On-Page SEO: Helping Google and Searchers Understand Your Website Page
Analyzing and monitoring On-Page optimization to create exceptional user experience and optimized content for bots.
Optimizing Your Content for On-Page SEO
What Is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing various front-end and back-end components of your website. On-page SEO components include include content, architecture and html elements.
Why Is On-Page SEO Important?
On-page SEO is important because it helps search engines understand your website’s content and determine whether it is pertinent to a to a searcher’s query.
The Ranking Process
The ranking process works by crawling or assessing your website pages first. Then Google decides whether to index your page. Since not every page will be indexed or shows up in search results it is important to tweak your on-page SEO elements.
How I Optimize Your Content for On-Page SEO
My first step is to conduct keyword research. Then incorporate these keywords into the content naturally, avoiding keyword stuffing. The content should match the search intent of the target keywords, unique and includes a visual content.
Google skims through your content to gain context about your page topic. I include target keywords in H1, in the first paragraph and subheaders.
Title tags influence ranking. These are displayed in browser tabs, social network posts, and search engine results. Title tags must be brief between 50-60 characters so Google does not cut them off. It includes a target keyword and no duplication.
Usually the meta desciption appears below the page title on the SERP. It doesn’t directly affect Google ranks but it is a deciding factor for the user to click on your page or not. Additionally, Google may pick its own description for the SERP if your meta description doesn’t match the user’s search intent or your page content intent. My best practice it to keep meta description short up to 120 characters with target keywords.
Users may quickly scan your page with the help of H1 tags, and following headings also help Google recognize the hierarchy of your page. Headings should contain keywords and keyword variations to provide Google with more context regarding your page structure and information it covers.
Simple URLs are Google’s recommendation. An excellent technique to make sure your URL matches the subject of your article is to include a target keyword in it.
Internal links are clickable identifiers for pages on the same site. An essential component of on-page SEO optimization is internal linking. It lets Google know that certain pages are connected and related and, the linked-to page is valuable. Internal linking also allow Google crawlers find and access new pages and facilitate user navigation on your website and keep visitors there longer.
Your website’s external links are those that lead to other websites. External links are crucial since they improve the user experience and helps build their trust. I ensure that your site links to authoritative, and trustworthy websites.
Optimizing images in your content increases your chance to rank in Google Images. Writing a descriptive alt text on the images is the practice I do except on decorative image which doesn’t need a description. The purpose is to provide context for search engine crawler and allow web users who use screen readers hear the image description.
Ways on how I optimized images:
I use descriptive file names. Also, I replace spaces in between words with a hyphen.
I compress images and use Google recommended webP file extension. The webP format reduces the file size while maintaining the quality of images.
Optimizing H1, H2, 1st Paragraph, Title Tag, Meta Description, URL and Image
