The Most Current Version Of On Page SEO Best Practices Guide

On-page SEO is an important activity that directly affects the website optimization process. In the article below, On Digitals will summarize and point out the latest, most effective Onpage SEO standards in 2023.

What Is On Page SEO?

The phrase “on page SEO” refers to all of the necessary steps that must be taken to optimize all of a website’s viewable, or on-page, parts. Consequently, an increase in the site’s rankings on search engine result pages will boost traffic and draw in more prospective clients.

A checklist for on page SEO factors

In addition to content creation, on-page SEO involves optimizing the URL, title tag, HTML tag, meta tag, keywords, content, page speed, sitemap, and other elements.

Search engines will view a website as reliable and authoritative when all of these components are maximized. Therefore, on-page SEO is one of the tried-and-true methods to use if you want results quickly.

Why Do We Need On Page SEO?

With the potential to bring about quick, tangible results, it’s not surprising that many companies put on page SEO checklist on their “must-do lists”. To get the most out of it, in addition to SEO copywriting content, certain on page SEO techniques must be carried out. The ultimate goal is to facilitate Google search engine’s crawling and ranking process so that our site will claim the top position in a shorter time.

Conducting an analysis of on page SEO for better strategies

Moreover, on page SEO also helps your site appear more user-friendly in the eyes of real users, hence attracting and retaining more potential customers, ultimately reaching a higher conversion rate.

When Is The Golden Time For On Page SEO?

The short answer is: As soon as possible. The full answer is: The best time to implement on page SEO is when your website has just been set up, which means planning must be done in advance. At this early time, you can start optimizing the website structure, https and sitemap among other factors.

What is the right time for on page SEO optimization?

Keep in mind that on page SEO is a continuous process, therefore some optimization tasks—like content audits, SEO copywriting, and page loading speed—should be carried out on a frequent basis.

It’s never appropriate to sit back and take it easy, even when your website has taken the #1 spot in Google search results. This is an unrelenting fight, and the winner might be decided in an instant. Keep up the excellent job by creating a strategy with precise deadlines and adhering to it. It will take a lot longer for you to win.

Important On Page SEO Elements

Very important 

• Crawlability: Ensuring that Googlebot can visit the website in order to index and crawl it
• Originality: For your material to be very valuable and set your website apart from rivals, it must be original.
• Speed: It should take three to five seconds for any page on your website to load.
  targeted keywords Select the appropriate primary and secondary keywords for the text.

Important

• Keywords are inserted wisely in the title, description, H1, URL, anchor text of the internal link, and the alt tag of all images
• Internal links lead to related content
• The interface is compatible with multiple devices and operating systems
• The content utilizes structured data and provides valuable insights
• The content is updated regularly

Quite important 

• Keywords are inserted selectively in the body of the content in bold/italic format
• Accurate canonical tags
• No broken links
• Appealing content layout and structure
• Valid W3C HTML, CSS, Javascript

On Page SEO Factors Appreciated By Google

Friendly URL structure 

URL is one of the factors that have a big impact on on page SEO. Therefore, don’t forget to insert the main keyword in the URL.

An SEO friendly URL is a critical part of on page SEO

An optimized URL should satisfy the following conditions:

• Containing the main keyword
• Short yet succinct (Top 1 URLs are usually 59 character-long)
• Related to the article content

Also, keep in mind that:

• The URL length and its likelihood to get to the top position are negatively correlated. In other words, the shorter the URL, the higher the probability to rank top.
• Consider combining multiple keywords with the same search intent into one URL for enhanced SEO impact

Optimized title 

A title which is catchy, engaging and central to the query will naturally attract more clicks. As for Google, optimized titles also give their bot a higher chance to crawl and understand the content quickly with higher accuracy.

When optimizing your titles, pay attention to the following:

• Each Title should be separated by the vertical bar | or hyphen –
• Since the top 1 keyword has been inserted in the URL, the title only needs to contain keywords with the second highest search volume
• Placing keywords at the beginning of the title will help increase CTR and rankings
• The more keywords the better, as long as the title still sounds natural and engaging
• The homepage should have special treatment: The title must contain the brand name while expressing its full meaning.

Optimized headings

Heading 1 is the most important here, so try to make it inclusive and relevant to targeted users.

Optimize headings for enhanced on page SEO results

In specific, an optimized Heading 1 should:

• Contain keywords ranked 3rd in search volume
• Convey the overview of the content
• Be “single”, which means one article has only one Heading 1 tag
• Be different from the Title and URL

As for the Heading 2 and 3, make sure they:

• Are short and sweet, representative of the main content of the paragraph
• Consist multiple subheadings
• Contain related or semantic keywords
• Don’t resort to keyword stuffing

Heading 2 and 3 have a certain effect on SEO while Heading 4, 5, 6 don’t help much in this respect. Therefore, put the most focus on Heading 1, 2 and 3.

Optimized description

The meta description tag is a short description that needs to be under 156 characters. It is the paragraph displayed right on the search results pages to inform users about your content prior to clicking.

Instead of trying to stuff keywords in the description tag, optimize it for CTR (Click Through Rate) to increase traffic and keyword rankings.

Optimized images 

Together with keywords and content, images have their own voice when it comes to website rankings. Here are some ways to optimize the images on your site:

• Each image needs a unique name with hyphens separating each word
• Optimize SEO tags
• Complete the meta section of the image including the title, subtitle, author, meta description, etc.
• Implement advanced SEO for the images to get to the top
• Add text to images to help Google recognize them faster, easier and more efficiently

Some tips to keep in mind when optimizing images:

• Use the alt tag with full description to push the image to top Google Image search results
• The first image should contain the main keyword
• Avoid keyword stuffing in the image

Optimized TOC (Table of Content) 

Users may quickly get the material they’re looking for by using the table of contents as a navigator. Furthermore, articles including a TOC are given priority by Google’s Hummingbird and Rankbrain algorithms. WordPress-based websites may make use of the TOC Plus Plugin.

The right content length

When evaluating your content overall, Google will take word count into account. We especially value in-depth material that fulfills the search intent of the user. Top trend articles typically contain over 2000 words in order to give thorough and in-depth information. Additionally, people will stay on your website longer if your material is interesting and lengthy.

Long-form vs short-form content: Which is better for on page SEO?

However, long-form content doesn’t always win over short-form content. After all, what matters is how much the content and the search intent match. In short, your content length should vary with users’ needs.

Semantic keywords

Semantic keywords are those that are associated with the group of keywords you utilize to improve your SEO. They provide the material greater depth and assist both Google and users with understanding the context or subject of the post. Both the Ahrefs tool and the Google Search Box may be used to look for semantic keywords.

Readability

Readability is an indicator to gauge how concise, understandable and readable an article is. The higher readability, the more easily users can obtain information from your content, and the longer they will stay. Double the effect by combining with effective internal linking and your bounce rate will drop while conversion rate soars.

Readability affects 4 factors:

• Bounce rate
• Dwell on time
• Conversion rate
• Featured snippet

Advanced On Page SEO Factors For 2024

Unique content that meets the search intent

A lot of people aspire to be different from others. The same requirement is shared by your content. Seeing the “same same, but different” stuff again irritates web users greatly. So make an attempt to wow them with the uniqueness and freshness that your writings exude.

As a result, take the time to thoroughly investigate a variety of sources in order to provide fresh material that benefits the readership. You may be confident that your efforts will be richly rewarded.

Remember that most consumers are only interested in material that meets their requirements. Therefore, when content is off goal, even freshly baked material might lose its shine.

Unique content helps boost on page SEO impact

The best content is neither long-form or short-form. It is one that can predict and match the user’s search intent. Pinpoint the search intent in advance will help you create the right content that works, thereby increasing traffic and boosting website rankings.

Featured snippets – Position Zero

Featured snippets are those short snippets of a paragraph, a list, a table or an image shown up at the very top of Google SERPs, before any search results. Featured snippets provide users a quick answer for their questions by taking an excerpt from one of the top ranking pages.

To get featured in this Position Zero, your site must meet these conditions:

• Ranked in the top 10, because Google often pulls featured snippets from websites on this list
• Make sure Google has chosen featured snippets with similar content from other sites to help you understand how to answer users’ questions
• Provide the answers to users’ queries right on your site so Google can pull it out quickly
• Use correct formatting: paragraphs, lists or tables

E-A-T

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. These are the standards to evaluate content creators and their websites.

Here are a few ways to improve E-A-T for SEO:

• Invest to develop brand reputation
• Audit and improve the quality of current content
• Provide more information about the author of the article
• Edit or remove low E-A-T content
• Make it easier for users to access the website

Recently, Google has added another “E” for “Experience” to the formula, making it become E-E-A-T. This is an obvious movement to show Google’s increasing attention to user experience. It also gives you another way to increase SEO effectiveness and reduce the bounce rate: optimizing on page experiences.

Internal and outbound linking

Without internal and outbound links, your content is a beautiful yet isolated island. Effective internal linking does not only help users navigate to related content but also facilitate Google’s crawling process. Consequently, the site rankings will enjoy a boost.

Internal and outbound links improve on page SEO effectiveness

On the other hand, don’t forget that outbound linking is essential because it both helps Google understand your site better and build good relationships with other sites.

Therefore, an article with effective internal links to provide relevant valuable information and outbound links to reputable websites is the best combination.

Advanced title optimization

For the highest on page SEO results, your title must be able to satisfy two criteria:

• The number of lowercase letters in the title is from 30 to 63 characters
• The size of capital letters in the title is from 200 to 550 pixels

Keep these in mind for successful advanced title optimization:

• Analyze your competitors to know their titles before deciding on yours
• The title must convey the content overview
• Insert the modified keyword into the title

Advanced image optimization 

The purpose of image optimization is to increase the possibility of images getting featured and reaching the top position on Google Image SERPs. Also, the use of images is considered a great aid to content in driving SEO results. After all, brand development is the ultimate goal of every digital marketing campaign.

Let’s take a look at some tactics of advanced image optimization:

• Rename the image and resize it to the standard size (600; 900)
• Use the Geosetter tool to optimize the image
• Add NAP (Name – Address – Phone) information to the comment section and insert keywords in the tag
• Provide full information of the author

Content gap

A content gap analysis is the process of reviewing, evaluating and referencing competitors’ content of the same topic. The expected process output is identifying the content that has not been published on your site.

You don’t need to start creating every “missing” content. Just filter out a number of themes that are most suitable to your page. This is to increase the competitive advantage for your site and increase the likelihood to get to the top.

Content gap: An advanced tactic of on page SEO

The process of implementing a gap content analysis on the Ahrefs tool includes 3 basic steps:

• Step 1: Conduct a domain search to find your competitorsClick on Competing Domains on the left side of the screen, then look for websites with high organic traffic. You will see some data, including a column of different colored bars.○ Blue bar: The number of keywords unique to your website○Green bar: The number of keywords common to both your site and the competitors’○ Yellow bar: The number of keywords unique to the competitors’ site

• Step 2: Add the domain(s) you want to run a comparison to the Content Gap section
• Step 3: View the comparison result

After adding the domain(s) you want to compare with, click Show Keyword. A detailed report table will be displayed to help you compare and consider adding which keywords for higher optimization impact.

Optimize CTR with structured data (schema markup)

CTR or click through rate is an indicator of the ratio between the number of ad clicks and the number of times that ad was shown. The higher the CTR, the more likely your website to gain the trust of users. Therefore, CTR optimization always stays on the “must-do list” of every SEO practitioner.

In addition to common factors such as the title, meta description and slug, structured data also plays an influential role. Schema markup is responsible for providing intuitive user experience, creating diverse interactive content, all of which to improve the CTR for your site.

Improve page loading speed

Page loading speed is one of the deciding factors for a user to stay and explore a website or just click back. Great content that challenges a user’s patience is as good as no content, sometimes even worse.

On page SEO done right = Higher site speed

In order to improve the page speed, try one of the following methods:

• Use decompression or unzip software to reduce the size of CSS and HTML files that go over 150 bytes
• Use Photoshop to fix blurry or broken images
• Use low-resolution photos
• Optimize the code
• Limit the use of website redirects

Mobile-friendliness

A mobile friendly website will show up nicely on any mobile device. As more and more people use mobile devices to search for information, Google also updates their algorithms to better accommodate this habit.

That’s the short story of how mobile-friendliness becomes one of the website ranking factors. On this aspect, there are two things to keep in mind:

• Utilize AMP

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages helps your mobile site load more quickly.

When your website is on par with the competitors’ on other aspects, AMP provides the golden chance to one-up them in rankings.

• Turn off the display of registration forms

Dynamic registration forms spell trouble for mobile users, especially when these forms are often so big that they cover the whole website content.

This is not to say that you should eliminate registration forms, but think twice before putting them anywhere in your website. One right placement is much better than many less-optimal positions.

Other On Page SEO Factors 

Anchor text

Anchor text is a short piece of text that directs the user to another link when clicked on. Albeit short, the anchor text must be able to fully and accurately represent the content of its link.

Utilize anchor text for on-page SEO results

When optimizing anchor text, be noted:

• Do not use a general word or phrase like “here” or “click here”. Be specific and convey correctly the linked content.
• Try not to use the same anchor text

Video 

More and more users are favoring video over text, which pushes SEO practitioners to think of novel ways to create and utilize this content form. Many companies choose in-house production while others seek professional help. It depends on your topics and internal resources as there is no one-size-fits-all video template.

Comment box

The comment section is also important to on page SEO results. Customers will be unlikely to buy in your content or website when they don’t get a response from anyone. Therefore, the comment box will bring certain benefits to your site, including:

• Increase interaction between customers and the business
• Build customer trust in the business
• Retain more customers

Favicon 

Favicon is the small icon representing your website. It is located on the left of the browser tab when opening the site. It can be the website logo or an equivalent design.

Favicon matters to brand identity. It also helps users switch tabs faster when surfing multiple websites at the same time.

Without a favicon, your website will have a hard time to create an impression on users, and suffer the fate of just-another-so-so-website. In other words, users are made unable to recognize you and of course will not return.

Social share 

Social share is one of the factors for Google to gauge the popularity and quality of an article. Research shows that website rankings are most influenced by the number of shares on Facebook.

So after publishing new content, remember to encourage users to share and leave comments under your post.

Effective on page SEO results in more social shares

On Page SEO Support Tools 

SEOquake 

An aid for performing on-page SEO analysis is SEOquake. It can assist you in determining if specific on-page components adhere to search engine guidelines. The sitemap, favicon, URL, picture, title, meta description, meta keywords, and headers are among the most often used components.

Many SEO practitioners utilize SEOQuake since it offers significant advantages and is completely free of cost.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular on page checker tool in Vietnam. It provides almost every necessary on page error checking features such as the title, meta description, sitemap management among many others.

Yoast SEO is a good choice for building personal blogs and SEO websites. The premium upgrade offers a comprehensive guide of on page SEO audit. However, the free version has already included common basic features, mostly sufficient for your tasks.

On page SEO checker of Semrush

This is a specialized checker tool to check on page factors with high accuracy, endorsed by many SEO experts.

Based on the data obtained from Semrush and Google, this on page SEO checker will do you a great service by analyzing your website, making a comparison to the top 10 competitors, and providing useful tactics to boost your site rankings on SERPs.

Website Auditor

Website Auditor is a software that assesses both basic and advanced websites. This tool supports evaluation in both on page and off page SEO factors to boost rankings.

Website Auditor – An on page SEO support tool

Some outstanding features of Website Auditor include:

• Crawl websites with SEO bots
• Analyze the website structure
• Audit many types of websites
• Minimize page load problems
• Display warnings about broken links
• Manage many other factors: title, URL, domain name, etc.

Surfer SEO

The Surfer SEO tool helps optimize website content by calculating the weight and frequency of keywords on top-ranked pages.

It runs an audit on the criteria of content that affect on page SEO such as article length, meta, title, image, page loading speed, and more. Users will be notified of content errors for on time adjustments.

Surfer SEO is a paid tool with many pricing plans:

• Basic package: $59/month
• Pro package: $119/month
• Business package: $239/month

Related insights: All businesses with a physical location will need a local SEO checklist to enhance their promotional efforts.

Final Thoughts

We hope you have gained important knowledge about how to carry out optimization chores for site ranking improvement and customer acquisition with this newly updated checklist and guidance on on page SEO service.

Contact On Digitals today for specific advice on effective SEO and Digital Marketing strategies.