On-Page SEO Techniques to Rank High on Google’s Search Engine

You may wish to increase traffic on your website, and you may want your posts to be optimized with On-Page SEO Techniques.

If you want search engines to categorize your keywords easily, and give your blog a higher rank, then you are at the right place. Let me share some tips and tricks to make your blog keyword-targeted.

There are two most important aspects that deal with the optimization of a blog post or a website:

1. On-page optimization
2. Off-page optimization

In this article, I will be discussing on-page optimization. A number of on-page SEO techniques will be shared so you can easily optimize your blogs.

There is a lot of confusion regarding onsite SEO-optimization and on-page SEO-optimization. So first, let’s get this misconception out of the way.

On-site SEO:

This technique is for the optimization of a complete website including a sitemap along with establishing permalink structures.

On-page SEO:

This technique is applied to a single blog post or a product page, where content is optimized for a target keyword. It is used in proper keyword placement and headings. It makes sure the content is maintaining quality with the right keyword density. It also focuses on many other factors.

Why On-Page SEO Techniques are required?

Most people have this misconception that “Search engine optimized article writing” is not a good practice.  They don’t actually know that it’s a necessity and on-page SEO techniques are required.

Basically, search engines are made up of a set of algorithms. They consider some factors e.g. keywords and rank your page. As writers, we have to make the search engines job easier and provide it with the keywords it’s searching for.

People often ask this question: why is their page not showing up on search results the first page?

There are a number of reasons behind this problem, but the biggest one is your negligence towards SEO.

When we are trying to optimize a post, we have to follow some proven techniques so our post rank goes higher on the search engine.

An on-page SEO score is not the only thing taken into account by Google. It also takes backlinks, off-page metrics, social media signals, and domain authority into consideration.

The main aim of on-page SEO is to do it cleverly, but the article should remain natural. This allows the search engine to choose the target keyword easily and bring your website to the intended visitors.

There is this one particular rule, one should not forget: Content is still the most important.

For starters, I would advise you to start incorporating videos in the blog. This helps to engage the users and also increases the number of media present on your content. Your blog will become more educational and thought-provoking.

On-Page SEO Techniques to Make Ranking go higher

First, one should consider including some non-technical things before getting into technical details.

Create good content

• Avoid writing fluff
• Improve yourself by listening to feedback
• Incorporate meaningful sub-headings

Enhance user experience

• Ensure responsiveness of the website, try to remove broken links

Make sure readers stay on your website for a while

• If users leave your website immediately after they visit, your ranking will decrease. Your content should be engaging, users should start reading and spend time on it.
• Practice correct copywriting techniques. Unique and well-written articles.
• Ensure your website remains professional at all times.

Now, let’s shift our focus upon on-page optimization features you should include while creating your blog posts.

1. Meta Title

The meta title is one of the most vital factor of on-page SEO techniques. If your title immediately grabs the attention of a visitor and it is well optimized, people will click on it fast, higher the clicks, higher the ranking.

Use a targeted phrase or keyword in the starting of the title tag (H1). If you are unable to do so, try to include it anywhere in the title.

Please avoid the mistake of repeating similar keywords in the title more than once. People think it boosts ranking, it actually brings it down. The title length should not be more than 65 characters.

2. Post Permalink Structure

Another important element in on-page SEO is the correct display of URL. URL should contain the target keyword; just refrain from adding brackets, special characters, commas, and symbols, etc.

Dashes can be used to distinguish the strings in URL structure. They are known as “pretty” permalinks. A lot of web browsers support this structure.

A good permalink looks like this:

https://www.example.com/post-title-separated-with-dashes

3. Heading Tags

Heading tags should be used to highlight critical points, heading, and sub-headings.

H1 is the title tag in WordPress. Once you use the H1 tags, refrain from using it anywhere else in the blog post. If you need to separate sections use H2, H3 tag.

One more thing, don’t add an abundance of H2 and H3 tags, the Google algorithm doesn’t like that at all.

4. Keyword Density

Keyword density should be approximately 1.5% and it should be the amalgamation of LSI keywords. However, there is no set formula. I would advise you to make use of semantically related words so the search engine can comprehend your content with ease.

The main keyword should be used one time in the first paragraph and then in the ending paragraph. Make sure when you add these keywords, it doesn’t disturb the flow of the paragraph and makes actual sense.

5. Meta Tags

Every blog post should contain Meta descriptions that are distinctive and appropriate.

The meta description should have a targeted keyword in it. There is a common misconception that Meta description is not considered for the ranking, but I think otherwise. I have observed a good relationship between ranking and optimized Meta description.

The job of search engines is to look for keywords, however, clicks on a post are equally important. The meta description should be written cohesively and it should be user-friendly.

Google has declared that Meta keywords are irrelevant to them, but a search engine, for example, Bing still feels that they are relevant.

6. Images

Traffic is generated due to image optimization in image searches.

“Alt text” and “image title” are the keywords that make your blog post direct and focused.

On the other hand, the most important factor is:

Image increases engagement.

It’s simple if the user is engaged; it means he will be staying on your website. The longer he stays, the higher the rank.

You should also keep in mind that large images will make your website slow. A slow-loading website will definitely bring your Google rank down. So one should:

1. Use a CDN (Use Cloudflare for Free)
2. Compress large images
3. Use a caching plugin
4. Post’s Word Count

Blog posts with fewer words usually don’t do great on search engines, because the search engines see them as “less knowledgeable”.

There might be a few exceptional cases; however, a regular blog post with a minimum of 1500 words is generally preferred and highly recommended. But if you can’t handle 1500 words, then 600 to 1000 words you can write especially if you are having an eCommerce website and writing product descriptions.

To be on the safe side, one should be well-researched and provide plenty of information. If you are targeting competitive keywords, then long posts become a necessity.

What you can do is, ponder on other posts having a target keyword and check how many do they have.

As mentioned before, there is no specific count but longer posts are ranked higher since they contain more information.

8. Add Schema

This technique is rarely used by most people. It is used to surpass your competitors rank wise. The search engine can apprehend your content better if you add schemas. Basically, schemas give relevance to your content. It can be used in a business article or a blog post.

In WordPress, there are plenty of plugins that allow you to add many kinds of schemas. If you don’t use WordPress, then other tools can be used to create Schema markups, which can be included in your post manually.

9. Internal Linking

You can always add links to relevant posts present in your blog within your blog posts.

Interlinking helps people to spend quality time on your blog, this, in turn, helps to boost your ranking.

The keyword should be used as an anchor text when you are interlinking, but make sure you are not going overboard.

When search engines detect interlinking they realize that your blog is giving additional information, and not just what is written in the specific content.

Your interlinking should be relevant and included only when necessary.

10. External Linking

External linking is also great practice for a higher rank in on-page SEO techniques. In this technique, you provide links to external websites on your blog. Make sure the link you provide is relevant to your content.

It is very important to place links of external websites that are trusted. If you feel uncertain about the reputation of the website, you can add a no-follow tag to prevent giving your link juice to bad websites.

A do-follow link should be for trusted websites, whereas Nofollow links should be for shady websites.

Popular trustworthy websites that have relevant content can be added, readers will adore it and your website will be deemed credible.

11. Make your content engaging

Can’t stress on this enough; write engaging blog posts.

If you think you can get lucky by writing poor quality content and deceive search engines, then you’re wrong.

First of all, the content you’re writing should revolve around a keyword. Try to understand the ways your readers become enthralled and learn engaging techniques. You can ask them interesting questions and interact with them by answering. See what they enjoy to read the most, and write about that.

People often get bored and leave the website when they feel the content is not engaging enough. If they find the content engaging and spend time on it, then your ranking will increase very rapidly.

Checklist for On-Page SEO:

We have put together a checklist, so it’s easier for you to tick every box when you are trying to raise your rankings.

Keyword placement

1. Have approximately 1.5% keyword density
2. Place keyword in the title.
3. Place keyword in the permalink.
4. Place keyword in the beginning paragraph.
5. Place keyword in the image alt tag.
6. Add LSI keyword in H2 or H3
7. Add LSI keywords in body

Other aspects of on-page SEO tips

1. Minimum limit of 1000 words
2. Page load speed optimization
3. Meta Title should be within 65 characters
4. Add related post at the end of each post to decrease bounce rate
5. Image optimization (resizing and compressing)
6. Place internal links in related articles
7. Include social sharing buttons in your blog posts
8. Include multimedia like slides, video etc.
9. Using GIF images is useful as per my experience.
10. The meta description should be within 320 characters, and the main keyword must be used once in it.
11. Add outbound links to good quality websites
12. Include an image for social media websites if you want to post a different image than your featured one.

Things to avoid:

1. Don’t overcrowd keywords
2. Don’t use H1 tag inside the post and not more than once on the whole page.
3. Don’t use the same H2 and H3 tags over and over again.

Things to include:

1. Use the intended keyword in the post title
2. Content length should be according to research. See the word length of the top 10 results that show up on your query and try to set your word limit around that number.
3. Make use of long-tail keywords
4. Eliminate dates from your blog post, if you’re planning to write evergreen content
5. Ask users to engage when the blog post comes to an end

On-page SEO tools:

You can evaluate the top 10 results of your query with the help of a few famous on-page SEO tools. Also, some tools can do a comparison between the top page and your page to provide you with data along with recommendations to make your page better.

The tools mentioned above are:

• Page Optimizer Pro
• SEMRush SEO writing assistant
• Website Auditor

These above tips will improve your on-page SEO and will help in increasing your rank on the search engine.

One thing you should always remember is:

A search engine can’t be tricked for a longer period of time

Articles that rank the highest tend to have more information are useful and engage with their readers the most. Work hard to produce quality content that your readers and the search engine will end up loving.

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Helpful Resources:

• On-Page SEO – Backlinko
• On-page SEO – Moz