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On-Page SEO
Tyler Horvath
Tyton’s guide to 10x Better Rankings
Agenda
• Introductions• What is on-page SEO?• Why Do I Need On-page SEO?• On-Page SEO Ranking Factors• Conclusion
IntroductionsWho we are and what we do
What is On-Page SEO?On-page SEO is the act of optimizing web pages to rank higher in search
engines, resulting in more traffic.
On-page refers the content of the page, as well as the HTML or source code.
Why Do You Need On-Page SEO?Investing in SEO is one of the best investments you can make for a website.
If you want to grow your website or business then having optimized web pages is a necessity.
Google is very picky about the results it shows to its users and if your website doesn’t adhere to best practices, it may get lost in the abyss of the SERPs (search engine results pages).
On-Page SEO Ranking Factors
• Content• Meta tags• URLs• Image Optimization• Heading tags• Structured data
• Website Structure• HTTPS/SSL• Responsive design• Internal linking• Website speed• LSI keywords
There are a number of factors Google looks for when ranking your website:
Content
• Text• Images• Videos• Diagrams• Graphs• Podcasts• Case studies• Infographics
Types of content:
The content on a web page is critical to ranking on the first page of Google.
Meta TagsMeta tags (or meta data) are small snippets of code that are placed in the <head> section
of a web page and give search engines more information about the web page.
• Title tags
• Meta Descriptions
• Canonical URLs
• Open Graph Meta
Meta Tags: Title TagsThe title tag is a critical element that briefly and concisely explains what a web
page is about.
The title tag is used for:
• Browsers use the title tag to display at the top of browsers or in the tabs.
• Search engine results pages will use your title tag as the main descriptor for your web page.
• Lastly, external website (mostly social media sites) will use this tag as a link anchor when web pages are shared on social media and other external sites.
Meta Tags: Title Tags (cont.)The title tag is a critical element that briefly and concisely explains what a web
page is about.
Title Tags should be:
• Between 50-60 characters in length
• Unique for every web page
• Leveraging Branding at the end of your title tags.
• Best Format: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Meta Tags: Description TagsThe meta description attribute provides a concise summary of what each web page
is about.
Google doesn’t use meta descriptions as a ranking factor, but
CTR is a ranking factor and having a good meta description can give your web page a higher CTR.
Meta descriptions should be between
150-160 characters in length and should be unique to each web
page.
Every page should have a unique meta
description.
Meta Tags: Description Tags (cont)
• Every web page should have a unique meta description• Great meta descriptions can increase CTR in the SERPs• Used for social sharing sites• Should be 150-160 characters in length
Meta descriptions are also used in social networks to give a summary of the shared content.
Meta Tags: Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs can help search engines decipher the right web page to use for:
• E-commerce sites with product variants
• Blogs with paging
• Large websites with possible duplicate content issues
• Websites with both HTTP and HTTPS versions
• Websites that use query strings
The canonical URL is a link element that tells search engines the preferred version (or URL) of a certain web page so you can avoid duplicate content issues.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tytonmedia.com/blog/on-page-seo-guide-better-rankings/">
Meta Tags: Canonical URLs (cont)
1. Download Yoast SEO
2. Go to the post and go to the Yoast SEO section
3. Click on ‘Advanced’ and you will see the Canonical URL
4. Edit the URL to your liking but make sure it matches the current URL!
If you use WordPress, setting the canonical URL is super easy.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.tytonmedia.com/blog/on-page-seo-guide-better-rankings/">
If you are manually entering it into your HTML, here is some example code:
URLsThe URL if your web pages has a strong influence on your rankings in search engines.
Matt Cutts says the first 3-5 words in a URL are the most important and are given more weight so keep your URLs short, sweet and descriptive.
When creating your URLs, there are a number of things you want to adhere to:
• Case sensitivity
• Use hyphens
• Don’t stuff keywords
• Short the Better
• Dynamic Parameters
• Match Page Title
• Remove Stop Words
• Punctuation
URLs (cont)Here is a great infographic by Moz about the anatomy of a URL:
• Shorter URL > Longer URL• first 3-5 words on a URL
carry the most weight• Use keywords in URLs• Remove stop words and
punctuation
Having your main keyword in the URL can also increase the CTR of your pages because like the meta description, URLs with matching search keywords will be highlighted in the SERPs.
Image Optimization
Images and User Experience
Filename
Title Attribute
Alt Text
Image Size
There are a number of factors contributing to the SEO of your images.
Image SEO: Images and User Experience
Using images that relate to the content is important for a better user experience which means better SEO
• Images boost user experience increasing time on page and rankings• Use images to break up text content• Images should be related to the content• The best images are ones you make yourself
Which page would you rather read?
Image SEO: FilenamesYour filename should include descriptive, content rich keywords about the
image itself.
• Every image should have a descriptive filename that explains the image• Use dashes instead of underscores or spaces for filenames• Use a few keywords of your page in filenames
Google even says that:The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Try to make your filename a good description of the subject matter of the image.
Image SEO: Title AttributesThe title attribute does not have any potential SEO benefits but it provides a good user
experience by providing a text description of a image when you hover over it.
<img src="image-seo-boost-rankings.jpg" alt="boost rankings with image SEO" title="Image SEO"/>
• Title attribute does not affect SEO
• Automatically populated from the filename in WordPress
• Shows when you hover over the image
• Do not use same text as alt text
Image SEO: Alt TextThe most important tag on the image element is the alt tag.
Search engines use this information to figure out what images are about on web pages since the crawlers are text-based and can’t see the images.
A great way to write alt-text is to pretend that you are explaining the image to someone who can’t see it.
<img src="image-seo-boost-rankings.jpg" alt="boost rankings with image SEO"/>
• Populate Alt Text for every image• Alt text should describe the image• Don’t stuff a bunch of keywords in the alt text
Image SEO: Image SizeCreating your images with the lowest file size possibly will help the user experience of
your website by allowing your visitors to load images fast without waiting.
• Crop images to max width of website• reduce color depth but keep image quality• Use .PNG file type when possible• Show thumbnails and link to larger image• Use a image compressor
1. Crop images to the max length of your content 2. Reduce the quality of the image enough to reduce file size but keep
a good quality photo3. Use .PNG when possible since they are smaller than JPEGs.4. Show thumbnails and link to the larger image.
4 ways for optimized images:
Heading TagsHTML heading tags are used (by both users and search engines) to determine a web
pages topic or content.
The <h1> tag is the most important heading tag and
should be used on every web page only once.
I like to think of h1 tags as chapters of a book that easily allow a reader to scan the content and look for the
section they are interested in.
These tags are published in the HTML body and range from h1 to h6, h1 being the most important heading and h6 being the least important heading.
Website StructureHow you lay out your website architecture has a big impact on how search engines
crawl your site and index it in the results pages.
A good website structure will provide a better user experience and reduce your bounce rate which improves dwell time and increases your search rankings.
1. Plan2. Keep It Simple3. Internal Linking4. Shallow Structure
4 ways for better website structure:
HTTPS/SSLHTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure and is the web standard for secure
communication between your browser and any server.
Google provides the following tips to get started with HTTPS:• Use 2048-bit key certificates.• Decide the kind of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard
certificate.• Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain.• Check out our Site move article for more guidelines on how to change your
website’s address.• Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains.• Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt.• Allow indexing of your pages by search engines where possible. Avoid the
noindex robots meta tag.
HTTPS/SSL (cont)In 2014, Google announced that they are now using HTTPS as a ranking signal which gives
a small ranking benefit to sites with secure SSL connections.
Lets encrypt offers free SSL certificates and is used by a number of large companies like Facebook and Mozilla.
TL;DR:Get a free SSL from Lets EncryptRemove all instances of ‘HTTP:’ and use relative pathsUse the SSL Insecure Content Fixer for WordPress
Responsive Web DesignDid you know that having a mobile-friendly website can boost your rankings on mobile
search?
48% of people cited a website’s design as the number one factor in
deciding the credibility of a business.
To test if your website is mobile friendly just use the Google Webmasters Mobile-Friendly Test to analyze your web pages.
What is Responsive Web Design?
• Web Design approach to allow website to work on any device (mobile, tablet, TV, desktop, etc)
• Uses HTML, fluid layouts and CSS3 media queries to change the layout based on the users device.
Why Do You Need Responsive Design?
62% of companies that designed a website specifically for mobile had
increased sales. (Source: Econsultancy)
• Good for SEO
• Visitors from Mobile
• More conversions
• Better Engagement
Internal Linking
Why use internal linking?• Helps with website navigation and user
experience• Passes link juice from one page to
another• Defines the structure and architecture of
the website• Improve rankings for certain keywords
An internal link is a link that connects one page of a website to another page on the same website.
Internal Linking: Anchor TextAnchor text is the visible text of a link that is often underlined.
• Using anchor text in your internal links will help rank that page for that certain keyword in Google.
• Anchor text should be natural sentence fragments that are part of a normal sentence.
Internal Linking: No Follow LinksThe nofollow link allows websites to link to other web pages and not pass any link
juice to the link referral.
You should use nofollow links when linking to:• Paid Websites• Competitors• Questionable sites or content• The same page multiple times
Internal Linking: Deep LinksDeep refers to your content that is the most amount of clicks away from your
homepage.
Linking to your deepest content will provide a lot of benefits like:• Raising the authority of all your web pages• Increase your websites relevance• Build your websites visibility
To test your deep and internal linking, use this internal link analyzer by SEO Review Tools.
Website SpeedA fast loading website not only keeps people from leaving your site, it also allows bots to crawl it faster and a better user experience… resulting in better rankings.
40% of people will leave a website if it takes more than 3
seconds to load. — Econsultancy
1. Leverage browser cacheing2. Use a CDN to host media files3. Remove or Optimize slow loading scripts4. Combine JS and CSS files (and minify them)5. Use W3 Total Cache for WordPress
websites
5 ways to make your website faster:
LSI KeywordsLatent Semantic Indexing (LSI) are keywords that are related to a certain keyword
you search for in search engines like Google.
These are LSI Keywords for the keyword ‘web design’:
• LSI Kewyords are keywords related to the searched keyword• Use LSI keywords in your content to rank better• Go to the bottom of a Google search to see LSI keywords• Use Google Keyword Planner to see more LSI keywords
