SEO: On-Page

On-page SEO is the practice of improving several front-end and back-end elements of your website to improve its search engine rankings and attract more visitors. More is needed to create and publish your website. It must be Google-optimized to rank well and draw in new visitors. Because the adjustments and improvements you make to your website’s optimization are visible to site users, unlike off-page and technical SEO elements, it is known as “on-page” SEO. On-page SEO is all up to you. Thus it would be best if you executed it correctly.

This article will cover the fundamentals of content optimization for search engines. The basis for making content that is search engine friendly is this. You can learn more about these and many other on-page SEO considerations in the resources section.

We’re going to discuss the following on-page SEO components in this article:

  • Heading Tags 
  • Title Tags 
  • External Links 

What are Heading Tags?

An HTML element that gives a web page a hierarchical structure.

Heading tags were essential direct ranking elements in the early days of search engines. 

Headings no longer directly affect your SEO. 

They do, however, provide unintended advantages. 

Your page is easier to read and navigate when the headings are well-written, which improves the customer experience and boosts your SEO.

Visitors will abandon your site and go for their answer elsewhere if your website is poorly organized, and they can’t find what they’re looking for, thus increasing your bounce rate will rise as a result, and search engines take this into account. So like most aspects of SEO, put your users first, use headings to build structure, making information quickly and easily accessible to users.

Guidelines for Strong Page Headings

• Use the H1 tag for your page title.

• The page’s subsequent headers should have an H2 or H3 tag, and so forth.

• In your page title, include your primary keyword.

First, each page can only have one H1 heading, which should be your page’s name. Consider the H1 heading to be a book’s title. Some CMS platforms may automatically tag the title, but it’s a good practice to ensure your page heading is an H1.

Use H2 or H3 headings to separate the various sections as you scroll farther down the page. Levels for heading tags reflect their significance on the page. An H1 has greater significance than an H2, which has greater significance than an H3, and so forth. Make sure your section titles adhere to this style because search engine crawlers use these tags to browse your material. Although you’ll rarely need to use more than an H3, you can use additional tags if you create a lengthy piece of content with numerous subcategories.

Title Tags

Title tags are HTML elements that shows a webpage’s title. Although the title tag and heading tag are distinct, they are frequently written similarly.

Your heading tag should explain what a specific page is about to visitors already on your website. On the other hand, folks who have yet to visit your website are the target audience for your title tag. Its main objective is to persuade visitors to click over to your website from the search engine results pages (also known as SERPs).

The title tag defaults in most CMSs to match the page heading, which is frequently acceptable. In most cases, search engines will treat your page title equally as favorably if it accurately summarizes the contents of your page.

Title Tag Guidelines

  • Keep your title to 60 characters or less.
  • Ensure that your page’s title and heading address the searcher’s main query. 
  • Use your primary keyword in the title.
  • External links on your pages improve your on-page SEO as well.

These are links to content on other websites. Your site’s SEO may benefit if you link to reliable websites to back up your assertions. When you link to high-quality external content, you demonstrate to your viewers and search engines that you have done your homework, much as you may not trust a paper or a news report that doesn’t reference any sources. Writing should always be done with the reader in mind, and references should always be included to establish credibility.

Allowing Google to Index Your Pages

The primary goal of on-page SEO is to make it possible for search engines to crawl and index your pages. On-page SEO aims to make your website more visible to search engines. You need to make it as easy as possible for search engines to access your pages. Crawling, indexing and ranking are the steps Google takes to do so.

Let’s examine this procedure’s operation and discover how to make it available on your websites. There are three primary purposes for search engines. Crawl or search web pages and analyze the code and content for each URL. The data it discovers while crawling is indexed or stored and organized. And ranking enables search engines to offer content that closely matches a user’s search query. Google finds your content by scanning the web’s billions of pages using a massive collection of computers. This crawler starts with a list of URLs for websites found during earlier crawls and then adds the sitemap information.

The Googlebot searches for new websites, changes to existing pages, and any broken links while crawling a website.

After the crawling process, all results are fed into Google’s index, and any new websites or updated information will be listed appropriately. Google examines information on your page, including title tags, meta descriptions, alt tags, and more, as it processes the results. Consider this procedure as a library. Books must be located, sorted, and arranged correctly on shelves. Crawlers carry out comparable duties as a librarian. They arrange all the online content to make it easy to access.

Meta Description

An HTML “meta description” feature offers a brief webpage overview. This short snippet appears below the blue link in a search engine result. Although it is not a recognized ranking criterion in Google search results, this summary of the webpage linked above’s content can be modified to assist readers in understanding what the webpage is about and persuade them to go through it.

  • Aim for 155-160 characters
  • Write descriptive and compelling content.
  • Include keywords (1-2)
  • Avoid the use of non-alphanumeric characters.

Descriptive Link Text 

Descriptive link language text is crucial for your website’s SEO effectiveness. The clickable words in a hyperlink are known as the link description. Link descriptions aid in the comprehension of your content by users and search engines. The hierarchy of the post and the purpose of your links will be more apparent to search engines. Individuals are more likely to follow a link if it clearly states where it will take them.

A bad link would be generic, like click here or learn more, which is ineffective. Google recommends staying on topic and using the keywords associated with the page.

Internal Linking 

An internal link is a link from one page to another on your website. They are essential when search engines crawl your website and when users are browsing. Google uses these links to discover new pages. Although they are not nearly as powerful as backlinks, they can still help.

Internal linking can help Google learn the following data about your page

  • Value
  • Relationship to other pages on your website 
  • Relevance to other pages

URL Structure 

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is an address for a webpage. When writing your URL’s, there are a few things that you need to look out for;

  • Include keyword
  • short and simple
  • descriptive of page contents 
  • Use hyphens between words 

Tools to Help When Optimizing Content
• Built-in SEO Tool in Wix

• Hubspot

• Yoast SEO (great for WordPress sites)

There are many more tools out there, but these are a great place to start.

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