Many of us are very
famiellear with this two terms but for many new comers and even for who are
experience it is hard to get all the on page seo factors done correctly.
It is very important
that we concentrate on on page seo at the start of our seo campaign because if
we mess up our on page optimization it will be very hard for us to rank
regarding how well we do our of page optimization.
Title optimization
Importance of Page Title on SEO
Page Title is the most valuable and important On-Page SEO factor for a website.
The typical length of Page Title is 70 including
everything (alphabets, numbers, special characters, spaces etc.).
All pages within a website should have unique Page Titles with the most
important targeted keyword/s for or about that page subject/topic.
One well optimized Page
Title should start with the keyword/s instead of mentioning the keywords in
the middle or at the end of the Title.
Use modifiers like best, top, advanced, year, list etc.
in your Page Title which will help to rank
high on Search Engine Result Page (SERP) and to get better CTR (Click Through Rate).
Concentrate on one topic per page. Do not write similar
contents on same topic with same or identical targeted keyword/s or keywords
phrase/s on multiple pages.
Optimized Meta Description
Meta Descriptions are the 2nd most important
on-page SEO factor after Page Title.
Meta Description plays two different roles on overall
SEO. First, if properly and naturally optimized then it will help to get better ranking on SERP for specific
keyword/s and secondly if it is well written without any grammatical or
spelling errors and if it is appealing and sounds credible then it would
deliver better CTR to a website.
Write natural Meta Descriptions mentioning the variation
of primary keyword/s (for Bots) and describing the overall page topic (for
humans) uniquely within 150 characters.
Each page within a website should have unique Meta
Descriptions.
We can check duplicate Page Title, Meta Description and
Meta Keywords at Google Webmaster tool.
On webmaster tool site dashboard click on Site
Appearance and then on HTML
improvements section we can check if we have any long, short or duplicate
Meta tags or Page Titles.
Domain Name of the Website
Domain names can be utilized for SEO. We can select
domain names with our primary keyword/s included in the domain which may
naturally boost the ranking of the site. Though there are lots of controversies
about this SEO strategy. Mostly small
businesses or traders used to use this kind of exact match domain names but many of the SEO Gurus, SEO Bloggers and critiques think that this
is unethical as it deceives the Search Engine.
Domain names with keywords are not brandable. So
depending on the nature or type of the business, business demographic, target
audience or other requirements, companies may or may not like to use domain names
with keyword/s.
Make sure to use either www or non www version
of your website’s domain name. Do not use both as Google and other Search
Engines will see them as 2 different web pages with duplicate contents and furthermore
the Page Rank of your website may get divided between the www and non www version.
Use either www.domain-name.com or domain-name.com. Do not
use domain-name.com/index or domain-name.com/home if they are same
page/content as domain-name.com.
We can take two different approaches to set the www and
non www preference.
Either Use Google Webmaster’s Proffered Domain tool to
tell Google which version of domain you want Google to crawl and reflect on
SERP. On Webmaster tool site dashboard click on the gear icon then click Site
Settings and then In the Preferred
domain section, select your preferred domain option.
Or we can use .HTACCESS file to create a rewrite rule to
point to your preferred version of the domain.
Search Engine Friendly URL Structure
Keyword rich URLs perform much better than non-optimized
URLs on SERP. Always write Search Engine friendly URLs including your targeted
keyword/s.
Do not write URLs like www.domain-name.com/products?product-id=xxx,
rather use www.domain-name.com/products/product-name-keywords/#xxx.
Most of the blog engines have the option to write custom
URLs or permalinks.
Depending on the technology or language we are using to
build the web application we can take different approaches to format the URLs
of a website.
Typically .HTACCESS files can be used to format URLs for better Search Engine Ranking.
Position of keywords in an URL matters a lot on SEO. Such
as, www.domain-name.com/keyword will
perform much better on SERP than www.domain-name.com/folder/xxx/keyword.
Make sure that 2 different or multiple URLs do not have
same content. If it happens then either redirect them to the original page or
use rel=canonical attribute.
Do not use underscores (_) or spaces as word separator
rather use dashes (-) to separate multiple words in an URL. Read Matt Cutts on URL separator
For a typical static website with all .html or .htm pages,
do save all the html pages with the keywords related to that page title or content
or topic.
Write URLs as short as possible keeping the most relevant
targeted keyword/s.
Optimized HTML Header Tags
HTML has six different Header Tags and they are numbered
as per their HTML structural priority. Six header tags are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5
and H6. Headers should appear in the html code as per their numbering. Means H3
cannot come before H2 in the website/page source code.
Header tags other than H1 are used as the heading of the content paragraphs and
H1 is used as the page heading which
tells search engines what the page content is all about.
Multiple
H1
is not possible in a single webpage where as other header tags can occur
multiple times in a site page.
H1
optimization is very important on On Page SEO. Use the
variation of your primary keyword/s in the H1 tag. Optimize all other header
tags with keywords and keyword variations topic wise.
Most of the CMS makes H1 same as the Page Title. Please
consult your website developer to change that. Otherwise it can be an over
optimization issue.
Content Optimization
Content optimization is very important for overall SEO.
Using keyword/s naturally, throughout the page content helps search engines to
understand what the page is all about. But do
not over use keywords in the content. Keyword inclusion should come
naturally but repetitive use of keywords can cause keyword stuffing or over
optimization which can get a website
penalized by Google or other search engines.
Try to put the targeted primary keyword/s within the
first 150 – 200 words of the article. Early mentioning of the main keyword/s in
the article supports the Page Title and H1 and helps in overall on site SEO.
Typical keyword density should be between 2% to 4% though
it depends on various things like article size, business niche or type,
competition level etc. Use different variations of keywords, long tail
keywords, keyword modifiers across the content.
Break your entire content in multiple paragraphs with proper
heading to reduce bounce rate and write
long and valuable contents for your readers.
Image Optimization for SEO
Images are great to make a website or article pages more
appealing and attractive to their site visitors.
Search Engines only understand texts not the pixels
(images). So if we want to optimize
images for SEO then we can do three things.
First save the image (image name) with keyword/s and
separate each word with dashes (Keyword/s should be about the image topic).
Second, mention the proper image alt attribute and same
as image name, alt attributes should be keyword centric but should not be out
of the actual image topic.
And lastly use the image title attribute for Image optimization for SEO. HTML image
titles are typically for human readers so it can be keyword/s rich but it should have human touch as well. Means image
title should not be robotic rather inclusion of keyword/s in an image title
should come naturally.
Outbound or External Links as a strategy of on page SEO
Most of the time we get confused whether to link an
external site or not. We think that linking to a competitor site may hamper our
business or we may lose our traffic. But the outbound linking concept is all about
relevancy, further sharing valuable contents to our readers and building
relationships.
Outbound links help search engines to better understand
the topic of the article or the niche of business and thus external linking
helps in SEO.
Be careful about whom you are linking to. We should link
to a relevant page of a site with the only motive of adding more values to our reader’s
knowledge and over all experience.
Impact of Internal Linking on OnSiteSEO
Internal linking between different pages within a website
has couple of advantages.
It helps search engines to crawl different pages of a
website easily when inter linked from different other pages.
Page Rank juice flows from the home page of a site to its
other pages so Internal linking is one of the best SEO practices for smooth PR
flow.
Inner linking to an old article page from a new and
highly ranked article page within a site can further boost that old page
ranking on SERP.
Interlinking between pages reduces the bounce rate as
visitors have more options to navigate around the site for further relevant information
or knowledge.
For best SEO results use keyword/s in the anchor text and
title attributes of inner links. Anchor text of inner links should have relevant
keywords related to both linking and linked pages.
Implement Rich Snippet – Schema
Though Rich Snippet does not have any direct impact on a
site’s ranking on SERP but it has a very good result on CTR.
Schema and micro data are used to structure the content
of a website properly so that Google and other search engines can identify and
interpret certain elements or property of a business or website, easily and
effectively. So if Google better understands a web page or the business itself,
then they are more likely to rank higher for different keywords over time.
Rich Snippets help websites to standout in the search
engine result page with some additional information (like review, rating,
address etc.) which eventually attracts more clicks.
Certain types of businesses or websites like local
businesses, restaurants, hotels, event management companies, travel companies etc.
should implement schema and micro-data without any delay on their site.
Schema.org
offers
a list of different Rich Snippet mark ups for different types of businesses or
websites which can be incorporated on a site easily.
Google provides a rich snippet testing tool which
can be used to test and identify if there are any mark up or rich snippet structural
problems or errors on a website/page.
Social Sharing and Social Signal – impacts on SEO
Use different social media sharing buttons like Google
Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest for better sharing of your
contents over different social networking sites.
Use third-party social tools for seamless integration and
sharing capabilities so that your readers can easily share your contents
without any difficulties.
Use Facebook and Google+ Open Graph and Twitter cards for
better user experience when someone copied and pasted your links on any of
those social networking platforms.
Google provides rel=author and rel=publisher markups to
show a profile or brand image alongside the regular search listing on SERP
which helps to generate more credibility and CTR.
Making Websites Mobile Ready
With the increasing number of different devices, screen
sizes and browsers, today it is very important to build a site responsive for
mobile, tablet, laptop and as well as desktop users. As more and more people
are using smart phones and tablets for searching, browsing and sharing contents
on internet so if we do not have a responsive, mobile friendly website then we
are going to miss the opportunity to reach to those huge reader or consumer
base.
We have intentionally excluded Meta Keywords from this Onpage
SEO check list as it is no longer important for SEO.
I hope,
the above mentioned 12 points will help you in doing Onpage Optimization of
your site or blog. Remember Search Engine Optimization is a
cumulative result of different factors, so doing one thing rightly will
not get you the expected results.Rather concentrate on all the points
carefully, do them ethically and naturally and over time you will see good
ranking of your website and other article pages on Google and other search
engines.
