10 On Page SEO Ranking Factors

What is On-page SEO?

On-page SEO, like the name, suggests, On-Page SEO refers to the actions you can take on your website to improve your rankings and visibility on Google. These actions are what we call optimizations. 

This can be anything from improving or optimizing your meta tags to your URL structure, heading tags, and more. What on-page optimization techniques should you use to improve your website from both a technical and aesthetic perspective?  

A clear site architecture helps organize your website.

Not only does this help crawlers understand how different pages on your site relate to each other, but it also gives users a more intuitive experience. You just know where to go and where to click.
 

If you need more information, you should use a robots.txt file and add a sitemap to help crawlers understand how different pages of your website are categorized, which ones are the most important, and which ones it should crawl index.

10 On-page SEO Ranking Factors

1. Clicks away from your homepage

if your website doesn't have an organized structure, fix that now. And aim for a flatter structure for maximum SEO gains.

2. Optimize your URLs

Each page of your website has a URL, the web address. And by optimizing your URL structure, you can make it easier for bots and humans to understand what your page is about.  URL gives us a good idea of what the page is about before we even click on it. Plus, pages having good URLs tend to get more clicks than pages with poor URL structures.

3. Optimize your meta titles and description

Look, here's some advice. Don't write meta titles and descriptions in a rush, seriously. Let me show you how it's all connected. After reading your meta descriptions and your titles, the users make up their minds whether to click on your link or not. If they click, that's a signal to Google that your page is relevant.

And that can help you rank higher. But the opposite is true as well. Poor meta titles and descriptions of poor click-through rate. So always try to put some thought in your meta titles and descriptions.

Try to keep the keyword at the start and use modifiers like best newly updated to provide some incentive for the user to click.

 

4. Having a responsive website and be mobile

First, you understand how frustrating it can be when you're trying to view a site on your phone, and the design doesn't fit the screen.

The text isn't the right size, the images aren't visible, you have to double-tap or pinch and zoom to view the whole thing. Guess what? Making your website responsive for different devices not only helps you earn some brownie points from the user, but it also helps you a ton with your rankings. In fact, as of 2018,

Google has introduced mobile-first indexing, which means that your website's crawling and indexing would be based on your mobile version. So better get a hold of your development team and make sure you're not lagging on that front. 'Google's mobile-friendly test". Check that out to assess where you stand.
 

5. Page Speed

Alright, so here's the thing with Page Speed. Most of the ranking factors from Google are based on making your user experience as smooth and convenient as possible. And a major part of that experience is how fast your website loads. Google came out in 2010, declaring that it uses Page Speed as a ranking factor.

So you should do everything you possibly can to reduce the load time for your pages. Now, generally speaking, the main culprits for high load times are too many HTTPS requests and poorly optimized images on your website. So here's what you can do. minimize the number of HTTPS requests by reducing the number of scripts that need to run.

You can combine CSS and JavaScript files so that they don't have to be fetched separately. You can also use Google Tag Manager to reduce the number of requests to external files, as the Tag Manager uses a single JavaScript code to control these tags.

Instead of making multiple HTTP s requests, the browser has to make only a single request to GTM or the Google Tag Manager. As far as images are concerned, you need to make sure you're only using the necessary images. Don't overdo it.

And make sure you're optimizing the file size for each image you upload on the back end. If you're using WordPress, that can be made super simple through plugins like image Ify. You can also use lazy loading, where instead of loading the entire web page in one go, the browser only loads the required section and delays the remaining sections until they are needed to be seen by the user.

Once you're done with all that, and you want to test your page speed, you can head over to Google's Page Speed Insights to check out the performance of your page.
 

6. Keep your site secure with HTTPS

Google has said that it uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. And all you have to do is add an SSL certificate to your website, which can be easily bought from GoDaddy, Bluehost, or any other service. So in this day and age, there's really no reason to have an HTTP or non-secure website.
 

7. Use header tags

Now there's a debate about whether or not keywords in your h2 tags can help with rankings, but it doesn't hurt. Moreover, the proper use of header tags improves your readability and user experience (UX).

If there's one thing we've seen is that an optimized h2 tag can help you score featured snippets. And optimizing for featured snippets can often be the difference between ranking number one and the number five on search results. There are loads of featured snippet formats, from paragraphs to tables to lists and more.

8. Improve your readability

I can't stress enough how readability helps with your on-page SEO. And not only tells Google how well your content is written, but it also helps to retain the reader for longer periods of time and keeps them coming back for more. Content that scores high on readability usually has the following characteristics.
 

They use legible text size and colour. Google generally recommends a 16 point size, and the colour needs to be easy on the eye. They add headers and paragraph breaks. This way, you're not just bombarding them with long chunks of writing but providing context.

They're optimized for skim readers add bullet points when talking about lists. This helps with featured snippets too. They use images, videos, gifs, snapshots, anything that can get your point across other than words. They connect with current examples, which helps in providing a better perspective.

And finally, they incorporate elements of storytelling to add a personal touch. Here's a pro tip for you. If your website is on WordPress, install a plugin from Yoast SEO, which tells you how good your content's readability is.

9. Use alt text for images

Alt texts help crawlers understand what an image is about.

HTML of an alt text looks like. Now, you could just describe an image pretty plainly without focusing on the keywords that the user experience (UX), or you can put in just a little bit more effort and optimize it. An extra effort can pay dividends.

Not only does alt text help with your rankings on Google Images, which can bring more traffic your way. It's also a good way for you to naturally use keywords that haven't been used in your content. Moreover, it helps ensure that visually impaired people or other physical or cognitive disabilities can access and understand visual content, such as images, charts, and graphs, easily. So you are making your content more accessible to everyone.
 

10. Use of internal linking

If you're smart about your internal linking strategy, you can give a helping hand to some of your pages that are struggling in the rankings. Let me explain this with an example.

Suppose you have written a blog, and it's ranking on page one of Google for the related keywords. This means this page has gathered a lot of authority for you. But it's time to leverage it further by adding links to other related pages that are relatively unknown or in need of a bit of a boost.

If you remember, crawlers use links to find new pages. So if you have orphan pages, crawlers would never be able to find them on their own. No matter how great the content is.

By adding internal links. You're letting users and crawlers understand how different pages are related to each other and internal links allow you to pay On valuable link equity. So choose your best-performing pages and see where you can place relevant and contextual internal links and a bonus on-page optimization tip.

Take your site to the next level with schema markups. What you need to know right now is that schemas are just little snippets of code that allow you to show a few additional and interesting elements on search results, such as reviews, product availability, frequently asked questions, organizational details, and more.

For example, if you have reviews from happy customers, you can display them to get a higher click through other potential customers. And by using a frequently asked questions schema, you can provide answers to specific customer questions.