Despite the initial rise of social networks, organic search is today the main source of web traffic (with around 35% in 2017).
Therefore, to improve SEO positioning and ensure that your website is easy to index, SEO On Page is your main ally.
If you are wondering what SEO On Page is, don’t worry.
In this complete guide, I will explain how it works and what are the main factors that affect organic positioning.
In addition, I will give you some tricks so that it is very easy for you to make your website index better.
What is On-Page SEO?
SEO On Page encompasses all those internal factors of a website that, directly or indirectly, affect its SEO positioning.
That is, we are talking about aspects such as the design, content, or performance of the website.
Unlike Off Page factors, which do not depend on us (such as external links), it is possible to improve SEO On Page positioning quickly and efficiently.
It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or if you already have an active website; you are always in time to improve your internal SEO.
This is its main advantage and the reason why it is very important that you take care of these factors that I am going to list later on very seriously.
How does SEO On Page Affect My Positioning?
When I talk about SEO On Page I mean those factors that positively influence the indexing of a site and, therefore, the SEO of a website.
But this does not mean that there are no other factors to position, even more important.
No matter how much you improve the speed of your site or the description, in the end, it is the whole that matters.
I don’t want to go into technical questions about how Google robots or other search engines index.
In this post, I want to be more practical.
As I was saying, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in technical aspects, so let’s see how the different factors of SEO On Page work and how to improve them with some examples.
On-Page SEO Factors
Next, we will see in detail the SEO On Page factors that will help you improve web positioning.
They are not the only ones but they are the most important in my opinion.
In each of them, I will stop to comment on what they consist of and how they can help you.
1. Title and Meta Title
It is the first thing we see on a page, even before accessing it.
The title and description displayed on the search results page are our first and only opportunity to impact the user and it is an extremely important factor in our SEO positioning.
Now, by the title we can understand two very different concepts:
On the one hand, what is known as an SEO title or meta title?
This is a meta tag that contains the title that appears in the top bar of the browser window or tab.
It is the one used by search engines to show our website on the results page, hence it is essential for positioning.
In the SEO title or meta title you should not exceed approximately 60 characters (otherwise it will be cut off in the SERP).
In that length of text, it is convenient that you use the keywords that you want to position.
On the other hand, the title itself of an article or post.
It would be like the headline of a news item, the main header, or the H1 of our page.
In this case, it is not necessary to impact the user, but it is convenient to present the topic of the article in question.
These two titles do not have to coincide.
In fact, it is advisable to follow different guidelines.
The title of the post can be longer, although it should not be excessive.
Ideally, it should be clear and concise.
2. Meta Description
Along with the title, search engines display a short summary or description of our site.
This is what is included in the meta description tag.
Although at first glance it may not seem like a very relevant factor, it can actually make the difference between a click and not.
Take advantage of this space to finish hooking the user and increase the click rate or CTR.
With a higher rate, you are telling the search engine that your content is liked more, which in turn helps you rank higher.
So yes, it is better to use an eye-catching description that highlights the relevance and benefits of the content to attract more visits.
3. Loading Speed
At the beginning of the Internet, you could wait for the websites to load, but in these times when everything must be immediate and with ever faster connections, we have become accustomed to a page loading in less than 2 seconds.
With the rise of mobile phones, we are even more demanding.
So if you don’t want users to leave before seeing our page, you have to control this factor.
Search engines know what the user wants and take loading time into account for the positioning of a website.
If a page takes too long to load the user will be returned to the SERP.
So, in addition to losing potential customers, the loading speed can cause you to lose positions in the search results.
There are many tools that allow you to analyze the loading speed of your website.
A very good tool is Gtmetrix.
It gives you a lot of information about the charging process and some tips to improve the times.
But if there is one I strongly recommend that you use Google PageSpeed Insights, since it is the one that will give you the best clue of what counts for this search engine.
How do We Improve the Loading Speed of Our Site?
Scratching a few milliseconds can be complicated, especially since many improvements are very technical and almost always depend on the server where your website is hosted.
It is something that may seem complicated, especially if we are not computer handymen.
But do not be alarmed; It is easier than it seems to be.
Follow these tips and you will see how you considerably reduce the loading speed of your site.
- Hire a hosting that has the resources that your website will need.
- It uses a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It is a service that allows you to spread out your site by reducing server load and load time.
- If we use a CMS, like WordPress, we must check that the plugins are not slowing down the loading of the page.
- Delays the loading of style sheets and javascript until after the page has loaded.
- Manage the cache properly. In WordPress, one of the best plugins that do this automatically is W3 Total Cache.
- Optimize the images. If you are going to put a thumbnail, do not upload a file that is 1800×1440 pixels.
4. Friendly URLs
It is another factor of SEO On Page that can greatly improve the positioning of your website.
Friendly URLs are addresses of the type domain.com/name-of-the-page.
Also, placing a keyword in the URL itself helps a lot to position it.
This is one of the aspects that should be taken into account from the moment you start.
With the web already up and running, you can and should switch to friendly URLs, but it’s going to be more complicated.
If someone tries to access via the old URL, they will get a 404 error.
To avoid being penalized by Google for this, you can do 301 redirects.
It is also a factor that improves the user experience since the user knows what content they are accessing and it is easier for them to remember the URL in the future.
Most CMS already integrate friendly URLs, but you have to make sure that they are well configured.
5. Sitemap and Indexing (noindex – robots.txt)
The Sitemap is an XML file that contains an index of the different pages to help search engines better index your site.
In addition, they contain information about attachments, the date the page was last modified, and versions.
When entering your domain, the robots will read the sitemap and will know at a glance how the pages are organized.
It is especially useful when some pages are isolated from the main site or are not well linked.
Although Google itself recommends its use only on very large websites (500 pages or more), having a sitemap will never penalize you.
And by the time your website starts to grow, you no longer have to worry about creating it.
It is very important that you include your sitemap in the robots.txt file and submit it to search engine webmaster tools (such as Google Search Console).
You will see how these two simple actions will have a very positive impact on SEO.
The robots.txt file allows you to control the indexing of your pages.
It is a simple text file that you can create and modify directly with any text editor.
In it, we write a series of parameters telling search engines which pages they can crawl and which pages they should not enter.
Let’s see a very basic example of how it works:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Sitemap: https://wpsuggest.in/sitemap.xml
With the user-agent command, we select the type of robot for which the following rules will be applied.
In this case, the asterisk * indicates that it applies to any bot that visits the web.
Next, we block access to the “private” folder using the disallow command.
In the same way, if we want to allow access only to a subfolder within “private”, we use the allow command.
Finally, we tell search engines the location of our sitemap.
As you can see, something quite simple.
Once created, you upload it to the root folder of your website on the server and that’s it.
6. Keywords
It is obvious that one of the things you must do if you want to rank for a keyword is to include it in the content.
But it is not worth placing it in any way in the text either.
In the end, it is not about cheating so that the search engines position us.
What we want is to attract users and retain them.
My advice is to write naturally, without forcing the appearance of keywords.
It is important to include the keywords in the page title and any other section headings.
It is also important that you use synonyms and variations of the main keyword.
In addition to avoiding always using the same one, you diversify the keywords for which you rank.
In this way, you expand the range of searches in which you can appear.
Is there an optimal keyword density?
No, it is not that there is a magic number, far from it.
The effect of having 2% instead of 0.5% on the positioning will depend a lot on the word in question and how competitive it is.
But in SEO everything is very relative.
The best long-term strategy is to create quality, well-structured, and consistent content.
7. Images
One of the SEO factors closely linked to images is loading speed.
We must pay attention to the weight of the files to prevent them from slowing down the loading of our website.
As I explained before, optimize the size and resolution for each image.
In most CMS there are plugins that help you optimize the size and weight of images.
One that I use on my WordPress sites is Compress JPEG&PNG.
It has a very good compression ratio while maintaining excellent quality.
Follow these tips when choosing the ideal format for images :
- If you want to include photos and images with lots of colors, use JPG.
- If these are images with a transparent background, then it is better that you use the PNG format.
- For more basic shapes with flat colors, use vector formats like SVG, as they are lightweight and scale perfectly without losing quality.
- Try to avoid animated GIFs.
And of course, don’t forget to always add a title and alt text to your images using the title and alt tags.
Try to include the main keyword in the alt text as well.
8. HTML Tagging of Text
By HTML markup I mean the way the page and its content are coded.
If you have no idea of programming, don’t worry because I won’t go into detail.
Basically, you have to apply some principles of HTML language and web semantics to optimize the content.
We are going to stay with 4 key ideas:
- Avoid using more than one h1 per page with the title of the page. Try to include the main keyword in it.
- Follow the order in the sections ( h1, h2, h3… h6 ).
- The bold type helps to emphasize the keywords within the text. Be sure to use the strong tag instead of b (the former is semantic, the latter is not).
- To avoid penalties for duplicate content, don’t use too many citations. When you do, remember to tag well the quoted text from other websites. It uses blockquote for this.
9. Internal and External Links
Here we are going to deal with internal and external links, that is, links to pages within your same domain and those that go to other websites.
Internal links help to position the different pages of your site.
As with backlinks, authority is passed from one to another.
In addition, they greatly improve the visit time and the bounce rate, since they allow the user to continue browsing our website.
External links enrich the user experience, expanding the content with articles from other websites.
Remember to set them to open in a new browser window or tab.
10. User Experience
Since search engines take it into account, it has become one of the most important SEO factors.
Making it easier for users to find what they are looking for can improve web positioning.
Let’s imagine that a user enters our page and cannot find what they are looking for or has problems navigating through it.
Most likely, it will come out immediately.
We can enrich the user experience by improving aspects such as usability, loading time, and images…
And it not only benefits us in web positioning, but it also improves our conversion rate.
11. Mobile Optimization
More and more users access the Internet through mobile devices.
It may seem like an unimportant aspect, but nothing is further from the truth.
If we take care of the experience of a user who enters through her computer, why don’t we do the same with mobile users?
Google already takes mobile usability into account as a web positioning factor.
Nowadays, most CMS templates like WordPress have a responsive design, so there is no excuse for having a 100% mobile-optimized website.
In addition, having AMP versions of the pages greatly improves organic positioning.
First, AMP removes a lot of design elements that wouldn’t look good on a small screen.
Second, because by removing the javascript and minimizing the page code, it improves loading on slow connections.
All a 2 × 1 for SEO.
Conclusions
As you have just seen, SEO On Page factors are many and very different.
Search engines are focusing less and less on simple factors and more on complex aspects such as usability, experience, and content.
And you must not forget the content.
We can make things easy for Google so that it takes into account some things more than others.
But the content is what in the end will make our site successful or not.
In short, it is about ensuring that the user finds quality content, enriched with images and links, all in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of complications.
If you work well on all aspects of SEO On Page, you will see how your organic positioning improves.
Have you used the 10 factors that we have seen correctly?
Have they helped you to position your website?
If so, tell me in the comments.
Thanks for Reading.
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