SEO Series: Top On-Page SEO Tips
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Table of Contents
- What Is On-Page SEO?
- On-Page SEO Tips: Textual Content
- Header Tags
- Internal links
- Anchor Text
- Number of Links
- Link Schemes
- On-Page SEO Tips: Redirection
- Images
- On-Page SEO Tips: Readability
- Featured Snippets
- On-Page SEO Tips: Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- On-Page SEO Tips: Page URLs
- To Be Continued……
- Further Reading
Today, we want to share with you some top on-page SEO tips to improve your website ranking on Google. They are used by many top SEO agencies around the world. If you have missed out other SEO articles, be sure to check out Keyword Research Best Practices for SEO, how Google crawls, indexes and ranks your website, and Google Analytics & Search Console.
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO means optimization of webpages like content, headlines, HTML tags, and images to boost a website’s traffic and rankings on search engines e.g. Google.
On-page SEO helps Google determine if your website and its content are relevant to a user’s search query. To this end, you make sure that your website and its content get more optimized for both users and Google as Google focuses more on relevance and semantics in search engine results pages (SERPs).
On-Page SEO Tips: Textual Content
High-quality Content
Your website content should be comprehensive and well-written with good readability without grammar and spelling mistakes, an eye-catching title, expert quotes, data, sources, images, charts, videos, and ideally written by an authoritative person. Check out how to optimize your content Google suggests.
Unique Topics on Each Page
Your website should have unique topics on each webpage. Avoid webpages with the same content but different keywords e.g. “sneakers”, “running shoes”, “sports shoes”, etc. on multiple pages that have the content on sneakers. Google suggests avoiding doorway pages.
Own Unique Content
Your website offers its own content instead of copying and slightly changing content including text, videos, images, and other media from other websites without adding any original content or value. Google suggests avoiding such scraped content.
Write your own content and avoid auto-generated content which Google may take action on. Avoid duplicate content which are substantive content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.
No Hidden Text in HTML Code
Avoid hiding text in the HTML code which users cannot see with a view to fooling Google, known as “cloaking”. Cloaking violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Right Keyword Density on Each Page
Your website should have the right number of keywords on each page in a natural manner without overdoing it.
Hidden Text & Links
Hiding text e.g. keywords or links in your content to fool Google violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes white text on a white background, text behind an image, text off-screen using CSS, zero font size, and link just a character.
Header Tags
Header tags are HTML elements for page headings from H1 to H6 in descending order of importance. Each page should have a unique <H1>Page Title</H1> which should, in turn, contain the page’s keywords. H2 to H6 are used to introduce meaningful headings as subtopics, and sub-headings as sub-subtopics. This creates a hierarchical structure, making it easier for users to navigate. Some of headings should contain the page’s keywords. Use headings sparingly across the page
Internal links
An internal link is a link from one page to another page on your website. So, you should build internal links to other pages on your website to ensure that both Google and your users use internal links to find content on and navigate through your website.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text with which you link to pages.
- Without anchor text: <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/yourpage/”></a>
- With anchor text: <a href=”http://www. yoursite.com/black-sneakers/”>Black Sneakers</a>
The anchor text tells Google about the destination page’s content e.g. “black sneakers” but avoid overdoing it or it would backfire as Google might think that you were fooling Google.
Number of Links
Google suggests limiting the number of links on a page to a reasonable number (a few thousand at most). More links on a page means less equity each link can pass to its destination page. Besides, too many links will only overwhelm your users.
Link Schemes
Link Schemes are any inbound or outbound links that fool Google and violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They include:
- Buy, sell, excessively exchange, auto-create links
- Too many keyword-rich anchor text links
- Too many links with optimized anchor text
- Low-quality directory or bookmark site links
- Keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets
- Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites
- Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature
On-Page SEO Tips: Redirection
Redirecting means sending the user to a different URL than the one he/she initially requested. Besides redirecting the old URL to the new one, you should update all the internal links to the old URL when you move your site to a new address, rename the pages, consolidate several pages into one, etc.
Avoid redirects that deceive Google e.g. Google shown one type of content while users are redirected to something significantly different, and desktop users receive a normal page, while mobile users are redirected to a different spam domain.
Google recommends server-side 301 redirects when changing the URL of a page because this best ensures that users and Google are directed to the correct page. 301 means a page has permanently moved to a new location.
Images
Optimization
For better user experience, it is important to optimize images for website performance. Google suggests the following.
- compressed images
- replacing GIFs with video
- responsive images
- correct dimensions
- use WebP images
- image CDNs
- lazyloading
Alt text
Alt text improves web accessibility. Google uses alt text with computer vision algorithms and page content to understand images. Besides, alt text is useful as anchor text for images as links.
Alt text should be useful and informative with the keywords of the page concerned but avoid keyword stuffing e.g. <img src=”black-sneakers.jpg” alt=”Black sneakers for men”/>.
Image sitemap
Image sitemaps help Google discover images with JavaScript, and indicate images on your site that you want Google to crawl and index.
They can contain image URLs as well as URLs from other domains. The latter allows you to use CDNs to host images. We encourage you to verify the CDN’s domain name in Search Console so that we can inform you of any crawl errors that we may find.
Use HTML for images
Google parses HTML e.g. <img src=”black-sneakers.jpg” alt=”Black sneakers for men”/> to index images but not CSS images e.g. <div style=”background-image:url(black-sneakers.jpg)”> Black sneakers for men</div>.
On-Page SEO Tips: Readability
Make sure your content is readable like:
- clear and short paragraphs and sentences
- simple (e.g. huge vs humongous), transition (e.g. because, therefore, secondly, etc.), and different (e.g. avoid overusing a certain word) words
- headings, bullet points, images, videos, and widgets
- text: readable size, color contrast, bold, etc.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are in a special box at the top of Google search results with a text description above the link. Most featured snippets only contain one listing. They include information as well as the page link, title, and URL.
Google’s algorithm determines if a page will show up as a featured snippet for a specific search query. That said, since they provide a quick answer or summary from a relevant website, and likely show up when the search is a question, you might want to include bullet points or comparison tables in your content.
On-Page SEO Tips: Title tags
A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage e.g. <title>Durable Black Sneakers for Men | the Best Shoe Outlet in California</title>. Each page has its own title tag which will show up in search results on Google, in web browsers, and on social sites like Twitter. For this reason, it is important for both SEO and user experience.
Here are some tips for better title tags.
- The keywords of the page appear in front
- 75 characters or 600 pixels long displayed on Google
- Your brand name to promote brand awareness at the back
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are HTML elements that describe the page content e.g. <meta name=”description” content=”Buy black sneakers and related products and see what customers say about black sneakers on BestShoes.com. FREE SHIPPING on ALL eligible purchases.”/> which shows up in search result pages (SERPs). However, Google may offer a description on the SERPs that is different than the one you provide as they think it is more relevant to the search query.
Here are some tips for writing a meta description.
- 155 characters long as Google truncates it
- Includes page keywords
- Relevant to page content
- Unique for each page
- Compelling content using CTAs e.g. Free Shipping
On-Page SEO Tips: Page URLs
Your page URLs should
- Contain the keywords of those pages but avoid overdoing it e.g. yoursite.com/products/sneakers instead of yoursite.com/products/shoes/sneakers/sneakers-for-men
- Convey information about those pages e.g. yoursite.com/products/sneakers instead of yoursite.com/product?id=895
- Be separated by hyphens between words instead of underscores, plus signs, spaces or no space e.g. yoursite.com/how-to-choose-sneakers-for-women instead of yoursite.com/howtochoosesneakersforwomen or yoursite.com/how_to_choose_sneakers_for-women, etc.
- Have no time stamp e.g. yoursite.com/how-to-choose-sneakers-for-women instead of yoursite.com/2020/07/04/how-to-choose-sneakers-for-women
- Not be too long with too many categories and subcategories but avoid shortening the URLs by sacrificing the URL’s descriptiveness e.g. yoursite.com/products/sneakers instead of yoursite.com/products/shoes/sneakers/sneakers-for-women
- Be in lowercase rather than uppercase e.g. yoursite.com/how-to-choose-sneakers-for-women instead of yoursite.com/How-To-Choose-Sneakers-For-Women
- Contain the name of their physical location if they are a local business e.g. yoursite.com/sneakers-for-women-in-los-angeles
- Be loaded on HTTPS instead of HTTP because only HTTPS is secure as recommended by Google and HTTP sites are labeled “not secure” in Google Chrome
To Be Continued……
Now you know many useful on-page SEO tips to improve your SEO as used by many SEO professionals. In the coming week, we will share with you in our SEO series more SEO topics in layman’s terms to help your SEO. Stay tuned.
