You can list these spam pages and request Google to remove them using Google’s Disavow Tool.

Integrate Valuable SEO Plugin for Your Site

It is important to stay informed about your on-page SEO efforts and the optimization errors in your pages. And here is where on-page SEO plugins put up an appearance.

These plugins track the numerous on-page optimization parameters on your site. They display the evident errors and even suggest to you the possible fixes.

Moreover, unless an SEO expert guides you, on-page SEO plugins come in handy to support your SEO strategy.

Two of the most diverse WordPress SEO plugins are Yoast SEO and AIO (All in One) plugins.

Rank Math and SEOPress are other promising SEO plugins.

Both Yoast SEO and AIO (All in One) SEO plugins offer comprehensive on-page optimization tips. Some of their capabilities include:

• The plugin assists you with setting up the XML sitemap, rich snippets schema, and site links

• It helps you set up and optimize Meta Tags and SEO-specific Page Title

• It allows you to define the page’s focus keyword and suggest its ideal frequency

These SEO plugins scrutinize your page content and suggest changes with:

• Keyword density
• Content readability
• Overall content analysis
• The permalink structure
• Keyword optimization for the sub-headers

• Checks if there are inadequate internal or external links on a page

• Informs if you have missed Nofollow tags on the external links

• Notifies about the missing Alt Tags on images

• Suggests possible technical SEO implementations

Grow Site’s Visibility through Valuable Schema Markups

Schema markups or structured data optimize how Google reads crucial content on your site. These elements go into the HTML source code of your site.

Moreover, valuable schemas allow Google to use your content for quick answers.

For example,

If you use an Address Schema for your local business, Google can show your address for a quick query.

Some common schema markups include:

• Organization Schema

• Local Business Schema

• Product & Offer Schema

• Breadcrumbs

• Article Schema Markup

• Event Schema

• Video Schema

• Recipe Schema

Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool makes it seamless to manage schemas on your site.

Moreover, the right use of schema markups allows Google to add rich snippets to your search listings.

These rich snippets win you a broader real estate and a high click-through rate on SERPs.

Some rich snippets that may show up alongside your listing are:

• Reviews snippet

• Event

• Recipe

• Breadcrumb

• Sitelinks Search Box

• Carousel

• Q&A, FAQs

• Job Posting

Check & Fix the Broken Links, Spam Links, and Redirections

One important on-page optimization activity is checking for possible broken or spam links.

A broken link is either an incorrect URL or points to a page that has been removed or replaced. In any case, it shows a 404 error (Page Not Found).

And so, both the users and Google crawlers do not appreciate broken links on your site. These are one significant reason for the crawling errors, and they hurt your SEO performance.

So, use a site audit tool to prepare a list of broken links on your site and rectify them.

If these are incorrect links, you can remove them altogether. Or, if these pages have been replaced, you must use 301 redirects for pointing to the new pages.

Moreover, while you check your link profile, you might find some irrelevant or spam sites pointing to your site. These spam links can tarnish your domain authority and take a toll on your SEO.

You need to create a list of all these spam links and request removal through Google’s Disavow Tool.

Remove Any Possible Content Duplication Errors with Canonical Tags

Search engines only appreciate unique content. The originality of your content on the internet gains you considerable authority and SEO value.

Meanwhile, search engines frown upon content duplication practices. And duplicate content may not only hurt your SEO value, but it can attract you a Google penalty.

So, content duplication is a strict ‘No’. But, there may be content sections that you need to re-use for multiple site pages.

In this case, you must mark these re-used sections with the canonical tag to point to the original section.

This tag informs Google about the original section, and only this section is indexed. Meanwhile, the crawlers ignore the re-used sections, which aren’t indexed.

Add Breadcrumbs for Larger Sites

You can enhance its navigation experience by using breadcrumbs if you have a large website.

Breadcrumbs display a page’s position in the navigational hierarchy followed on a site. So, a user can understand his location on the site by checking the breadcrumbs.

Crawlers also appreciate the use of breadcrumbs on large sites. And it improves the user metrics by decreasing the bounce rate and increasing the page visits per session.

Here is how the breadcrumbs navigation looks in a rich snippet: