Inbound Marketing University

Overview

On-Page SEO refers to the process of optimizing your website content and web page elements to make them as search engine friendly as possible. This is done by placing relevant keywords in all the right places, optimizing web content and improving page titles, URLs, headings, meta tags and images. By adjusting your content to be easily recognizable by Google, you are basically increasing your chances to rank first in relation to your competitors. This, of course, leads to getting found by potential customers first.

Step by Step

Optimize Page Title & URLs
Although often unnoticed by people, page titles are critical to search engines. It is through page titles that search engines determine which keywords the page should rank for. That is why for traffic generation purposes page titles should be well written. They need to truly reflect the content of the page and be unique for each of your web pages. The keyword selection should also be carefully thought out in terms of achieving an efficient communication with target audiences. Lastly, the length of the page titles should be limited to minimum because search engines discount the importance of a given keyword depending on the total number of words in the title.

The same rules apply for optimizing URLs. You need to incorporate target keywords in your website’s URL itself and keep it short and clear. Keep in mind that keywords appearing earlier in the URL tend to be more important than those appearing later.

Optimize Headings
Headings indicate the beginning of themed content segments. They provide a general sense of the text’s message and purpose. Headings can be compared to the meal names in a restaurant menu which customers skim. Google does exactly this kind of quick scan of your website looking at headings to identify the content on the page. Therefore, it is important to include target keywords in the headings on your pages.

Optimize Meta Keywords and Meta Description
Although hidden in the page source code, meta keywords can always be seen by search engines. Make sure your meta keywords are unique, separated by commas and correctly spelled.

Similarly hidden in the page source code and important for search engines is the meta-description content. This content is often shown along with the page title in the search results page and can be read by potential visitors. That is why you want to write a keyword-rich and unique description that is not exceeding two sentences.

Optimize Images
The images you optimize should be relevant to your website’s content. Use target keywords and the ‘alt’ attribute to name your images before uploading them. Thus, search engine spiders will know more about your website. In addition, relevant keywords can help you rank in Google image search. The images’ file types and anchor texts also play important roles in boosting traffic.