What is On-Page SEO?
On-page SEO is basically a set of techniques and methods that optimize all the elements on a website to make them more search engine friendly and thereby increase website rankings.
Although keywords are considered the focus of almost every On-page SEO activity, keywords alone are not enough, because On-page SEO also involves many other factors such as images, URLs, Titles, H1 tags, and so on. H2, Meta Description,…
To help you easily grasp and not miss any factors, here is a checklist of important factors in On-page SEO.
Checklist 6 On-page SEO standards
URL
A short URL will increase your chances of getting to the top, increase your click-through rate, and make it easier for crawlers to crawl.
A good SEO On-page standard URL needs to ensure the following 3 factors:
- Contains main SEO keywords
- Concise, remove redundant words
- The canonical URL needs to be under 60 characters
- The URL is related to the article content
- On-page SEO Standards
- The URL needs to be short and contains the main keyword
Adding images to posts significantly improves user experience and page rankings. Moreover, using images also makes the content easier to understand, attractive, and memorable, thereby attracting more traffic to your website.
To optimize images for On-page SEO, here are a few things to ensure:
Image name and alt text
Google bots cannot "see" images like humans, but can only read letters or characters. So give every image a clear filename (“blue-running-shoes.jpg” instead of “82596173.jpg”) and alt text (in case the image fails to load for some reason) for every image. on the site, of course, include keywords in both of these naming.
Some notes when naming images and alt text:
- Unsigned image name, does not contain special characters
- Fill in the image description
- Contains the main keyword in the image name, alt text
- The alt tag should describe the image in detail and complete
Image size
Page speed is one of the important factors in website ranking on both desktop and mobile devices. And a "bulky" image, too large in size, will slow down the website's page load speed.
Title and meta description
An attractive, right-focused title can quickly attract users to click on the article. In addition, a good title also helps search engines collect information more quickly and accurately, thereby easily understanding the content of the article.
Some notes when setting the title for the article:
- The length of the title should be between 60-65 characters and not exceed 70 characters, otherwise, it will be truncated in the SERPs.
- A title should not be exactly the same as the URL
- SEO keywords should appear at the beginning of the Title
- The short description displayed on the search results page is called the meta description tag. The meta tag should contain the main keyword, be engaging and relevant to the user's search intent, but not be over-stuffed.
Title and meta description
Here is an example of a meta description
Meta tags should be between 156 - 160 characters in length. If you don't create a meta tag, Google will automatically select some relevant text from the page and display it as a meta description in the SERP, but this is not good for SEO.
Page loading speed
If your pages take too long to load, it will create a bad experience for visitors, or worse case they can leave the page and go to a competitor's site.
Therefore, make sure that:
- Minimize excess space by minifying Javascript/CSS
- Don't create unnecessary redirects
- Compress all images
- Enable file compression and browser caching
- Internal and External links
- Both Internal and External links play a role in On-page SEO.
Internal Links (Internal Links)
Pages and content need to be combined scientifically and strategically. This helps crawlers better understand and rank content for the right keywords.
Internal and External links
Internal links are factors that help increase the SEO "score" of the page
Internal linking also helps direct visitors to relevant pages and keeps them engaged with the website.
External link (External link)
Citing external sources and having off-page links is important for building credibility in the eyes of both Google crawlers and visitors. However, make sure that you only link back to high-quality sites and trusted sources.
Also, make sure there are no broken links (“404 not found”) on the page as they affect SEO and user experience.
Content
Every blog or website post plays an important role in on-page optimization. Make sure your target keywords appear appropriately and naturally throughout the body title, URL, subheading, and body paragraph. Here are a few things to watch out for:
Structure and Readability
The article needs to be clearly and logically hierarchical by using title tags and subheadings with the main keyword, for example, H1, H2, H3 tags...
This decentralization also helps improve Readability (the ability of readers to understand and collect information in the article).
In-depth
Many studies show that long-form and in-depth posts have a better effect on Google rankings than short-form articles.
Content like this will also serve readers better as it can provide a complete overview of the issue or topic they are interested in.
Distinguishing On-page SEO and Off-page SEO in SEO strategy
On-page SEO and Off-page SEO are two basic components of an SEO strategy, but what is the difference between them?
On-page SEO focuses on building content and optimizing tools to make the website more search engine friendly. On-page SEO ranking factors include:
Page quality: The website must have all the correct content.
SEO keywords: the article content focuses on keywords. Besides, the search engine ranking score is also calculated based on the time that customers stay on your site.
Up-to-date: Content on the site should not only be relevant to keywords but should be up-to-date from time to time.
Page structure: The rules needed in SEO about titles, description tags, alt text... to push articles and websites to the top.
The URL structure contains keywords and is clearly easy for customers to navigate.
Internal linking is one of the important factors in an on-page SEO strategy. It makes it easy for Google's analytics system to crawl your site and keep users on the page longer.
Page performance: If your website takes too long to reach or doesn't display properly on a variety of devices, customers will leave.
Off-page SEO focuses on building links ( backlinks ) pointing to your website. You need to set a plan for each keyword and choose a reliable link source to increase rankings.
Conclude
With each new update, Google is gradually shifting its focus to increasing the user experience (UX). But on-page SEO is closely related to UX, so this checklist will still be useful for business SEO activities.