What is On-Site SEO?
On-site SEO ( or on-page SEO) is when elements on a website are optimized for search engines. On-site SEO can be compared to off-site SEO, in which links and other elements are created elsewhere on the internet in order to drive traffic to your website and increase rankings in searches.
On-site SEO involves the content itself, as well as some other elements that you may not have thought of such as pictures and internal links. Here is what you need to know about on-site SEO for your website.
Why Does Your Business Need On-Site SEO?
If you want your business to show up in searches, you need to utilize on-site SEO techniques. On-site SEO tells search engines that you have content that readers are looking for. Without on-site SEO, all of your carefully created content is unlikely to be found by your potential customers. However, if you optimize your pages for search engines, you have an excellent chance of getting on the first page of Google for the keywords that matter to your clients.
On-Site SEO is More Than Just Using Keywords
At the beginning of SEO, everything was about keywords. Specific keywords needed to be placed in specific areas of the website in order to tell search engines what the website was about.
Now, search engines are more sophisticated. They can decipher what a website is about using synonyms, context, and the frequency of word combinations. Keywords are still important, but making sure exact keywords go to specific locations is no longer nearly as important as the relevance of keywords to user intent. That said, using the right keywords in the right places is still a valuable part of SEO, although the “right places” may be different than they were before. These are the important areas in which to work in keywords to optimize your site for search engines.
Headings
Search engines can recognize when headings are used and give the words within them greater value than general content. It is especially important that keywords are used in the first heading. It is helpful for SEO if there is a heading with the primary keyword before the first paragraph.
A great way to include the keyword, catch users’ interests, and describe the value of your article is to ask a primary question that the article answers in the first heading. Using keywords In headings throughout the article helps to organize the content for search engines and human readers and also improves search engine rankings. Remember, just making text larger or bold does NOT make it a heading. Use heading tags in HTML or heading blocks in web page editors. Here are the most common headings and how to use them:
1.) H1 headings should be used sparsely. They work well as a title at the beginning of an article.
2.) H2 Headings are useful as primary headings throughout the article. They should be used when a new point is being introduced or there is a change in topic.
3.) H3 headings divide content underneath H2 headings. They should directly relate to the subject of the H2 heading that they are under. Because they are more specific, H3 headings are a great place to incorporate secondary keywords.
4.) H4 headings further divide content under H3 headings. They are only used in the longest articles, such as articles of 3000 words or more since generally content under H3 headings is better divided using bullet points or lists in shorter articles.
Title
The title of your content is a huge cue to both search engines and readers as to what the page is about. Ideally, you will include the primary keyword as well as a secondary keyword in the title. This works well when dashes or colons are utilized.
For instance, the title of this article is “On-Site SEO: How on-page SEO techniques can increase your website’s ranking”. “On-site SEO” is the primary keyword and “ on-page SEO techniques” is a secondary keyword.
Keyword Density
Many beginners who are trying to optimize their page for search engines tend to think that the more times they can fit in their primary keyword, the better. In fact, the practice of using a keyword more than is natural is known as keyword stuffing, and it looks bad to both search engines and readers.
The ideal keyword density is between .5% and 3%. If your text is 100 words and three of the words are your keyword, you'll have a keyword density of 3%. It should not be difficult for you to include the keyword as much as is required, and you may actually have more of a problem with using it too much.
After all, your entire article is generally about the primary keyword, so you will tend to use it a lot. In order to reduce keyword density, use secondary keywords which will increase your ranking for the subject without making search engines think you are keyword stuffing.
Tools such as SEMRUSH can calculate your keyword density for you or you can use the “find” tool in your Microsoft Word or Google Documents and compare the number of keywords to the overall word count.
Optimized Images & On-Site SEO
Images are some of the most overlooked aspects of optimizing content for search engines. Images can help your article show up in Google image searches and properly tagged pictures also help your on-site SEO.
Images rank better in Google image search when they are placed near the top of the page, so be sure to put your most important images first. Illustrations and animated gifs can also be helpful. Here are some things to keep in mind about SEO once you have found the perfect picture for your page.
- Put keywords in the file name. Google can see and crawl file names, so make sure to customize the file names for your picture using keywords
- Choose the right format for your image:
- JPEGs work well for large photos or illustrations since they keep color and clarity without having a huge file size.
- PNG preserves background transparency.
- WebP offers high-quality results with very small files, which is great for when you have lots of pictures on your page.
- Logos and icons work best with SVG format that allows you to resize without losing quality.
- Use captions where appropriate. Captions are very useful for including additional keywords because they are often scanned by readers, but don't use captions for every picture just in order to fit in more keywords.
Metadata
Metadata is not displayed on the page itself, but it is extremely important for search engines. It can be tempting to use more meta tags than you really need since they are not visible to readers, but in fact, too many tags can confuse search engines and actually make your page less likely to rank. You want to stick to the most important meta tags.
Perhaps the most obvious and important news of metadata is the meta description. This is what people read when they are scanning through results in a search. It needs to be within a hundred and sixty characters and should be designed to encourage users to click on your website. Keyword stuffing is a bad idea in this limited space, but it is essential to fit in your primary keyword and at least one or two secondary keywords.
Schema Markup
Schema markups are a fairly new evolution in on-site SEO, and one of the forms of SEO that is least known about and utilized. Schema markup can help search engines understand what content means, not just what words are used.
For instance, the right schema markup can tell search engines whether your article that includes the keyword “Venus” is discussing the planet or the Greek god. Schema markups are a shared vocabulary that any website can utilize. You can visit Schema.org In order to find out which Schema markup will work well for your page.
Internal Linking
Internal links direct users to other parts of your website. Compare these to external links, which direct users to other websites. Internal linking is very useful for helping readers find more relevant information on your website.
They also help search engines determine how information is organized on your website and help your other web pages to be ranked better whenever you create a new web page with internal links. Without internal links, some pages may actually be invisible to Google. In order to improve the SEO across your website, use internal links wherever appropriate.
Internal links can be used throughout the content, for instance, if you have another page that goes into depth about a subject that is mentioned on the page you are writing. They can also be listed at the bottom of a page as options for learning more about a subject.
Performance
One of the most frustrating experiences for website creators is putting hours of effort into creating and optimizing a page, only to find that the page loads slowly. Pages that load slowly are fatal for both user experience and SEO. Page load time is even more important for mobile users since pages often load more slowly on mobile devices.
Users are likely to give up on a page that loads too slowly and click the next option in Google searches. Not only does this mean that your site doesn't get viewed, but it also hurts your bounce rates (The frequency with which someone leaves your site quickly), which negatively affects SEO.
Contact Perfectly Optimized of On-Site SEO Services
When you consider how important on-page SEO is for your business’s marketing success and everything that goes into successfully implementing on-page SEO strategies, you may find yourself in search of on-page SEO services. Perfectly Optimized can make each of your pages highly attractive to both search engines and readers while decreasing load time.