How to Achieve Optimal OnPage SEO – The 10 Definitive Factors

Search engine optimization can feel like a many-headed beast with all the different elements that work together to allow your site to stand out in search results. These include the on-site, off-site, technical, analytical, content, and whole-site optimization efforts. Every different type of SEO is connected, so it’s important to understand–and master–all of them.

The good news is it’s totally doable! We’re here to help you tame the SEO beast step-by-step. In this complete guide to onpage SEO, we’ll break down onpage optimizations and their impact on your rankings. Onpage SEO optimization is one area where you have full control, so let’s make it count!

First, let’s clarify what we mean by onpage SEO. It covers both the visible content your readers see on your page within their browser window and the behind-the-scenes content read by the search engine bots (also known as Googlebot, Bingbot, Facebook Bot, etc.). This invisible content includes the HTML markup that your browser and bots interpret, including meta tags, title tags, heading tags (H1s and H2s), structured data markup schema (courtesy of schema.org), rich snippets, and a few other types that we’ll explore.

So, SEO warriors, if you’re ready, let’s dig a little deeper into the world of onpage SEO. You’ll not only expand your SEO vocabulary but also apply what you learn to get your product or service at the top of the search engine results page (SERP) and attract lots of healthy organic traffic!

1. Content Quality and Keyword Research

Why should Google choose your page over the competition? Seriously, think about it. What makes your site stand out?

After working with hundreds of brands, we’ve seen time and time again how critical keyword research and high-quality content are. To boost search rankings, it’s not just about finding the right keywords. It’s about doing thorough research to select keywords with high search volume, low relative difficulty/competition, and relevance to your site’s existing content. Gone are the days when thin content, duplicate content, or keyword stuffing would do the trick. There are no shortcuts!

Now, it’s all about creating valuable, well-researched, and engaging content. Whether you hire a quality writer, hire us, or write it yourself, the effort is worth it. We have advanced tools to perform content audits and help get your content optimized; our crawlers examine Google’s first page results and pinpoint the keywords that Google deems relevant for your targeted keyword. Once we create high-quality content, we use this keyword and keyword density data to include any relevant topics we may have forgotten to cover.

When it comes to onpage ranking factors, content quality is king. Want to rank for “personal injury lawyer Chicago”? That keyword better be in your content somewhere, and you better have related keyword phrases like “car accidents,” “motorcycle accidents,” “motor vehicle accidents,” “workers compensation,” “lost wages,” “insurance company,” and “medical bills.” This helps Google understand the context of your page and boosts your chances of ranking.

Adding rich media and graphic content like images, embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos, and embedded tweets also increases the value of your page content. When it makes sense, use bulleted or numbered lists to help with readability. Don’t just drop a block of text on the page. It’ll overwhelm your readers. You can use the onpage audit tool in our dashboard to identify where your content needs the most attention.

2. Responsive Design

How does your site look on a mobile phone, tablet, or different desktop screen sizes? We’ve all been there—visiting a site on our phone only to deal with endless scrolling just to view an image or read content. The pro move here is to make sure your site has the right CSS code for each of the common device types. Any front-end developer worth their salt can do this in their sleep with their left hand, but just in case you’re short one sleepy right-handed developer, here’s a list of media queries for these different screen resolutions. If your site was custom-built more than five years ago or hasn’t been updated in a while, you’ll need to use these queries to revamp your front-end design.

If you built your site using a front-end framework like Bootstrap or Foundation, or if you’re using a WordPress theme built on one of these front-end frameworks (most of the good ones are), you’ll probably have pretty good responsiveness out of the box.

We’ve used Bootstrap and Foundation and recommend them both.

So, does this page pass the responsiveness test? Click here and use our nifty responsiveness tool to check it out! We’ll give you a second….

Yep! We’re looking good! Now might be a good time to test your page if you haven’t already.

3. Content Length

The numbers don’t lie: the content that consistently ranks on the first page of Google tends to be between 1750 and 2000 words long. Check out this telling comparison of number of words on a page versus that page’s Google ranking:

*INSERT GRAPH*

Increase the length of your content. If it makes sense given your industry and the subject matter of the page, aim for 2000 words. But this isn’t about padding your content like a middle school essay to achieve the desired word count. Quality still beats quantity. The reason Google wants to push your longer content to the top of the SERPs is because it has been deemed authoritative and a valuable resource. Search engines think you’re an expert on your subject matter, so prove it. Don’t repeat yourself, and keep your thoughts clear, focused, and sufficiently detailed.

So, exactly how do search engines recognize your content as authoritative? While there’s no Google editor reading and interpreting your blog, it relies on indirect methods like user behavior for gauging the quality of your site. The way real readers react to your content makes a huge difference.

Search engine algorithms factor in the number of repeat visitors to your page, the number of times your page has been bookmarked in a browser, the time a visitor spends on your site, how long it takes them to read to the end of your content, and how often people are searching for your particular brand. User experience metrics like low bounce rates, long dwell times, and multiple page views per browsing session are metrics that Google pays attention to. How? Google’s top data collection sources include:

• Google Analytics – this is the most popular piece of javascript used on websites, appearing on 95%+ of sites on the internet, giving Google (and you) rich data insights about your visitors and metrics related to their browsing behavior.
• Google Chrome Browser – as Google’s own browser, it collects anonymous stats on user activity, pages viewed, dwell time, and browsing patterns.
• Google Search – takes note of searches for your brand, clicks to your site in SERPs, and the browsing behavior of those users on your pages.

To further optimize your content, use keywords wisely. Keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. Google’s algorithm will not only detect it but will penalize you for it. A better strategy is for your keyword(s) to appear within the first 100 words on the page naturally; this helps to establish your content’s topic. Google can recognize synonyms, too, so sprinkle some of those, as well as related phrases, throughout your work.

Remember, content is no longer just text. People are consuming information through videos, podcasts, and images. The more multimedia embedded with your content or the more ways your content is shared via multimedia, the more search engines will like it. So aim for that perfect mix of long-form, keyword-rich content with engaging media to maximize your SEO impact.

4. Internal Linking

So you’ve created lots and lots of authoritative, high-quality, lengthy multimedia content. Now what? Why, you interlink it, of course! Google analyzes internal links on your website to understand the structure of your site and the relationships between your pages to figure out which content is most important.

Take a look at your website’s home page. It’s chock-full of great content … but not everything is crammed into this one page (that would definitely spoil the fun). Your home page should be a “pillar page” or a high-level overview of the content to be discovered throughout your site. And how will visitors discover that rich bonus content (please don’t say menu, please don’t say menu …)? Yes, through inbound links!

Your home page usually holds the greatest link value within Google’s link algorithm because it usually has–or should have–the most internal links or backlinks. The link value assigned by the search engine will be shared amongst all of the links on your home page, and that value will be passed onto the page that the link leads to.

Remember this: When you post a new blog to your site, add a link on your homepage leading to that new content for added link value and to help Google index it quicker.

Simply put, more links to your site’s related content give your page more value. “Related” is the operative word here; your internal links should be relevant to both the content on the original page and the content it’s linking to. Please don’t use links just for the sake of linking; Google can detect that too!

5. Outbound Linking

Now that we’ve covered the importance of internal links let’s explore outbound links–because they’re just as essential for optimizing your pages. Why? While inbound links show that you have lots of awesome, authoritative content on your page, outbound links help demonstrate to search engines that your original work is backed by reliable external sources. A hyperlink to these can serve as an endorsement and add credibility to your site.

The same principles apply to quality inbound links as to outbound links. When linking to content outside of your website, make sure it is relevant, high-quality, and supports your original content. Another pro tip in outbound linking for optimization is to use descriptive anchor text. For example, if you were linking to a statistic, include the entire phrase “optimal number of words for your content” in your anchor text instead of single words like “number”…or “words.” It’s not necessary to squeeze keywords in your anchor text; the content around your anchor text should be of high enough quality to speak for itself.

6. Page and Site Speed

How valuable is your perfectly optimized content if visitors never get to see it? Not very. If your page is slow to load, people will hit the back button before they even get a glimpse. Users expect pages to load within milliseconds, or they’ll find what they need somewhere else. Google knows this, and that’s why both page and site speed plays a role in search rankings.

You might wonder if there is a difference between site speed and page speed. Yes and no. Page speed, also known as “page load time,” refers to how quickly a single page on your site loads. Site speed reflects the overall performance of your site as users navigate through it and is a key element of Google’s ranking algorithm. Both are important for SEO, but for now, let’s focus on page speed—something we have more control over.

Improving page speed is all about fine-tuning those invisible, behind-the-scenes elements that we mentioned earlier. Start by cleaning up your code–eliminate any unnecessary scripts, fonts, plug-ins, widgets, or tracking pixels that may be slowing things down. Reduce the number of page redirects, and compress image sizes to load faster. Remove excessive images or anything else that keeps your page from rendering quickly. Every little tweak helps shave seconds off your load time, and those seconds can make all the difference.

Optimizing individual pages will contribute to the overall optimization of your entire site. Want to check out your page’s load speed? Try Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Just enter your page’s URL, and within seconds, Google will evaluate your page’s speed and offer helpful suggestions for speeding things up.

7. Core Meta Tags

Another “behind the scenes” element for page optimization is your metadata. The proper use of title tags, heading tags, and meta tags is crucial for your overall performance on Google, so let’s go through them one by one.

Title Tag:

This is the most important meta tag on your page. Generally, the closer the keyword you want the page to rank for is to the beginning of the title tag, the better. Your title tag for each page should be unique and should clearly describe your page’s content. Pro tip: adding descriptive modifiers like “2018,” “best,” “guide,” or “top” to your title will help you rank higher in long-tail searches!

Heading Tags:

Also known as H1, H2, and H3, these tags, along with your title tag and other onpage elements, tell search engines (and readers) what your page is all about. The first three, H1 to H3, are the most important to the search engine. The H1 tag is the title that appears on the page (different from your page title, which is not displayed on the page, paradoxically). Both H2s and H3s are subheadings, with H3s being paragraph titles or other content headers. It goes without saying that your headings should always be grammatically correct and contain relevant keywords–but don’t go overboard if you want to avoid the wrath of Google.

Meta Description:

Here’s your chance to show off your writing skills. This short snippet, ideally under 160 characters, gives search engines and potential visitors a snapshot of what your page is about. A well-written meta description not only includes a relevant keyword or two but also entices users to click from the search engine results. Make it snappy, engaging, and to the point!

Alt Tag:

Also called alt attributes, these should accompany every meaningful image on your site, describing the image’s content for search engines that can’t “see” images. Including alt tags can also help improve accessibility for visually impaired users while giving you another small SEO boost.

8. URL Structure and URL Slugs

Let’s get straight to the point: keep your URLs (domain name + slug)short, simple, descriptive, and easy to understand–no random numbers or confusing strings. The best way to explain this is with examples (you’re welcome!). Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to URLs:

Bad URLs

BAD: site.com/2018/cats/my-favorite-cats/hypoallergenic-cats/cats-with-tails/cats-with-two-eyes/the-cat-from-the-cat-in-the-hat

BAD: site.com/?post=5

BAD: ecommercesite.com/t-shirts/?product_id=5&color=green&size=M

UGLY URLs

UGLY: site.com/cat-breeds.php

UGLY: site.com/cat-breeds.html

Good URLs

GOOD: site.com/best-short-hair-cat-breeds-2018

GOOD: ecommercesite.com/t-shirts/dancing-monkey-tshirt

See the difference? Bad and ugly URLs are long, cluttered, and hard to follow. Good URLs are clear, descriptive, and user-friendly. You have full control over this in your site’s settings, so keep it simple and clean.

9. Sitemap.XML

In the early days of the web, finding new content to index was a major problem for search engines. Web crawling was expensive and inefficient, often leading to many dead ends with duplicate or useless pages (think HTTP vs. HTTPS, www vs. non-www, subdomains, etc.). Search engines had to recrawl large portions of websites, hoping to stumble upon fresh links they hadn’t indexed yet.

To solve this problem, search engines introduced the sitemap.xml file. This gave webmasters a simple way to provide a complete list of all their site’s pages, helping search engines find and index content more efficiently. The introduction of WordPress, with its built-in sitemap feature, made it even easier to discover new content.

Want to make sure your sitemap is working its magic? Use our free Sitemap.XML checker to make sure your sitemap is up to Google’s standards. While we could dive into the nitty-gritty of sitemap best practices for refresh frequency and optimizing your Google Crawl Budget, we’ll save that for another post! But for now, get that sitemap validated and let the crawlers do their thing.

10. Robots.txt

Your site’s robots.txt file plays a crucial role in guiding search engine bots on how to crawl your site. Think of it as setting ground rules for your website’s robot visitors. Just like in the movies, there are “good” bots that help you get discovered in search engines and “bad” bots that can clutter your site’s analytics or cause other issues.

Here’s a quick list of what not to do with robots.txt:

• Always include a robots.txt file on your site, and never leave it empty
• Make sure your robots.txt doesn’t contradict your sitemap
• Never use robots.txt to block access to sensitive information on your site ( password-protect confidential data instead).

Now, you have all the tools you need to create a perfectly optimized webpage. Ready to put these tips into action? Do as much as you can with onpage SEO factors like internal link building, and when you’re ready to level up your off-site SEO factors like backlinks, content marketing, and social shares, let us know. We’re here to help you build authority across the web!