How to do On-page SEO? A complete guide
On-page SEO can be the most tedious and time-consuming task of running a blog. There are many components you need to work on to make sure your website delivers the best user experience for search engines (SEO). In this article, I will be covering all the components and show you how to do on-page SEO for your website. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Choose a relevant keyword
You have to research a relevant keyword before going to do On-page SEO. Otherwise, you can not rank on google easily especially if you and your site are new. Google keeps changing its ranking rules, so you have to keep up with them. You can use Google’s keyword planner tool to find keywords that your customers are searching for in their search engines. You can use this tool to identify which keywords are most likely to help you convert traffic into customers.
In addition, you have to understand the content of your page, what kind of content does it contain? Is it informative or is it just a sales page? Do you have social proof like testimonials, reviews, etc? If yes then use those as your keywords because they are more likely to get a higher ranking than others like “buy now” or “checkout” etc. You can use SEMrush to check the keyword’s intent. It will show up whether a user wants information or wants to pay money.
Step 2: Add the keyword to the Title tag
The title tag is one of the most important on-page SEO elements that you can use to optimize your content. The title tag is what displays in the browser tab, so it must be optimized for SEO. This is a basic idea. But if you want to know in detail which on-page element carries the most weight for SEO then I have written a complete article about that. Kindly check out that.
The title tag should include a few keywords, but not too many. It should also be relevant to the post and accurately describe what the reader will find in the content.
Here’s how to optimize your title tag:
First, write a descriptive headline that includes a few keywords from your research. This will help people find your content when they search for related terms on Google.
Include your target keyword(s) in the first 60 characters of your headline.
If possible, make sure your headline includes keywords related to your target audience (e.g., if you’re writing an article about how to grow tomatoes in small spaces, use words like “gardening” or “patio”). In this way, you can both optimize your content for SEO and also attract your potential readers. The title tag is the most important on-page SEO element that carries the most weight for SEO. If you want to know more then I have written a complete article about “which on page element carries the most weight for SEO”. I have discussed everything out there. Kindly check out the article.
Step 3: Add the keyword to the Meta Description
A meta description is also a very important aspect of on-page SEO. You should optimize your meta description with your targeted keyword if you want to rank on google. Without optimizing these things you can’t rank on google.
Meta descriptions are used by search engines to show snippets of a web page in the search results when users search for information about your site. A meta description is also a good way to convince visitors to click through to your website from a search engine result, so it’s important that it’s compelling and contains relevant keywords.
Meta descriptions help people get an idea of what they’ll find if they click through to your site. This can be especially important when you have multiple pages with similar content or titles—for example when you have multiple pages with the same product name or category name.
Step 4: Add the main keyword in the body
You should optimize the content body perfectly with your targeted keyword. In addition, maintain the keyword density of your targeted keyword. You should maintain a keyword density of 2 to 3% to get optimal results.
Keyword density is the ratio of the number of times a keyword appears in your content compared to the total number of words in that content. Keyword density is calculated by dividing the number of times a keyword appears by the total number of words, then multiplying that result by 100. For example, if you have a 500-word article and it contains three instances of your target keyword, you would divide three by 500 and multiply the result by 100 to find that your keyword density is 0.06 percent.
The goal with keyword density is to reach a certain threshold without over-optimizing your content or making it look unnatural. The best way to avoid over-optimizing is by using descriptive words in place of your keywords whenever possible. For example, instead of saying “red dress,” say “stylish red dress.” This makes your text more readable but still keeps up with the required keyword density.
In this step, you need to write quality content that is well structured. You should use one or more keywords in these tags as well. But don’t ruin readability to do SEO, google and readers both don’t like this. Moreover, you must write high-quality content by adding substance and value to each post.
Step 6: Add internal links and external links
The main goal of your content is to deliver value to your users. To do that, you need to make sure that they can easily navigate and find what they are looking for.
You should Add internal links and external links to your content to improve user experience and also your internal linking.
Internal linking is when you link words or phrases in one post or page to another. External links are when you link words or phrases in one post or page to a website outside of your site (such as another website).
Step 7: Set up a sitemap.xml file
You should add a sitemap.xml file to make it easier for Google to find and index your blog posts or website pages.
This is a simple and easy-to-do thing, but it is very important for your website.
A sitemap.xml file can be created and uploaded to the root directory of your site (wherever you have placed your index.php file). This file will then list all of the pages on your site and tell Google in what order they should be visited (as far as possible).
In WordPress, if you install any SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or something else it will automatically create an XML sitemap for your website or blogsite. If you want to read more about XML sitemaps then you can visit this google guide to know more.
On-page SEO is that part of SEO in which you focus on ranking your website in search engine result pages (SERPs) using the various aspects of your website. There are various ways to do On-page SEO, but the most famous one is ‘on-page keyword optimization, which includes the usage of keywords or keywords in the title of a web page, Meta description tag, header tag, body text, and image alt tag, etc. So keep in mind these above things. I hope that you have enjoyed this article and have learned many things. Thanks for reading.