You have determined the desired keywords to rank on the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages). You also have created interesting content to put on your web pages.
Then the next question is, how to optimize the web page so that Google displays your page on the first page of its search? The answer is on-page SEO.
This technique for optimizing web pages for SEO purposes, which is commonly referred to as on-page SEO, has a relative difficulty, depending on the scale of the website and your knowledge of SEO.
But before getting into the technical discussion, it's a good idea to first understand what is actually meant by on-page SEO.
{jistoc} $title={Table of Contents}
What is On-page SEO?
On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing web pages to make it easier for them to rank high in search results. The ultimate goal of doing on-page SEO is to increase organic traffic on your site.
Then what exactly should be optimized in the on-page SEO process? Some of the common page components to optimize include title tags, content, internal links, URLs, and several others which we will discuss below.
Why Is On-Page SEO Important?
Optimizing pages is so important in the overall scheme of SEO because it can help search engines to understand the content of your website and the content in it.
The Google Search algorithm continues to develop in order to provide search results that match the wishes of searchers. On that basis, Google is currently focusing on the relevance aspect of answers or posts in the SERP appearance.
In achieving that, Google officially conveys that one way to determine the relevance of content is to detect the similarity of keywords on pages with certain queries.
This shows that the aspect of structuring the structure and content of the content on your page is very crucial to give a signal to search engines that the content you provide is relevant to a particular search.
8 Ways to Optimize On-Page SEO
Now you have understood why on-page SEO is important to do. Then it's time for you to start optimizing content. Specifically, in this section, we will explain the proper practice of placing keywords on every page of your site.
1. Include the target keyword at the beginning of the page
This tactic has actually been known for a long time but is still very relevant.
All you need to do is embed the main keywords that have been determined at the beginning of the article you created. You can place these keywords in the initial 100-150 words in the article.
For example, if your article wants to rank high on the keyword 'email marketing', then try to put the word 'email marketing' at the beginning of your article.
Why is that important? Google assigns a higher weight to words that appear at the beginning of a page. Why is that?
Actually, the reason is quite easy to understand. Imagine the following scenario, you just published an article about diet. If your article really discusses diet, does it make sense to mention the term diet, only at the end of the article? Certainly not.
This is the reason why it is important to mention your target keyword at the beginning of the article.
2. Add H1 tag to post title
The function of the H1 tag on a page is almost the same and as important as the title tag.
Google states that the use of H1 tags can help it understand the structure of a page.
Some platforms (like WordPress ) will usually add an H1 tag to your post title automatically. However, not all platforms/CMS have this feature.
To find out whether your page has been equipped with the H1 tag or not, you can check the code from your site.
3. Adding H2 tags to the sub discussion
Include your target keyword in at least one subheading. Then, don't forget to add the H2 tag to the subheading.
4. Pay attention to keyword frequency
What is meant by keyword frequency is the number of times a certain keyword appears in the content you create. It is important to pay attention to this in the practice of on-page SEO.
Imagine the following scenario, you have a page that discusses keywords with a certain topic. You want Google to identify the content on your page as relevant to the specified keywords. However, these keywords only appear once on your page.
How likely do you think that Google will understand that your content addresses the topic of your keywords? Of course very small.
With this assumption, a page that mentions that keyword 10 times will be more easily identified by Google correctly.
However, the inclusion of too many keywords will also make it difficult for readers to understand your article, which will therefore even be dangerous in terms of SEO. So you should also be really careful about the question of keyword frequency.
Make writing that is easy to read by paying attention to the flow of writing when you want to place keywords in your article.
5. Include external (outbound) links
Including external links to pages that are relevant to the content of your page will help Google understand the topic idea of the page.
This has been proven through experiments conducted by Reboot Online, that embedding external links can help increase your page ranking.
The experiment was carried out by creating 10 new websites. Half of these websites are linked to sites that have high authority values, the other half is left without external links.
The experimental results obtained are websites with external links occupy a higher average rank than websites without external links.
6. Include internal links
Internal linking can help Google to find, index, and understand all the pages on your site. Therefore, internal linking is very important in carrying out SEO.
Connect the high-authority pages on your site with pages that have lower authority values. Also, make sure you use keywords in the anchor text.
7. Use a descriptive URL
Often URL optimization is missed when running on-page SEO. In fact, paying attention to the URL structure is no less important than other on-page SEO components.
The practice is also quite easy. You just need to:
- Keep your URLs short
- Include keywords in every URL
To make your URL SEO friendly.
8. Improve page speed
Google has explicitly stated that page loading speed is one of the determining factors for SEO ranking. Then how to make the page loading speed of your site faster?
There are many ways you can do to speed up the page loading speed of your site. According to an analysis conducted by Backlinko, some of the most effective ways to speed up page loading speed are:
- Switch to a faster hosting provider
- Reduce third party scripts as much as possible
- Reduce page size
- And many others
Conclusion
That's the explanation and some tips for running on-page SEO. By implementing the 8 steps above, you can improve the SEO quality of your website well.
After optimizing on-page, don't forget to optimize your off-page SEO.