5 On-Page SEO techniques that’ll Boost Your Rankings (checklist included)

On page SEO is perhaps the most important process not only for better rankings but also for a

successful internet marketing campaign. Every campaign starts from the web site and if your

web site is not optimized for both search engines and users, your chances for success are

minimized.

I have already talked about the relation between on-page and off-page SEO and also explained in

detail what is off-page SEO. For the purpose of giving beginners a complete picture, I will

explain in brief a few basic terms.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization or SEO in short is a term that encapsulates everything you need to

do to improve your web site‟s ranking position in the various search engines. This includes

configuration settings you have to apply on the website (that‟s on page SEO) and techniques you

can use outside the boundaries of the website (that‟s off page SEO).

Is on-page SEO more important than off-page SEO?

To achieve maximum exposure in the search engines and keep your users happy you need both

off-page SEO and on-page SEO. In my opinion on page SEO is more important and I will

explain below why.

1) ‘Speak’ the search engines language: It makes more sense to start with on-page SEO and get

it right rather than trying to convince search engines to give you better ranking with off page

SEO. Search engines are computer programs (software) and they understand a particular

language. With SEO and especially on page SEO you „speak‟ their language and your goal is to

help them understand what you website is about. In other words the more signals you can give

them, the more are your chances of achieving better rankings.

2) On Page SEO is about the user as well: Never forget that your primary target is to keep your

users happy. Off Page SEO may bring traffic to the website but if it is not setup correctly, if it is

not user friendly the results will be disappointing.

3) Many websites get it wrong: It‟s amazing but it is true that the majority of websites today are

not optimized for search engines. Despite the plethora of information about SEO many website

owners believe that it does not worth to even do SEO and they quit before starting. For those

cases on-page SEO has a lot to offer both in terms of usability but in terms of traffic as well.

4) On Page SEO is sometimes all you need: If you are running a website for a small business

and you need to get local customers searching for various terms on Google then on page SEO is

all you need to do.

5) Off page SEO comes after on page SEO: In order to start thinking on how you can promote

your website you need to be sure that the website is optimized and in good condition. So the first

step is to work with on-site SEO first and then go off-site.

5 on page SEO techniques for better rankings

Now that the theory about SEO and importance of on-page SEO is justified, let‟s move on to the

practical part.

There are many on page SEO techniques and not only 5, but for the purpose of this post I will

explain below what I think are the absolute settings you have to apply on your website today. I

strongly suggest that you also read (links will open in a new window):

1. Content comes first

A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO, a website with bad content

will not survive with or without SEO, a website with good content can become even better with

SEO!

So, what is considered good content?

Original Content (articles, text, images, videos, presentations, infographics, comments etc.) –

No copies or re-writes of existing articles

Content published on your website first – Even if it‟s your own content, if you have already

published it on another website then it‟s not good for your site.

Content that includes text as well – Try to have text to accompany your non-text content. For

example if you post videos on your website try to add a text description as well. If you add

images try to describe in words what the image is all about.

Content that is useful – Don‟t publish content for the sake of publishing. Before hitting the

publish button make sure that what goes live adds value to your website.

Content that is well researched – Users don‟t want to read quickly prepared posts and neither

does search engines. If you are writing about a certain topic or answering a question make sure

that what you write is justified and covers both sites of a story. Long articles are proven to rank

better than short articles.

Posting frequency – 2 things are important when it comes to posting frequency. First is to have

fresh content on your website and second to establish a publishing strategy and stick to it.

2. Page titles, description and formatting

This is SEO 101 but very important as well. When search engines are reading your pages among

the things they check includes the page title, the description of the page, the major headings and

images. They do so because they need to understand what the page is all about and then based on

other factors as well (off page SEO, domain authority, competition etc.), they will place your

page in a position in their index.

Page titles – Each page must have a unique title that will help both search engines and users

understand what the page is about. A page with title “On Page SEO Tips” is better than a page

with title “index.html”.

Descriptions – The page description is what the searcher will see in the search engine results

page. So it has to be descriptive, up to 150 characters and unique for each page. It‟s your

opportunity to advertise your page and convince the searcher to click your link and visit your

website rather than selecting one of the other links.

Formatting – A page needs to be properly formatted. Think of it like a report which needs to

have a heading (h1) and sub headings (h2). Important parts of the report are highlighted with

bold, underline or italics.

Do not just throw text on the page but make sure that it is readable as well. Besides the

formatting practices explained above you also need to use a good size font (at least 12px) and

split the text into small paragraphs (max 4-5 lines).

Images – Images are important but these should not increase the loading time of the website.

Best practices for using images:

1) Use original images. If you need to use an existing image from the web you need to reference

the source.

2) Optimise the size of the images – the smaller the size (in bytes) of the image the better. Use

yahoo smush it to reduce the size of an image without sacrificing the quality.

3) Use ALT tag to describe the image – This helps search engines understand what the image is

about.

4) Use descriptive filenames – Don‟t just name your image „image1.jpg‟ but try to use

descriptive filenames, for example „Man doing push-ups‟.

5) Use a Content Delivery Network – If you have a lot of images in a single page you can use a

CDN service (from Amazon or Google) that will make your page load faster. In simple terms

your images will be hosted and served by a number of servers and this speeds up the loading

process.

You can also read my seo tips for beginners article for more examples of optimized titles and

descriptions and for best practices about the use of images.

3. URL Structure

The URL structure is an important part of on-page SEO. Whenever I talk about URL structure, I

prefer to split it into 4 major parts:

1) Permanent links – Permanent links are the URL‟s of each page. Good URLs should be less

than 255 characters and use hyphens to „-„separate the different parts.

For example a good URL is:

http://www.reliablesoft.net/seo-tips-for-beginners-15-ways-to-google-boost-your-web-site/

A bad URL is:

http://www.reliablesoft.net/p?165 or

http://www.reliablesoft.net/seotipsforbeginners/ or

http://www.reliablesoft.net/123131/publish/data2/seo_Tips.html

2) Categories – Group your pages into categories to help users and search engines find what

they want faster. It‟s like having a warehouse with lots of uncategorised items versus a

warehouse with all the items assigned to a dedicated category. You can have sub-categories as

well but my advice is not to go over one level. For example a good category structure is:

Reliablesoft > Social Media > Facebook and not Reliablesoft > Social Media > Facebook > Tips

3) Breadcrumb – A breadcrumb is also important for all your pages because it allows users to

navigate your website in a structured way since they always know where they are and how deep

below the home page.

4) User Sitemap – One of your options in the main menu should be the User Sitemap. This is an

html file that represents the structure of your website. Visit my sitemap for an example.

4. Internal linking

Linking to pages within your website is very important for SEO because:

1) It’s like building your own web: If you watch the nice tutorial by Google on how search

works, you will see that the first step a search engine spider will do is follow the links they find.

So when they arrive at your page, if you don‟t have any other links within the text they will read

your page and go but if you have links pointing to other pages within your website they will take

those into account as well.

2) It’s a way to let search engines know about your other pages: As explained above when

search engines find a page with links, they will go and read those pages as well so you can use

this technique to tell search engines about pages of your website they have not yet discovered.

3) It’s a way to tell search engines which are your most important pages: Every website has

some pages that are more important than others. Internal linking is one of the ways to pin-point

the most important pages by sending them more internal links.

4) It’s a way to increase time on site – A user that is reading your post is more likely to click on

a link to read more about a certain subject and thus increase both the time spend on your website

and the number of pages per visit.

Best practices for internal linking:

1) Don‟t use keywords only for your internal links

2) Add internal links when they are useful for your reader

3) No more than 7-8 internal links per page (this is my opinion and not based on any research or

studies)

4) If applicable you can also use „related posts‟ at the end of each post for internal linking

5. Speed and authorship

Last but not least, 2 SEO techniques that are becoming more and more important especially after

the release of penguin 2.0 (or 4.0 as some people like to say it): Speed and authorship.

Speed: Google is investing a huge amount of money to make the web faster. In every Google I/O

someone will talk about the importance of speed and their desire to include the fastest websites

in their index. In order to „force‟ web site owners to take speed into account they have officially

added speed as one of the ranking factors.

So, we know for sure that web site speed does matter when it comes to SEO and ranking. As a

webmaster your job is to make sure that your website loads as fast as possible by taking into

account Google’s recommendations.

Google authorship: Google is preparing for the next generation of Search and their effort is to

rank higher webpages written by people who have authority on the particular subject. One of the

ways to establish authority is by correlating the content you publish on the web with your

Google+ profile. Then depending on how many followers you have and who follows you, your

ranking may change.

Google authorship is still at its early stages but it‟s gaining ground fast so you have to create a

Google+ profile and bind the profile with your content.

On-Page SEO Checklist

If you have read the article up to this point, the main tips are summarized in the check-list below:

(You can also download in PDF format for printing – On page SEO Checklist)

On-Page SEO Checklist

Content

1 Content is original – copyscape checked?

2 Content is first published on your website?

3 Content has enough descriptive text?

4 Content is well researched with references?

5 Do you have a clear publishing strategy?

Pages Titles, description and formatting

6 Page titles are unique for each page?

7 Descriptions are unique and up to 150 characters?

8 Text is properly formatted using H1, H2, Bold, Italics?

9 Text is split into small paragraphs?

10 Font size is easy to read on small screens (tablets) as well?

11 Image size is optimized using smushit?

12 All images have alt tags defined?

13 Image filename is descriptive?

URL Structure

14 Permanent links use ‘-’ as separator ?

15 Website pages/posts are grouped into categories?

16 There is breadcrumb on all posts/pages?

17 There is an HTML User Sitemap?

Internal Links

18 Pages have internal links?

19 There is a ‘Related posts’ section at the end of each page?

20 Internal links use both keyword and non-keyword anchor text?

Speed and Authorship

21 Website scores more than 90% when checked by Google page

speed insights?

22 Google Authorship is implemented for each and every post/page

available on the website?