What is on-page SEO
Anyone can make a website these days, but SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the most important part of a website that can often be overlooked. On-page SEO will help your users have a better experience and will also tell search engines exactly what your page is about. There are some important on-page factors that will determine your website’s ranking like headlines, title tags, header tags, content, meta descriptions, image optimisation, etc.
The best way to rank high in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is to optimise for user experience and SEO.
Headlines
A headline to your blog post or news section should be able to attract users to your content. A compelling headline could mean the difference between your post gaining clicks or an actual audience. Be strategic when you do headline research and brainstorming possible keywords that you can add in the headline.
There are headline analysers and headline creation tools online that can also help you come up with a captivating headline. One example of a headline analyzer is Coshedule Headline Analyzer.
Title Tags
The title tag is the first sections that exist on your website, it gives the user a brief understanding of what the page is about. The best way to rank for your title is to describe in a few words your topic or what the information will contain. Researching your topic further will also help you find the best title for your page or post.
Header Tags
Header tags are important as they let the reader understand the order of your content. These elements start from H1 to H6, H1 being the most important.
H1 should be used as your main heading and should be the core introduction of your page. This hierarchy for your page and should span through the rest of your content, be sure to use only one h1 tag in a page. When a search engine crawls your website, this will paint the bots a clear picture of your page structure.
Content
Your content should be driving traffic to your website, as “Content is KING“. You might have the best on-page SEO but you also need rich and interesting content to keep the user on your website.
Before writing your content, you should determine which strategic keywords to target in your website’s content, and how to craft that content to satisfy both users and search engines.
The power of keyword research lies in better understanding your target market and how they are searching for your content, services, or products.
Keywords are the backbone of your page, without them, search engines would not know how to index your website. Including keyword researching will make writing content easier as it will help you to incorporate your keywords naturally. But don’t just add a lot of keywords to the page. This practice is called “Keyword stuffing“. This is a practice used in the past in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.
Write for humans instead of keyword stuffing as more time your visitors are spending on your website, your website will rank higher.
Meta Descriptions
A Meta description is a brief excerpt of what your page is all about, this is shown on the SERPs. This description should be informative and include some keywords that a user may be searching for. A good meta description is the best way to get a user on your website.
Image Optimisation
When talking about on-page SEO, not too many people think about their media or images that they are using. Images will make your web pages more appealing. But not all images are equal. Images like any other file have the potential to slow down your website, so make sure your image’s dimensions fit and that it’s not too big in size (Mb’s).
The best way to optimise your images is to first find out the correct dimensions that you need for your page. Once you find the right size, use an online picture compression tool (like tinypng.com) to further decrease image size.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, your on-page SEO will help get your website indexed by search engines. Optimising will further help your website ranking, your on-page SEO is the first step in building the ranking of your website.
Improving headlines, title tags, header tags, content, meta descriptions, and image optimisation are only a few ways to help increase your SEO. Off-page SEO and technical SEO also play a part in ranking your website higher on Google.
