When it comes to optimizing a website for search engines, several factors play a significant role.
Following are the significant components which play significant roles in SEO:
1) On-Page SEO
2) Off-Page SEO
What is On-Page in SEO?
On-Page optimization is to make changes in the site web pages (HTML codes, Content, site structure, Meta Tags, etc.) to make the web pages SEO/User-friendly to get more organic traffic from search engines.
But why do you need to make your website SEO friendly-
In on-page seo, the most important factors are your website web Pages, Content, Website Structure, Meta Tags should be appropriately optimized.
And with perfect on Page seo, you can improve your Search Traffic, it will also help to boost your ranking in front of SERP.
Once on page seo would be done correctly, it makes your off-page SEO much more accessible.
There are many factors on the on-page that we need to consider while making changes to on-site seo.
Why?
Because Google wants to make its users are happy when they visit your website or web page.
Now I’ll share with you the “Top On-Page Optimization Factors,” which you should keep in mind while optimizing your website web pages.
On-Page Optimization Factors –
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are used in an HTML document, helping the search engine understand the context of the web page.
Meta tags help generate the snippet of text under the SERP of the webpage.
According to Builtwith following Meta Tags are most used on the website – Meta Description 33.8%, Meta Keywords
25.3%, Canonical Content Tag 20.3%, Meta Robot 17.1%.
There are various types of Meta Tags in SEO, but I am sharing the essential Meta tags, which you should use to optimize our website On-Page SEO.
1) Title Tags Optimization Best Practice
Title Tags is used to define the content of the web page, which is shown in SERP as the blue-link text.
It is clickable, so when a user sees this, they click on it and directly redirected to your web page.
How to find meta tags on a website?
You can view these all Meta Tags by selecting the “page source” option under “view” in your browser toolbar. For example:-
And it will appear with a page of code where you can see Meta-Data Information of the page like as given below in the screenshot-
How to Create and Optimize Title Tags for Your Website?
Your title tags should be unique, attention grabber & filled with the focus keyword.
Why?
Title tags seo is vital for both the search engines and as well for the user.
The search engine will determine the relevancy of the web page from the title tag.
And the user will only be going to click on it if it matched with their intent.
And a good title optimizes with the relevant keyword helps the web page to rank higher.
As the title tag is not the direct ranking factor, the search engine considers many things into account while ranking a web page highly in SERP.
But for your SEO success, title tag matters a lot, so optimize it to make your on-site SEO better.
So you can make your Meta Tags creation process easy with the help of the tools there are some handy tools which can help you, here I will explain below
Title Tag Character Limits
Keep one thing in mind that doesn’t use any more than 65 characters. It will skip your title from SERP and google count’s character in Pixels, so while creating (Meta Title or Description Tags), you can use Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool to construct the page titles and meta description tags strategically.
But as these tools don’t show your title or Description in Pixels so you can also use this (Page Title Pixel Checker Tool) to major the pixels of your tags.
As Google count the title & meta description in pixels instead, character counts.
Pro Tip–While creating the Title Tag for seo ensures that your main keywords are included with Power Words, it helps your listing increase the CTR (Click Through Rate) in SERP.
Title Tag Best Practise
1) Keep the length of less than 65 character
2) Add the main keywords in the Title
3) Use Power Words in the Title
4) Include a Call to Action
5) Avoid Keywords Stuffing
6) Avoid Stop words (A, And, So, but, On, etc.)
7) Add the brand name at the end of the title
2) Meta Description Tags Optimization
The meta description appears below the title & URL of the page.
You can write your meta description; otherwise, google algorithm automatically pick up the text for the description within your web page content.
Why should you write your own meta description?
The meta description tag’s primary intent is to summarize your web page content to the searcher.
So write a descriptive & an eye catchy meta description. It helps to influence the searcher to click through to your site from search engine results pages.
A perfect meta description should be clear & concise & it helps the listing to improve the CTR, and improved CTR improves your search ranking as well. CTR is also a ranking factor in SEO.
Meta Description Tag Best Practice
1) Include the focus keyword in the meta description (you can use synonyms or (LSI) for your main keyword but don’t stuff
2) Keep the length of the meta description up to 300 character
3) Add a Call to Action (CTA)
3) HTML Header Tags
Heading Tags are started from (H1, To H6). Essentially, we use heading tags to structure the content.
H1 is one of the most important tags on any webpage, which holds more importance, and the H6 title holds the least importance.
Why are header tags important for SEO?
Header tags are one of the most important On-Page SEO ranking factors.
When the search engine crawler scans the web pages, it takes the tags into account.
And these tags help the search engine crawlers understand what your webpage content.
While optimizing the tags, try to include your most important keyword.
It is recommended that we should only use 1 Tag per web page.
You can use other tags in the subheading on the content to make your content scannable.
Heading Tag Best Practise
1) Use 1 H1 Per Page
2) Include Primary, Secondary Keywords in the Heading Tags
3) Use tags from H1 to H6 in Hierarchy
4) SEO Friendly URL Structure
Your URL structure should be clean & short, and it would also be helpful for your SEO if you would add a keyword in the URL.
Ugly URL Example- https://thedigitalpankaj.com/12-02-16/category/title
Best URL Example- https://thedigitalpankaj.com/keyword
Pro Tip- Add the keyword in the URL makes it short and easy to read by a human being.
Avoid underscores instead of you should use a hyphen to separate the words in the URL.
And Exclude dynamic parameters in the URL you may read this Rand Fishkin Guide on Best practice For Structuring URL.
SEO Friendly URL Structure Best Practise
1) Use your important keywords in the URL
2) Avoid Underscore, dynamic string in the URL
3) Keep your URL short & clean
5) Write Persuasive Web Copy And Use Internal Linking to Maximize Seo Value
Create the content which solves searcher problems and tries to make it scan-able with including Bullets or Headlines in each paragraph. Also, don’t forget to include the Visual Images and facts.
Do the keywords Research First–
Find the keywords which are relevant & related to your main keywords theme.
And use the LSI or Synonymous with your main keywords in the content. And avoid stuffing your main keywords again and again.
Keep keyword density in mind as your main keywords should not be used more than 1.5% in all over the content.
You can calculate keywords density like- (Total word count/number of keywords) always write the content in a natural way & forgot about the keywords.
Only include the keywords where you feel that it should be necessary to add.
Find the Long Tail keywords and include those in the content; they are often 3 to 6 words long. And always try to write for the user, not for search engines.
Read this, Brian Dean post on how to find the best keywords for SEO.
6) Internal Linking and Anchor Text SEO Best Practices
Internal links are links that go from one page to another page in the same domain.
We use interlinking so that users can navigate to the website other pages easily.
And proper internal linking help to distribute the link Juice in the internal pages as well.
How link juice flow in the internal pages?
Let say I have an Insurance website, and I want to rank the terms “Health Insurance”.
I have already created a dedicated page for “Health Insurance” terms.
Now on the Home Page content, I’ll add the terms health insurance, and I’ll be interlinked this with the “Health Insurance” page.
When search engine bots crawl the home page, it will follow the links and give priority to this page.
And when you write a blog post for this term, add the internal link with this term for this health insurance page.
When you build the links to the Home Page or Blog Post page, link juice will be distributed to this “Health Insurance” page.
But don’t overdo it.
While building external links, don’t use these terms many times; otherwise, search engine animals will catch you and penalized the website.
Because Google considers Exact match anchor text as spam.
If you overdo it, you can use Synonymous related keywords or branded keywords for partial keywords instead of the exact keyword.
So use descriptive anchor text, which is relevant to that web page.
Make your website Internal navigation Easy and Clear.
User & Search Engine both love Easy navigation Structure.
So while internal linking uses the right anchor text, it helps to influence the ranking for that web page and helps to flow the link juice on all the pages.
7) Make your website structure Silo
As Theme Zoom described the Silo Theming: “A website architecture based on a linking structure that segregates various themes into different ‘silos’ so that people and search engines can quickly identify the main topics of a website.
In the above image Example, did you understand something about SILO Architecture?
Let me give you an example- You need to create Silo Pages, and those pages need to be connected to your category pages & supporting pages. In this way, when you send the link to the Home Page.
Now SEO Juice will flow through your category & supporting pages, and this will help boost your website search performance.
To help you Guide moreover Silo Structure Read this SEO Siloing Post by Bruce Clay.
For more on SEO Siloing, check with this post How to build a website silo architecture.
I hope this will clear your doubts about Silo Structure.
8) Add Visual/Images in the Content-
According to Wishpond, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.
Try to add the interesting and relevant images in the content so that you could attract the user & keep them engaging within your content.
9) Use ALT tags to describe Images
When you add the images to your content try to add the Descriptive ALT Tags for each image.
Because Search engines can’t read the Images only through ALT Tag, you can make it readable for the search engines.
Use the Descriptive or keyword related words to define the image, ALT Tag.
Give your image file name a descriptive title or captions.
If an image fails to load in the browser, the ALT text will show instead of the image.
And the user will see the text and could know quickly what the image is.
Hence optimizing the images for your website is one of the most important on-page seo tactics, which is beneficial for both users and as well for the search engine.
10) Optimize Your Web Page Speed For Mobile Or Desktop User
If your website loading speed is slow, then it’s time to optimize your website load time; otherwise, all your hard work will be ruined.
Google also confirmed that website speed is a ranking factor that they consider for ranking web pages.
How do I make my website load faster?
In the first step analyze your website speed –
Various tools can help you to know the reasons for a slow website response time.
I use the google speed test tool to check the website load time, but you can use any given tools to test your website loading time.
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://gtmetrix.com/
https://www.webpagetest.org/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Just head over to this Google Web Page Speed Test tool & enter your website URL.
It will show you the speed of the website for both desktop & mobile devices.
And provide the suggestion to make that page faster.
Have a look at the below screenshot-
If you found your website speed is slow on any devices as you’re seeing in this snapshot, make a list of the recommendation which googles speed test tools is providing you.
Fix these changes & make your website faster!
11) Use Breadcrumb for a better User Experience and SEO
Breadcrumbs are used to show the hierarchy between content.
Breadcrumbs allow search engines to understand the structure of the website.
Breadcrumbs are also helpful for a user because a user can easily see exactly where that Web page is located on the website.
If you are using WordPress, it would be too easy to add the breadcrumbs.
Just head over to Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress.
Click on Search Appearance on the main tab click on Breadcrumbs, enable the breadcrumbs setting, click on save changes.
Now copy the below code & paste it into the theme where you want to show the breadcrumbs.
if ( function_exists(‘yoast_breadcrumb’) ) {
yoast_breadcrumb(‘
‘,’
‘);
}
?>
Want to learn how to implement breadcrumbs in the WordPress read this Yoast article on breadcrumbs.
12) Create an XML Sitemap to improve your SEO
What is a sitemap- A sitemap is an XML file which contains the entire website URL’s.
Why do we need to create a sitemap?
You need to create the sitemap so that your website all URL’s could be discoverable by search engines bots quickly.
It also helps your website to index the website pages easily by search engine bots.
How to update your XML sitemap on the website??
You can update your website sitemap in two ways-
1) With the help of Sitemap Generator Tool (Use static sitemap If you don’t update your website daily or if your website is in HTML)
2) With the Help of Plugin (It will depend on the CMS & it would be good if you update your website daily if your website is in WordPress)
For static sitemap – Just go to this URL- https://www.xml-sitemaps.com
In the below screenshot like this, a screen comes in front of you. Just enter the URL here and in the priority, box check automatically, and click on the start.
Once this is done, you can download your sitemap XML file upload it to the website through Cpanel or FTP as you find it convenient.
Once this would be done, you can check your sitemap by entering this URL in the browser – http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.
How to Create a Sitemap in WordPress using Yoast?
If you are using WordPress for SEO, you would already have installed the Yoast SEO plugin.
Just head over to the SEO Section on the left side of your WordPress dashboard.
Now click on the features option.
Now click on the On Button & to check your sitemap just click on see the XML sitemap.
And you are done!
And your sitemap would be shown like as the below screenshot-
The main benefit of adding the sitemap on the website is to make the indexation of the website internal pages faster.
The more pages indexed by the search engine, the more trust your site gains.
Hence if you still don’t have the sitemap add it to your website and help search engine bots to crawl more essential pages of your website.
It will help improve your website ranking & indexing and overall SEO of the website.
13) Create a robots txt file for better SEO
What is a Robots.txt file?
Robots.txt is a text file that you put on your website to inform the search engine bots that you should not visit or crawl these specific pages.
At first Search Engine, bots visit your robots.txt file; it wants to know that it has permission to access the pages or not.
After that search engine, bots crawl and index these pages and files.
“Important Note”
Make sure your robots.txt file syntax should be accurate.
If you write the wrong syntax in the robots.txt file, you could end up telling search engine robots not to crawl your website.
And it means your web page wouldn’t appear in the search engine results page.
So it’s too essential for you to understand the work & purpose of the robots.txt file; otherwise, your website would be in trouble.
How to Create a Robots.txt File?
Robots.txt Example-
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Got confused?
Look at the example first –
Technical robots.txt syntax
User-agent – In the first line of the robots.txt: (User-agent:) it means for which crawler, spider or bots you would like to set the permission (Every Search Engine has their crawler, bots, or spider)
What does (*) mean – It means we are setting the permission for all the crawler, not for any particular web crawler.
Therefore if you want to set the permission for any specific search engine bots, you can use their crawler name in place of (*).
For example, if you would like to set the permission for Only Google crawler, you can use the crawler name (Googlebot).
Example Syntax:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:
And if you would like to prevent the website from crawling just add the backslash at the end of the disallow:
Example Syntax:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /
This syntax will block your website from crawling Googlebot, and if you want to allow, just remove the backslash behind the disallow.
This Syntax Allow Indexing for all crawler-
It allows all the bots to crawl the website.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
This syntax Disallow indexing of everything for all crawler-
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Allow Indexing for Any particular Search Engine-
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:
Some search engine bots name is as follows- Google- Googlebot, Yahoo – Slurp, Bing- Bingboat. Here is the list of the robot’s database.
You can also place sitemap URL in the robots.txt file so that search engines can find new pages quickly, but it’s not necessary:
Example Syntax:
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap:http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
How can you create the robots.txt file?
Well, it’s too simple; just open the notepad from your PC or Laptop.
Enter the syntax and save it with the name of robots.txt and make sure its name should be written correctly.
Once you saved it now, upload it to the root of the website server. That’s it.
Once you upload, it will start showing, just enter the robots.txt behind the domain name.
http://www.example.com/robots.txt
Done!
So once you have uploaded the file, you can check the Robots.txt file live status in Google Webmaster Tool.
To know more, you can read this Google search console guide.
14) Add the structured data to get more Seo Love
What is Structured Data?
Structured data is a way to present additional information about the listings to the search engine results pages for the user.
By implementing the Structured Data, search engines can easily understand the content of these markups and show them as rich snippets in the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages).
Have a look at the image below first-
As you see in the above image, the rating with STARS is showing under the URL (I have highlighted with Red Line) that rating is showing here by implementing structured data on the webpage.
We use Structured Data so that we can show the additional information for the user related to their query on your webpage.
Types of Structured Data Markup
There are three types of structured data markup:
• Microdata
• RFDa
• JSON-LD
What are Rich Snippets?
Rich snippets are used to showing extra information that we often see right in the search results.
For example-
• Star Ratings
• Videos
• Breadcrumbs
• Events & events times
• Embedded Site Search Box
Now I am going to show you how to create a Structured Data with Schema.org.
First head over to http://schema.org/docs/full.html
A window will appear like this on the left side you will see all the vocabularies of schemas.
Choose the appropriate schema vocabulary which you want to implement for your content.
As I have chosen the Review Rating Schema.
A webpage would appear like this –
Now scroll down to the end of the page where you would see three types of schema.
Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD
You must choose a JSON-LD.
Why?
Because now JSON-LD schema can be easily understood by all major search engine crawlers.
The main benefit of JSON-LD schema is you can easily insert the JSON-LD script into your webpage without breaking your current content or HTML of the page.
And google also confirmed that now their crawlers can easily understand JSON-LD as structured data.
Now click on JSON-LD.
A script would appear now copy this and make changes in it.
Only make changes in those fields that you would like to show through schema on your webpage.
Where should you insert the Schema Script?
You can Insert it into the and as well of the webpage.
And after inserting the schema, make sure to check it is correct or not.
I’ll show it to you later, but at first, let me show you how you can implement the structured data with Google Markup Helper Tools as well?
Just click on this URL –
https://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/
Now it will ask you to enter your email, so enter your logins & you will be redirected to the page as given in the image.
In the below example I will show you how to add structured data to your Article.
Select the Data Type & Enter the URL in the next step markup every information you can, but keep one thing in mind; you should only markup the data visible to the user.
As in this example, I have Markup the Following Tags, as you can see on the pane’s right side.
1) Article Name-
2) Author Name-
3) Date Published-
4) Image-
You can markup as much information as you can, which markup I have added those are just so that you can understand.
Now there are two ways to add the structured data on your website.
1) At first, select the JSON-LD on the top of the page. Copy the script and paste it below the head section of your HTML to the webpage.
2) In the second method, Select the Microdata Click on Download.
Now you can replace your original webpage by uploading this HTML file, but make sure to take the backup of your original HTML webpage.
Make sure to follow this seo checklist to skyrocket your On-Page SEO.