What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is merely the act of optimizing individual web pages and makes them rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in most search engines. On-page SEO refers to both the HTML source code and content of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which deals with links and other external signals. Back in the days, “on-page optimization” referred merely to the placement of keyword to enhance the page ranking. Search engines preferred to see keywords in specific areas of the HTML code to help show a page’s relevance for that particular query. But today, this simple approach won’t work just because of this sole reason: The keyword-based algorithms and relevancy that Google and Bing use to elucidate and rank pages are increasingly more complex.
If you are curious what your Website’s SEO looks like, head over to our SEO page for a free analysis.
An on-page SEO provides more than just unique content, but also offers unique value. What’s the difference you ask? Unique content refers to those words, in that order; don’t appear anywhere else on the web. Unique value indicates the degree of usefulness and takeaways derived by visitors to the page. You will agree with me that many pages can be termed as “valuable,” but very few provide a really unique kind of value — one that you can’t find on other pages with that keyword phrase.
What measures have you devised towards optimizing your online presence to make your voice heard? You should begin with making sure you are up to date on on-page SEO essentials to provide optimum performance for your website and visibility for your target customer. For the past few years, the on-page SEO “rules” have changed drastically as Google has implemented a decision that ensures they’re delivering the best results. Now, a typical search result page shows you pages that don’t have the exact match query or keyword in their title tag.
Currently, we’re dealing with ranking algorithms that include Hummingbird, Panda, Rankbrain and semantic importance within the page. With the advance in technology, Google is getting smarter. Your on-page methods must improve too.
As Google becomes smarter, one of the significant factors affecting on-page SEO is relevance. To develop the page continuously, ask yourself, how relevant is your page to the query? Think of these as a benefit to your end user.
You have approximately eight seconds to influence the decision of a visitor to interact more with your website. The more engagement and interaction, plus the longer your visitors stay on the site, the better their experience.
Once you fully understand everything that goes on in your on-page SEO efforts, carry out an analysis of your site to see how your page is performing.
Below are two essential practices to bear in mind as regards on-page SEO.
Meta Descriptions
Although this is not a direct ranking factor, search engines read Meta descriptions to know the topic on the page and the type of audience that will find value. A Meta description depicts what site visitors will see on the page. If your Meta description is well-written, it can generate a very competitive advantage in the search results.
Title Tag
Most site visitors don’t blindly click on the first result; they carefully read titles and descriptions to find the best answer to their query. Despite the fact that there are multiple tags on your page, the most important is the title tag. This is what users see in the search engine. It outlines what the page is all about when it comes to page ranking; Google considers the title tag and compares that to the rest of the content on the page.
Be sure to check out our Article on Off-Page SEO