What is On-Page SEO?
The process of optimizing various back-end and front-end elements of a website to gain more relevant traffic, improve user experience, and rankings on search engines is known as on-page SEO or on-site SEO. Elements of on-page SEO that indicate where a website will appear on the results page are determined by the following:
- Title tags
- Site accessibility
- Internal links
- Page speed
- HTML code
- Optimized content
- Keywords
- Images, etc.
On-page SEO surrounds the aspects of your website that you have total control over and that can be changed and modified.
What is an on-page SEO Checklist?
To make sure your on-page SEO strategies are up to the mark, you need a checklist that will help guide you for on-site or on-page optimizations.
- Title Tags
On each page of your website, add targeted keywords in the title. To write an effective title tag, here are some of the best practices:
- Including the spaces, limit title tags to 55 to 60 characters.
- Have the keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible as long as it makes sense.
- Do not overcrowd a keyword
- Incorporate the brand name at the end of a title tag that’s separated by a pipe bar “ | “, for example, “Best body scrub | XYZ Inc.”
- Headings
Search engines give headings more importance than other contents on a page as headings (H1) are the largest words on the page. Working a target keyword into a heading on each web page can boost conversion. But keep in mind that the heading accurately reflects the page’s content. Ensure that the one heading (H1) is limited to one page, the other headers will be H2, H3, and so on.
- URL Structure
Incorporate target keywords into a URL if you can. But do not change other existing URLs to accommodate a keyword in them unless there is a plan to redirect old URLs to new ones. If you plan to do so, consulting a professional who provides Link building services in his regard is a good idea. Here are some things to keep in mind.
- Label folders and directories that make sense to the users.
- Keywords must not be repeated in a URL more than once, overdoing keywords will prove to be counterproductive as it affects UX.
- Keep a URL as short as possible.
- Page load speed or fast loading pages
A site can rank higher in the search results if the pages are optimized to load faster. PageSpeed is a tool on Google that analyzes a site on a desktop and mobile. It also suggests tips to help optimize a page’s speed. Important factors to consider for site speed:
- Ensuring server response time is more than 200ms
- HTTP requests should be minimized
- Enabling Gzip compression
- Images should be below 100kb in .png, .jpg and .gif formats
- HTML, CSS and JS should be minified
- Browser caching to be set to a week or longer
Other elements to have in your checklist is mobile friendliness, internal linking, page content, page experience, schema markup, and social tags. If you do not have enough information on where to start or are confused then hiring a Google Pagespeed Service provider is important for you. Page speed matters a lot when it comes to ranking and this is where you can take a lead.
Why is on-page SEO important?
It is important as Google is indicated all about a website and how value is provided to customers and users. It enhances optimization for search engine bots and humans. It isn’t enough to just create and publish a website, it must be optimized for all search engines to be able to attract new traffic and rank better.
It is called “on-page” as the changes and modifications made to optimize a website can be viewed by users on the page.