on-Page SEO In 2023:
{Best Tips For Increasing CTR}
On-page SEO is an important element of search🔎engine optimization (SEO).
Keywords, relevance, and searcher intent are the focal point of on-page SEO.
Good on-page optimization increases dwell time⌚and decreases bounce rate.
These factors🏭will help your site rank in Google SERPs.
Which will result in more visitors to your site😊.
Search engine optimization is the practice of fixing or improving all aspects of your website or blog so it can appear on the search engine results page (SERP).
On a search results page, you will see different elements; such as ads, videos, images, recipes, etc.
Take a look at the example image below. It displays a ‘paid ad’ and some videos.
Someone paid Google to have their Ad appear on the page.
Paid ads are always at the top and bottom of a SERP. Sometimes they’re on the side as well.
They are easy to identify; they’ll have the word ‘Ad‘ next to them.
The elements that are shown on a SERP depend, on the search term that is entered.
Google’s search engine results page displays 10 organic results per page.
The image below displays only organic search results.
When you optimize your content, that is where you’re optimizing it to appear.
There are many different search results pages, but your goal should always be to get to the top of page one.
Why?
Because those are the results that get the most clicks.
Search engine optimization is a broad topic, it covers:
- On-page SEO (also known as on-site SEO),
- Off-page SEO, and
- Technical SEO.
Google is always changing its search algorithm.
So, website owners have to do regular site updates and keep up with the changes, if they want to rank in SERP.
Website updates include on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.
The goal of this guide is to help you gain a solid understanding of on-page SEO.
As well as, how to properly optimize your web pages to increase your chances of ranking on all search engines.
Not just Google.
Which will result in you gaining more traffic.
So,
What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is the practice of arranging in a particular way and making changes to the contents of a webpage to make it easier for humans and search engines to read and understand.
It is not the same thing as off-page SEO.
Off-page SEO focuses on things that happen off-site, such as relationship and link building.
Off-page SEO is all about driving traffic to your site and turning them into repeat visitors.
On the other hand, on-page SEO focuses on optimizing the contents of a web page. Contents such as titles, descriptions, images, videos, etc.
These elements are optimized with keywords, synonyms, or phrases that match a searcher’s query.
Whenever you hear the term on-page SEO think of, keywords, relevance, and searcher intent.
Keywords
Keywords are specific words, phrases, or sentences that searchers type into search engines when searching for something.
There are seed keywords and longtail keywords.
Seed keywords are also referred to as ‘main’ or short-tail keywords.
They are either one or two words. For example, content marketing.
Long-tail keywords have three or more words.
They are normally questions or phrases.
Keywords help you to understand, what people are searching for, their intent, and which type of content to create for them.
Those are the words and phrases that you will be optimizing your posts and pages for.
Look at the image below and see if you can identify the keyword in those results.
If you guessed turkey🦃you’re correct. Treat yourself to a turkey!
Did you notice how Google bold the keyword and matched it with relevant results?
It even pulled results with images of turkey.
So, before you create or write any piece of content, do keyword research.
Once you understand what searchers want, then you can create relevant content for them.
Relevance
When doing on-site SEO it is essential that the content of your site be relevant to the search query and intent of the user.
The relevance of the content to the searchers’ query, is one of many factors that Google uses to rank a page.
The content on your page must be aligned with what the searcher is looking for.
Your keyword/s indicate to Google that your content is relevant to what the searcher wants.
When you create content that matches a searchers’ query then you stand a greater chance of getting ranked by Google.
Searcher Intent
People are always searching for something.
It may be to solve a problem, learn something, or make a purchase.
Whatever it is, your job is to identify the searcher’s intent.
The intent is the reason behind the search.
There are four main search intents:
1. Informational: This is when someone is seeking information. For example, how to tie a shoelace?
2. Commercial: This is when people need more information before making a purchase. For example, best vacuums for carpet reviews.
3. Transactional: This is when people are ready to buy. An example of a transactional search term is, best/buy a vacuum for carpets.
4. Navigational: This is when someone is searching for a specific brand, eg. Walmart.
You’ve been reading for a while, so take a few minutes and watch the video below.
It has some very good information that you’ll find valuable.
Hopefully, you watched the vid and got some value.
Now, let’s move on to
Why On-Page SEO Is Important
On-page SEO is important because it:
- Makes the content better organized, clearer, and easier to read and understand by your visitors.
- Helps search engine bots understand the contents of your site.
- Increase your site’s page-one visibility chances.
This means the keywords and phrases on your page must align with what the searcher is looking for.
However, it does not mean that you should keyword stuff your pages or use redundant and irrelevant words.
By now, you should understand the importance of on-site SEO.
So, let’s look at
How to write SEO content
If you want to rank on search engines, you have to learn how to write a blog post. You won’t rank if you can’t produce great content.
When it comes to content creation, there are 3 key factors:
1. Keywords,
2. Searcher intent, and
3. Relevance.
Those are the backbones of your content.
You need content to rank on Google!
But not just any content; you need great content, heck, make that exceptional content.
The criterion for exceptional content is:
- Relevance,
- Value, and
- Uniqueness.
Let me break them down for you.
Since I already covered relevance a few paragraphs up👆, I’ll move on to the other two.
Value
For your content to be valuable, it must benefit your readers and satisfy their intent.
The more details and supporting data you can provide to the reader, the more valuable your content will be.
You can make your content value-packed by adding images, examples, actionable steps, facts, and statistics whenever possible.
Be as clear, thorough, and in-depth as possible to ensure that your reader is satisfied.
Uniqueness
Bring something new to the table.
There are tons of information available on just about everything under the sun, so you have to bring something unique to the board.
I’m not saying to do a complete re-inventing of the wheel, I’m simply saying add your own twist if you want to stand out.
Give or tell your readers something they’ve never had or heard before.
How to optimize your content
If you want to rank on Google, you need to learn SEO.
And how to optimize your content.
There are many parts of a web page to optimize.
But it’s not hard to do, once you know which parts to optimize.
If you don’t know, no worries, I got you covered here.
Below are the parts of your page that must be optimized:
- Title,
- Meta description,
- URL,
- Introduction (place your keyword in either the first or second sentence),
- Subheadings,
- Body (sprinkle your keyword and related words throughout the page),
- Images,
- Links ( anchor text, internal, external), and
- Conclusion.
Remember, your keyword is what you’ll be optimizing your page for.
Adding the same keyword many different times will make your page sound unnatural and look unattractive.
To write search engine optimized content you need to target a specific keyword or phrase.
Each page or post must target a specific keyword.
Naturally, place your keyword at the top and middle of your page.
Sprinkle it and related words, synonyms, and phrases throughout the rest of the page.
Let’s take a quick look at each part that must be optimized.
Title
The title is the main topic of your post and it is always nested in the head tag of a web page.
Best Practices
- Wrap your title in h1 tags
- Only use one h1 tag on each page.
- Put your keyword in your title.
- Put your keyword close to the beginning of your title. The closer it is to the front, the more Google will value it.
Your title lets search engines know what your page is about.
Below is an example of how a title looks in search🔎.
Using modifiers in your titles also helps with ranking.
Using modifiers like “best”, “guide”, “checklist”, “fast” and “review” can help you rank for long tail versions of your target keyword.
Brian Dean, Backlinko.
Meta Description
Fill out your meta description.
If you don’t, Google will pull information from parts of your site to fill that section.
Below is an example of a meta description.
Best Practices
- Include your keyword at least once. and highlight the key points of your content.
- Highlight the key points of your content.
- Use active voice.
- Keep it short, between 100-155 characters is ideal.
- The meta description is like the preview text in an email, so you need to make it compelling enough for the visitors to click your result.
- Let the searchers know what to expect when they get to your site.
Meta description helps content stand out.
Meta description also impacts click-through rate.
URL
Your uniform resource locator (URL) is important and should be optimized.
Use the tips below to properly optimize your URL:
- Give your URL slug a proper name with your keyword once.
- Use a different URL for each page.
- Keep it short (think of it as an email subject line).
- Use lower-case letters.
- Use hyphens to separate the words.
- Avoid using symbols and numbers.
- Add posts and pages to their correct/relevant folders
URL also plays a role in increasing CTR.
Subtopics
Subtopics are wrapped in other heading tags (h2-h6).
You should aim to have your keyword in at least one-third of your subheadings whenever possible.
Images
Images on a web page attract viewers.
But, they can reduce site speed if not properly optimized.
Below are a few tips to help you optimize your images:
- Name your image appropriately.
- Choose the correct image format (gif, jpeg, png, etc).
- Compress your images (Shortpixel, Smush, etc).
- Use alt text to describe your image in detail.
- Include your keyword in your description.
- Submit an image sitemap to Google.
Links
Hyperlinks or links, enable users to click from one page to another either on the same domain (internally) or to a different domain (externally).
Anchor Text
Anchor texts are clickable words or phrases that jump from one page to another; or from one section to another section of the same page.
This is a naked or raw link (www.anchortext.com), and this is an anchor text (anchor text).
Whenever you hover over an anchor text, the color will change.
You should use anchor texts to link to relevant internal and external pages.
Internal Links
Internal links help visitors to navigate your website and find additional relevant or supporting information.
Linking internally from high-authority pages is important.
It helps to pass link equity/juice to the pages that are linked to it.
Link equity means link value/power/authority.
It is good practice to link to other pages on your site.
Always use anchor text to connect to other sections, pages, or sites.
Linking to other pages makes it easier for Google bots to crawl your website.
External/Outbound Links
External linking is also good on-page SEO practice.
When you link to external web pages, you provide more value and information to your readers.
Ensure that the outbound links are relevant to your page and provide value to the reader.
Now you know how to optimize your web page.
Next, I’ll give you a few tips on some
SEO tactics to avoid
We all want to get on Google’s first page!
But to get there, we must avoid actions that will do more harm than good.
Here are a few bad SEO tactics that you need to avoid:
- Keyword stuffing.
- Thin and low-quality content (insufficient and lacks value).
- Duplicate content (same content on different pages of the same domain).
- Cloaking & misleading redirects (showing different content to humans and bots on the same link).
- Link schemes (buying or selling links).
- Auto-generated content.
Now, here are a few
Tips to Help your content Rank
You’re not going to rank on Google in a few days or weeks.
However, as you continue to implement the tips in this guide, you will eventually get there.
To get your content to rank, focus on:
- Understanding searcher intent.
- Optimizing for a good user experience.
- Increasing click-through rate.
- Decreasing bounce rate.
- Avoiding bad SEO tactics.
User Experience
You can improve the user experience by giving people what they want from the start.
Don’t bombard readers with a lot of images and other media before giving them the answer or solution that they came to your site for.
Backlinko’s owner, Brian Dean says,
“push your content above the fold”.
Make your content easier to read and understand by using short sentences and paragraphs.
Use lots of subheadings so people can skip to the parts they are most interested in.
Use simple words so that the average reader can understand them.
Some people are visual learners so have visual elements on your page.
Bounce Rate
You can decrease your site’s bounce rate by implementing both on-page and technical SEO.
Technical SEO takes care of things like your site speed and other backend issues that can slow down your site.
When your site loads fast, has a good design and is easy to navigate, it increases your visitor’s dwell time.
If your site takes too long to load people are going to bounce.
Engaging with your audience through comments is another way for you to decrease the bounce rate.
Now, here are a few simple, but effective
Tips for increasing CTR
Best Practices
- Use the keyword in your URL.
- Use long-tail keywords in your title.
- Fill in the meta description. Keep it relevant and between 155 characters.
- Use structured data/ rich snippets (are special Html codes that help Google understand your content better) such as FAQ, How-to, etc.
- Improve your site speed.
- Link Magnets
Below are some useful free
On-Page SEO Tools
Acts as a guide when optimizing your posts.
Audits your site and find the missing title, meta description, etc.
Merkle’s Schema Markup Generator
Creates different types of structured data in the format recommended by Google.
Gives a preview of how your URL, title, and meta description will look in search.
Check the schema on your page to see if it qualifies for the rich snippet in search results.
On-Page SEO fAQ
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing different elements of a web page to make it easier for humans and bots to access and understand it.
Off-page SEO focuses on building relationships, brand awareness, link building, and driving targeted visitors to your site.
There is no one best SEO technique. All the elements of SEO work together to make websites user-friendly.
Content writing and optimization are great but if your website’s performance (technical SEO) is bad then the content won’t be well received.
So, do your best to incorporate all elements of SEO on your site.
Examples of on-page SEO are your title, meta description, URL, subheadings, etc.
The Wrap On On-Page SEO
Your site won’t stand a chance of ranking on any search engine if you ignore on-page optimization.
You now know which parts of your site to optimize.
By implementing the basic SEO practices you stand a greater chance of ranking.
On-page SEO works hand in hand with technical and off-page SEO.
There are lots of good paid and free SEO tools available, so use them to audit your site and use the information to improve it.
I hope you now have a better understanding of on-page SEO and its importance.
Tell me, which of the tips above, will you try?
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