Best Practices for On-Page SEO | Downloadable PDF

How Should I implement On-Page SEO? Guide and best practices for Beginners.

Step by Step Implementation of On-Page (On-Site) SEO

Search Engine Optimisation Methods 

Search Engine Optimisation is also known as SEO can be broadly divided into 5 types and we will look at them briefly.

1. On-Page SEO – That is carried out on the web pages of the website also known as On-site SEO.
2. Off-Page SEO – That is carried out outside your website (web pages) also known as Off-Site SEO.
3. Technical SEO – Herein the Optimisation is carried out on the technical side of your website (web pages) such as structured data, schema mark-up, and core web vital.
4. Local SEO – Herein you optimise your NAP (Name, Address, Phone numbers) in local directories for better local presence.
5. Blended or Universal SEO – Here again you optimise all the contents to the best practices such as Text, Images, Video……etc.,

What is On-Page SEO and how to implement it?

On-Page SEO is a process of optimizing individual web pages within the website to rank the web page in a better position in SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) and gain higher organic traffic to the website. On-Page SEO refers to optimizing elements like content, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), images, URL structure and more in each of the web pages on your website.

In this guide, we will learn the basics of how to practice the best, so that you achieve the set GOALS. We will address each of these in length for better understanding. Each of these steps is important.

1. Step 1: Keyword Research
2. Step 2: HTML Tags (Title, Meta and Headers)
3. Step 3: URL Structure
4. Step 4: Anchor Links
5. Step 5: Image Optimisation (ALT Attributes and more)
6. Step 6: Bread Crumbs
7. Step 7: Site Navigation
8. Step 8: Content

Step 1:- Keyword Research

What is a Keyword?

A search term which a user types to find your website in the search engine is called a Keyword. It can be a single word or a phrase.

Keywords can be defined in two contexts 

1. Defined on the Length of the Keyword
2. Defined on the Users Intent of search.

On Length: There are 3 types of keywords

1. Short-tail keyword these are one word like Uniform, Car, TV, Speaker.
2. Medium-tail keyword these are 2 to 3 words like Buy 55inches TV, Online Car Sales, Best Speakers.
3. Long-tail keyword these are 3 or more words like Buy online best TV, Seconds Car Sales in Bangalore, best digital marketing courses in Bangalore.

On the Users Intent: There are 3 types of keywords

1. Transactional keywords Search terms with sales intent like buy, sale, purchase
2. Informational keywords Search terms with educational, learning, updating, upskilling or research intent like how to, who are, when will etc.,
3. Branded keywords Search terms that are associated with your Brand name like WordPress, Microsoft, Hostinger etc.,

Keyword research is the process of discovering the keywords used by potential customers to find your products or service or both. You can then pick the most relevant keywords within your reach that have a good search volume.

Please note that when you research the keywords, you should keep in mind the purpose/theme of your website. If your intention is sales, go for transactional keywords or opt for informational keywords if you aim to educate the readers. 

Here are a few important ways/tools that help you research appropriate keywords for your website and are important for a good On-Page SEO.

You can do these in two ways, as explained below. These are very handy checklists.

a) For transactional keywords, use tools such as 

1. Google Suggest 
2. Google Related
3. Google Keyword Planner: You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them.
4. Google Trends: Google Trends is a website by Google that analyzes the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. The website uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time.
5. UberSuggest: This tool goes through all the recommendations from Google Suggest and shows you the most appropriate keyword. You can also check the competitors’ keywords by putting their website URL.

You can explore these tools for better understanding.

Free Versions: Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends

The paid versions of UberSuggest, MOZ, SEMRUSH all help.

b) For Informational keywords use tools such as 

1. People also ask (Google): This is a very effective tool to check what kind of questions people are asking for the given keyword. The best part, it is displayed on the SERP along with the other search results, so you don’t have to search for it separately.

2. Quora: The best platform to get ideas for your blog. Quora is not only a highly ranked question and answer community, it’s one of the top online destinations in the world.

This makes it a great place to begin the process of making a site popular and improving rankings and traffic

You can explore: QUORA

3. Answer the Public: Listens to autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword. It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. AnswerThePublic has a basic free version that gives you up to three searches a day.

You can explore: AnswerThePublic 

Once you are done with the research, always make your decision based on what you may feel is the right for your website and its pages. Treat each page different so the keywords differ for each web page and you will need to research each of them separately.

Step 2:- HTML Tags (Title, Meta and Headers)

Title Tag

A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage. It is displayed on the SERP as a clickable headline for a searched keyword and is one of the most important steps in On-Page SEO. It is shown as a blue link on the SERP.

Optimizing your title is an important ranking criterion for search engines and it can be easily optimized. 

Importance of a title tag 

Title tags are a major factor in search engine ranking and it also acts as a first impression for the users to understand your pages.

There are three places where you can check the title tag

1. On SERP
2. Browser Tab 
3. Page Source

Title tag, best practices

1. Keep your title length within 60 characters’ maximum including space to avoid ellipses (…) Google truncates the title tags that go beyond the ideal character length.
2. For better search results, use the keywords in the title at least once.
3. Every page should have a unique Title tag for better understanding for the users and it also improves Click Through Rate (CTR).
4. Keep your content interesting with a short, crisp and engaging title.
5. Use separator after the keyword. Example: use a comma (,) or a separator (|) or a hyphen (-)

What to avoid while writing title tags

1. Avoid keyword stuffing or over-optimization of the title as Google may simply remove it for serving the users with more relevant information. 
2. Duplicating the titles for every page as Google sees it as a black hat practice. 
3. Lengthy or irrelevant title tags are bad for the user experience and can lead the search engines to not rank your pages higher. 
4. Writing the titles in UPPERCASE. Capital letters take up extra character spaces so your titles may be truncated by Google in this case.

TIP: Remember, you are writing for your users. If you practice this then your content will automatically be easy for bots to crawl, index and rank.  

Meta Description

A meta description is a piece of text that provides a summary of webpage content. It is displayed below the title tags in the SERP. Just like title tags, this is also an important ranking factor for search engines. The purpose of the meta description is to get the users interested to click on your link. 

There are two places to check the meta descriptions. 

• SERP 
• Page Source

Good meta description, best practices

1. Use up to 140-160 characters. If you beyond this rest of it can be truncated by Google. 
2. It should briefly describe the content of your page. Keep it actionable (Call To Action-CTA) which will make the user click and visit your website. 
3. Add not more than 2 keywords, keeping it relevant to the content of your page so that Google shows this to the users.
4. Write unique, compelling, and readable descriptions for a better CTR. 

What to avoid while writing a meta description

1. Using duplicate descriptions for different pages. This is not a good practice according to Google and it may not rank you higher on the SERP. 
2. Writing short and irrelevant descriptions that provide no value to the user. 
3. Stuffing the keywords. It is a black hat practice and Google can choose not to show a description that is over-optimized. 

Header Tags (H1, H2-H6 tags)

Header tags are used to highlight the main heading (H1) and subheadings(H2-H6) on a page, H1 and H2 tags help in ranking pages better and are important for On-Page SEO. When you use different header tags, you structure your website content to make it easier for visitors and bots to understand it. 

Good Header Tags, best practices

1. Use header tags to provide a good structure to the content. Each header should give the user a clear idea about the information provided on the page. Use H1 to highlight the main heading of the page and H2-H6 tags to provide the subheadings and so on. Please make sure to use only ONE H1 tag per page. 
2. Include keywords in the headings. While headers are not going to have as large an impact on your SEO as a backlink from an authoritative site, Google still looks at them to gather context for your page.
3. As with anything Google pays attention to, that means it’s worth including keywords in your header tags, use them consistently. This will add to a good user experience and also helps the user navigate through the content with ease. 
4. Using them in chronological order for better SEO, although it is not a direct ranking factor. Make sure that if you are using an H5, you use H4, H3 and H2 as well. This adds quality to your content and that helps in SEO. 

What to avoid in writing Header Tag?

1. Using more than one H1 tag on the page. This can be confusing to the bots as they won’t understand which is the main title of the page. 
2. Using an extremely lengthy header tag can break the flow of your content and give users a bad reading experience. 
3. Using irrelevant header tags. 

Step 3:- URL Structure

URL is a permalink that shows your domain name along with a brief structure of a page. URL is important for rankings (On-Page SEO), link sharing and even adds value to your presence on the SERP. By seeing the URL, the users and search engines should get a good idea about what they can expect on the page. 

You can find the URL of a page in two places: 

• SERP
• In the address bar

Good URL structure, best practices

1. Keep it simple, relevant, and as accurate as possible.
2. Use hyphens ( – ) to separate words. If you are using a plugin like Yoast to add a structure then the spaces are by default taken as a hyphen. 
3. Use lowercase text only.
4. Using the exact page name along with a keyword can increase the click-through rate. 
5. A user-friendly URL structure is ranked higher by the search engines and also enhances the user experience.

What to avoid in URL structure

1. Using uppercase letters, never use it
2. Don’t use an underscore, space, or a special character to separate the words
3. Using file extensions
4. Keyword stuffing
5. Long and irrelevant URLs
6. Avoid changing your URLs frequently. If you do, then make sure you are redirecting the users and the bots to the new URL

Step 4:- Anchor Links

If you create content on your blog for an individual page, then the other pages of your website must direct the users to this blog page. This is achieved through Anchor Links. You can do this by adding links in between the content of the other pages within the website. Use proper anchor text (use keywords here) to let the users know about which page they are going to click on. This improves the user-friendliness of a page.

Remember: Use the same anchor text that leads to the power page. This helps the bots to recognize the page as important and relevant to the website which helps in ranking. 

Anchor links mainly focus on the internal inbound links which means that how many pages within the website are directing the users to the main target page which you want to rank on the SERP.

Step 5:- Image Optimisation ( ALT Attributes)

Optimizing your image file name using alt text makes it easier for the image bots to better understand your images. 

Good Practices for Image Optimisation

1. Use file names that best describe the content of the image. For example, “Black-Leather-Bag.jpg” is a better filename than “IM21032012-110357.jpg”
2. The alt attributes should be helpful to visually impaired visitors and make them understand your content easily. 
3. Use proper and correct image dimensions/sizes.
4. Use correct image formats.
5. Use Progressive JPEG

Image Optimisation can be done in two ways

1. Changing the file name at the source. When you download free images from the internet, always rename the file when you save it on the desktop. This can help you understand that on which page of the website should you upload the images. 
2. Optimizing on the WordPress backend in the Media section. Over here, just like the pages, you have to optimize the Title and Description, along with the Alternative text.

Remember: Image optimization helps in improving page load speed, boosts websites’ SEO ranking, and improves user experience. Page load speed is the amount of time taken by a web page to load completely. Image SEO can boost your ranking in Google’s image search. This, in turn, will bring in more traffic, especially if you are selling products online. Positive User Experience: SEO friendly images is known to positively impact the overall user experience.

Step 6:- Bread Crumbs

A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the home page. Breadcrumbs help to enhance the user experience (UX) and also lower the bounce rate on your site. 

Breadcrumbs can be broadly classified into three types.

1. Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs: They are like your site structure, for example, Home – Blog – Category – Post name.
2. Attribute-based breadcrumbs: they are the ones we find on e-commerce sites, having product filters, for example, Home – Product category – Gender – Size – Color.
3. History-based breadcrumbs: They tell you about what the user has been doing on your site. Home – Previous page – Last page – Current page.

Step 7:- Site Navigation

Navigation is necessary for ensuring that your website is accessible and usable. Good navigation will allow visitors to search your site for longer, giving them confidence in where they are and what they can receive from your website. Navigation allows visitors to search with ease.

An organised and transparent navigation system acts as a road map to direct visitors to various pages and information on your site. It is fundamental in encouraging visitors to stay, peruse your content and have a positive user experience, which subsequently leads to more sales and brand loyalty for your business.

Step 8:- Content

High-quality, useful content influences the website much more than any other factor mentioned above. Your content should Educate, Entertain and Engage (3 E’s of best Content) the users. Content has a very high value in terms of ranking on the SERP because that is what compels the users to take necessary action on your website. Contents properly taken care of with all the other On-Page SEO aspects perform great on SERP because it helps your visitor in resolving the problem for which they came to your webpage or blog in the first place.

Some of the best practices to write useful content are: 

1. As of today, the best content should be simple enough that even a layman can read it and understand how it resolves his problem. The Keywords should be used in relevant places so that your content is available for those keywords for the user.
2. Be the expert in writing content that you know about. This builds credibility and also adds to trustworthiness. Use tools such Grammarly for best results.
3. Create fresh, unique content and focus on readability. Great content is clear, organized, has logic, and is full of resourceful links, in all aspects including image, video, audio and more.

Avoid the following in Content Writing 

1. Using text that is full of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. 
2. Adding a large amount of text without structuring it using header tags or by using multimedia. 
3. Adding duplicated content that provides little or no value to the users. This is considered a black-hat practice by Google and might be penalized for the same. 
4. Adding unnecessary words that have no relevance to the content. Keyword stuffing is not advisable. 
5. Don’t Write without a Clear Understanding of Your Audience.
6. Don’t Write without a Clear Purpose
7. Don’t Start without a Clear Plan or Structure
8. Don’t Forget a Call to Action
9. Don’t Write Content That Doesn’t Add Value or Solve a Problem for the Reader.