Top 10 On-Page SEO Techniques for Higher Ranking

In today’s competitive online world where everyone wants to rank on top in the Google search result page.

It is important to have deep knowledge of SEO as it has a significant role in Digital Marketing. SEO exists from the time the internet has been public and it is focused to increase traffic to the website organically.

Google has 86.6% market share among all other search engines.

Statista

SEO has changed a lot since it’s beginning, it was earlier focused on keyword stuffing and filling the page with low-quality backlinks to gain ranking. But over time, search engines became smart with more robust algorithms to filter those spammy webpages.

It started to analyze the quality and relevancy of the backlinks than stuffing the keyword and number of low-quality backlinks in a page.

Related: Link Building Guide For Beginners

SEO in itself a very broad field that’s why for better understanding it’s categorized into three categories named as technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO is the major parts of the overall SEO strategy, Google always comes up with new algorithm updates to measure on-page factors. Few major updates from Google are Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.

The main goal of Google is to provide the best result to the user for a relevant search query for that they focus on several factors to analyze the quality of site webpages.

Search engines have been developed and now they give more focus on semantics and relevance for ranking, it’s not only about keywords.

Here in this article, I’ve shared the top 10 on-page SEO techniques to rank higher that will definitely help you to optimize your webpage in a better way.

But before that, I would like you to watch this video that is going to help you for sure!

What is On-Page SEO?

It is the process that includes the content creation and optimization of it for the users and search engines for ranking higher organically (unpaid) in search engine result pages.

I mentioned the user first and search engines latter, because if you focus on satisfying the intent of the user through your content then the possibility for ranking on your target keywords will increase.

This is what search engines also want, so start with writing for users then optimize it in a way that search engines can understand.

Key on-page elements that you need to optimize are title tags, meta description, H1 tag, internal links, content, and keywords.

Understanding and applying these on your webpage will help you make your content more understandable for the search engine bots and users.

On-page SEO uses technical and content elements to enhance the quality of the page. Thus, working more on these factors can boost traffic.

Why On-Page SEO Is Important?

It doesn’t matter if you have the best website in the world with great features that include fast loading time, positive user experience, and so on but if you lack quality content that isn’t well optimized for search engines. Then you won’t be able to rank for your target keywords.

Mark my words you are never going to rank on Google, that’s why having great content combined with the technical and off-page aspect of SEO should be your top priority.

This as a result would have a big impact on your site because if the content gets loved by users and generate consistent traffic, then other webmasters also start giving backlinks to you because everyone loves quality content.

These factors together can enhance the ranking of a website and make you a thought leader in your industry.

Top 10 On-Page SEO Ranking Factors

Clear knowledge about the key on-page factors helps to improve the relevance of the webpage and therefore attain better organic traffic.

These factors not only rely on high-quality content but also the internal links, metadata, and page’s HTML. These factors when combined togerther can improve site visibility in the search results. Thus, it helps to increase conversions and authority of the site.

Let’s examine them one by one

E-A-T

E-A-T or Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness is used to analyze the quality of Google’s search results. It analyses the credibility of content creators, web page authority, overall past performance of websites altogether.

Searches related to health, safety, and finance are not supposed to serve results from sites of low-domain authority. E-A-T is not much important in searches like animals or trees, but when it comes to health, finance, and safety searches, it is the most important factor.

Google strictly avoids inaccurate results for such searches and always tries to provide high-quality results. E-A-T can determine the quality of the website which in turn affects the search traffic and rankings.

It never promotes results from sites that are untrustworthy and has low authority. Contents written by an unskilled writer which are published in an untrustworthy site with low authority are not considered as high-quality content.

Those contents will never be shown as the result of the query. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness are evaluated separately using various criteria to check the quality of the page. 

Thus focus on building authority in your industry by showing expertise through well researched and written content this will help you to stay ahead of your competitors.

Title Tag

It is one of the pillars of SEO and an important SEO ranking signal. The title tag is the HTML tag that can be seen in the head section of the webpage source code.

It is shown in blue color with a high font size in SERP. It is relevant in the SEO strategies as it provides the idea of what the page is about to the search engine bot. A well-written title attracts the user and may increase search visibility.

Another place where it is shown is the user’s browser tab, if a user has multiple tabs opened at the same time unique title helps him to distinguish between the web browser, the title tags help to distinguish each of them.

The title tag should be accurate and a short description of the content of the page. It is the factor that attracts the user before they click on the link. Search engines use titles to determine whether the page is relevant to the search or not.

Using the keyword in the title tag helps the users to make sure they are on the right way. Writing a unique title for each page can reflect the uniqueness of the page.

Search engines display 50-60 characters of the title tag in search results. So, the characters in the title tag should be within this range.

Keeping the characters not so lengthy and so curtailed is necessary to access a good title tag. It should be powerful enough to attract the user.

Meta Description

A meta description is the HTML tag that summarises the content of the webpage. It is present beneath the URL of the page. It enables visitors to understand the content before opening the page and it affects CTR (click-through-rate).

A meta description is not used directly in the ranking algorithm but uses CTR to analyze the quality of the page.

The search result is provided as the meta description along with the title tag and URL. The meta description should not exceed 135-160 characters.

It should not be duplicated that each page should carry a different meta description. When the meta description is not there, Google itself will provide a piece of content that seems to be most relevant in the content.

If the meta description added in a page is irrelevant to the content, Google will neglect it and add a relevant meta description by itself by extracting part of the content.

Meta description was once a ranking factor, but Google changed it when people abused it by stuffing the keyword. The meta description will also be present when the content has been shared across other websites. It enables the user to decide whether to click on the search result or refuse it.

Search engines like Yandex still consider meta descriptions as a ranking factor. Using a good meta description attracts the user and it increases the Click Through Rate. CTR is a direct ranking factor and thus meta descriptions can enhance the ranking.

Here is the graph that shows the importance of each on-page ranking factors, understanding of this correlation will help you to better plan your on-page strategy.

Importance of H1 Tag

It enables search engines to understand whether the page is relevant for the visitor’s query.

Lengthy headlines don’t have any impact on SEO and the headline which is relevant to the content containing the keyword can make interest in the visitors. It is the element that defines the overall topic of the page.

Most importantly use only one H1 tag on a single page, it will help Google bot to know about the webpage.

Having well-written content without a good headline doesn’t matter as it can’t catch the attention of the visitor. A fine headline with great content has an impact on the SEO ranking in a wide range.

It is the first sentence seen by the user and it should consist of relevant words and good structure. Search engines use headings in the context of the page even if it is not a powerful factor in the ranking of SEO as before.

A good heading makes the user click-through into the content. Using powerful words within the headline can attract people. It is the headline that tempts the user to read further.

Role of Other Heading Tags

These tags are used within the content to give them a proper structure, for instance, H1 tag is used for the main heading, and other heading tags which are H2, H3, and H4 used to specify sub-headings on the webpage.

These tags make the content easily readable by everyone and enhances user experiences that leads to increased dwell time on the webpage.

If you structure your content with proper headings and bullet points then chances of ranking in Google featured snippets also increase.

Header tags are important factors for help both users and search engines. Being an indirect component, it influences the ranking by giving keyword-rich context about the content to the search engines.

There is no need of using every header tag from H1 to H6, but H1, H2 obviously and H3 if required. It should be in order because using the H3 tag without H2 looks a little odd on a webpage.

Using the targeted keyword helps to show the topic which has been covered on the page. Using these words in every header tag may be pictured as optimization which is negative in the SEO ranking strategy.

It is better to stay natural than stuffing the header with keywords. So, it is relevant to include the keyword in the header if it is necessary.

SEO Writing

It is the optimization of content to get better rankings. Content is the cornerstone of SEO and proper planning and creation of content results in a better experience for the user.

It also affects ranking directly and well-written content has a wide range of effects on the ranking. The content should be relevant and should possess high quality.

There is a strategy for writing effective content more than the keywords. Having useful content on the page increases the relevance and improves the rank.

Google can digest synonyms and semantically related words and stuffing of the keyword is not SEO writing.

It requires a profound understanding of SEO along with great ability in writing to create the content. High-quality content naturally influences search visibility and ranking. It also makes the web pages more attractive to search engines.

Among the various factors search engines use to analyze web pages, content is most important. Organizing the content effectively can boost ranking.

Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

When a website has multiple pages for the same search query, it is keyword cannibalization. For Google, both pages are competing themselves for the ranking and it only has a negative impact.

It is a misinterpretation that the more pages with the keyword results in better ranking. It reduces the CTR and results in splitting the links and contents of the particular page.

It affects the authority of the page and hence, the ranking. It results in the loss of site traffic and the queries may lead to a wrong page. It is easy to find the problem and fixing keyword cannibalization is also simple.

Everything done with SEO is aimed at making the site easier for Google to crawl. Understanding the issue and fixing it properly can avoid further problems.

It may arouse confusion to Google which page should rank higher and sometimes will refuse both pages from rank for the target keyword.

Google finds different pages relevant to the same keyword and had to choose among them. There is no chance of being the site ranking higher. It is an important component that affects the value of the webpage.

Related: How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Business?

Content Audit

The most important element in SEO is creating and distributing great content. But, it is hardly revisited by a webmaster, updating and editing the existing content is an effective content marketing tactic.

A content audit is a process of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the content. It helps to understand the deficiency of the content and to improve it.

A content audit provides the chance to escape from the penalty regarding the content and to improve the content by editing it. Some contents should be kept as-it-is, some should be improved and some to be removed for the enhancement of the domain.

A good audit helps to understand which content is performing well, which topic is connected closely to the users and which should be removed or edited.

A content audit is helpful to the site owner for understanding the current status of the content in the website and to enhance efforts to meet with the modern marketing strategies.

It is the only method to analyze the quality and structure of the content completely. It helps the site owner to avoid the search engine ranking filter and remove unnecessary content from the site.

Image Optimization

Images are one of the main factors that attract the user and also give contextual details to search engines. It also gives life to the content and enhances the interaction with the audience.

Here are key points to remember for image optimization.

It is the process of providing images in the appropriate size, format, and resolution with high quality.

It influences page loading speed and thus affects the better user experience. For the enhancement of the site, the basics of image optimization are essential.

When the image size is reduced without any loss in the quality of the image, the page loads faster. It improves the user experience. More interaction with the website influences customer engagement, conversions, and customer retention.

Site backups can be completed fast as the optimized images require less storage space on the server. It is important to choose the right format while optimizing the content.

Image adding to the content should be relevant to the topic on the web page. Using a short and descriptive alt tag can help in understanding the image. Adding the keyword in the image file name and image title can create SEO friendly images.

User Engagement

It is measured as how much value the visitor gives to the website. With the high quality of the content, users stick to the page and take action. Search engines want to offer relevant and meaningful results to the search query of the user so that it prefers pages with more actions by visitors. It can affect the ranking both directly and indirectly.

There are several types of user engagement including CTR and dwell time. Google considers various factors to provide the most relevant result to the visitor.

Working on these factors can enhance the quality of the page. The success of the site is mainly based on user experience as it provides whether the site is valuable or not.

The search algorithms aim to give the best result to the user and they will analyze the range of user engagement to understand the virtue of the content.

If the website doesn’t provide relevant results, the user will never find it valuable and it will cause degrading the ranking of the site. The users will try to reach another site that is better and relevant.

Reducing the visibility of a site is a negative sign in search engine optimization. So it is vital to keep the visibility range high for the better optimization of the site.

Conclusion

In the end, I would say having good SEO knowledge is necessary for ranking your website organically. And giving similar attention to each part of SEO is the key to success.

It can primarily enhance visibility which is an essential part of a successful SEO strategy. But you need to remember that SEO is a series of long term efforts.

Now you know about the all key factors that can affect the ranking, now it’s your turn to experiment with them to bring results for your website.

Let me know in the comment box how you’re going to implement these on-page SEO techniques.