On Page SEO: A Complete Beginner’s Guide on 2023

It takes effort to produce content that Google and consumers will find valuable. Once you’ve done that, you need to use On Page SEO to put the cherry on top.

To learn what it takes and how to achieve it, keep reading.

Basics of On Page SEO

On Page SEO: What is it?

Anything you can do on the page to raise its rating is called on-page SEO. It seeks to make your material easier for Google and other search engines to comprehend and process.

What makes on-page SEO so crucial?

To determine if your page is a relevant search result, Google looks at what you can affect with on page SEO. These consist of the search terms on the website and how visitors utilize them.

Performing on-page SEO

Duplicate keywords are not on-page SEO, even if Google considers the keywords on your page. Your rankings will suffer if you do this frequently.

So let’s have a look at some clever optimizations that work.

For the page title, use the H1 element.

Google can better grasp the content of your pages thanks to heading tags, such as H1.

For the title, it is ideal to use one H1 per page.

Utilize Ahrefs Site Audit to crawl your website and retrieve the content report to identify pages with empty or missing H1 tags. You may accomplish this without cost with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account.

For subtitles, use H2-H6 tags.

Wrapping subtitles in H tags will help your content’s visual structure. Subtitles should be in H2 or H3, etc. The text will be simpler for search engines to comprehend and scan.

Create a catchy title tag

The first information needed to choose which result to click is frequently title tags. It would be best if you thus made them compelling. Here are some pointers:

1. Make them brief. To prevent truncation, less than 70 characters are preferred.
2. Search intent matching Inform search engines that you provide what they are looking for.
3. Give details. Avoid being nebulous or generic.
4. Avoid using clickbait. Verify that they align with your content.
5. Specify a keyword. If a close choice makes more sense, use it.
6. Specify the year. For topics that demand novelty.

Each indexed page has to include a title tag. If you’d like, you may utilize the Ahrefs site audit to identify pages with problematic title tags, such as those that are excessively long or empty. A free AWT account is all that is required. Go to the content report to look for problems after signing up and exploring your site.

Create enticing meta descriptions

Although meta descriptions don’t affect rankings[5], they can increase traffic and clicks. Therefore, Google frequently employs them for the search results’ description snippets. These are some writing hints for them:

1. Make them brief. To prevent truncation, it is better to use less than 160 characters.
2. Lengthen the title tag. Include any USPs that are ineffective for you.
3. Search intent matches two times what search engines desire.
4. Adopt an energetic tone. Directly speak with the candidate.
5. Specify a keyword. In the results, Google frequently uses bold to highlight it.

Ahrefs Site Audit may be used to check for pages with problematic meta descriptions, such as those that are excessively long or empty. A free AWT account is once again required for this. Go to the content report to look for problems after signing up and exploring your site.

Set SEO-friendly URLs

Your URL structure has to be solid if you want your website to succeed with SEO. But each page still has to have an informative slug. Google suggests that you utilize pertinent language in your material. Often, using a target term is the simplest way to accomplish this.

Improve your image

Your pages’ images may appear in Google image search results, increasing traffic. However, for them to be optimized, you must perform three things.

Use meaningful filenames

According to Google, the file names indicate the image’s subject.

As a result, Dog.jpg is superior to IMG 859045. jpg. These naming suggestions:

• Give details. puppy.jpg should be replaced with black-puppy.jpg
• Be succinct. Compared to my-super-cute-black-puppy-named-Jeff.jpg, black-puppy.jpg is superior.
• Avoid typing keywords. Puppy-dog-pooch.jpg is superior to black-puppy.jpg.
• Hyphenate all words together. Better than Black puppy.jpg is Black-puppy.jpg

Utilize illustrative alt text

Google can also decipher an image’s meaning from its alt text (alternative text).

This HTML property is used to describe a picture in img> elements. It is not visible on the page itself and appears as follows:

Puppy.jpg is the image’s source and its alt text.

Alt text’s main objective is to increase accessibility for users of screen readers. They transform the page’s text, graphics, and audio into audio.

Here is our top advice for alt text:

Give details. Describe what the image truly depicts.

Be succinct. Try to keep things as brief as you can.

Avoid typing keywords. According to Google, users will have a bad experience as a result.

Please don’t claim that it is a picture. The words “Image…” or “Image…” are not required in descriptions.

Your site may be searched for photos with missing alt text using the Images report in Ahrefs Site Audit.

Use external links

Some individuals believe that connecting to other sources is detrimental to SEO. Nothing in the evidence supports this. According to Google, connecting to other websites is a fantastic method to give your readers more value. Please don’t be reluctant to act accordingly where it makes sense.

Prove your knowledge

Although experience alone is insufficient, Google rewards expert content. You must make the reader aware of your experience. Google suggests the following methods for doing this.

Display your expertise on the subject.

Clearly state the information’s origins.

Include a link to the author’s “author” page and general information about the author.

Make sure there are no verifiable factual inaccuracies in the material.

Featured snippets that are optimized

The highlighted portion provides a concise response to the researcher’s query. Nearly the majority of the results that Google obtains from online search results pages are on the top 10 pages. This implies that obtaining a shard can accelerate your approach to the top spot.

The best chances to use highlighted snippets are typically those that involve keywords, such as:

• The top 10 already includes you.
• Google has already made the highlighted snippet visible.
• The shard is not yours yet.

The Ahrefs site explorer may be used to locate these elements. But first, filter the top 10 spots where you don’t have a snippet in the frequent keywords report after entering your site.

Obtain rich bits of structured data.

Search results called “featured snippets” emphasize structured data that is included on web pages. Their objective is to give crawlers a quick overview of the outcome.

Example of a featured snippet in search results

Although it doesn’t affect rankings, structured data aids Google in comprehending the content of your sites. Additionally, they improve the appearance of your website in search results, which may encourage additional clicks.

Avoid using poor strategies for On Page SEO.

Your website’s material need to serve three purposes: to inform visitors about how to utilize it and to explain its goals. Not just any content should be produced to do well in searches. The goal of ranking is to assist researchers, which is a technique for that aim—putting the horse before the cart puts us in danger of stumbling onto low-quality information.

Let’s examine low-value techniques that should be avoided while producing search engine-optimized material.

Weak content

The traditional content strategy was to produce a page for every variation of your keywords to rank on page 1 for those extremely narrow searches, even though a website normally contains distinct pages on a range of themes.

For instance, even though each page essentially says the same thing, if you were selling wedding gowns, you might have distinct pages for bridal gowns, bridal dresses, wedding gowns, and wedding dresses.

Google makes it quite apparent that you should have a comprehensive website on a subject rather than a few mediocre sites for each keyword variant.

Duplicated Content

“duplicate content” apparently refers to the material utilized across several domains or pages on a single site. Content that has been “cleaned” goes further and makes overt, unlawful use of material from other websites. The content may be used again as is, or it may be minimally edited and then reposted without adding new information.

Cloaking

The fundamental tenet of search engine best practices is to serve human visitors and search engine crawlers with the same material. This implies that you should never obfuscate content that is visible to the ordinary user in the HTML code of your website.

Search engines refer to the violation of this rule as “masking,” and they take steps to stop these pages from appearing in search results. Masking can be done in various ways and for various motives—both good and bad—the scenario where Spotify provided consumers with a different material than Google is seen below.

Keywords Stuffing

You’ve probably experienced keyword confusion if instructed, “You need to add a vital keyword on this page X times.” Many individuals falsely believe that if you repeat a keyword X times in the text of your website, you will rank better. Instead, the page itself should give value in addition to employing the keywords, even if Google searches for those terms and others linked to them on your site’s pages. The page will seem like it was written by someone other than a robot if it’s going to be helpful to users, so organically use your keywords and phrases in a way your readers can comprehend.

Congratulations on finishing the On Page SEO Beginner’s Guide if you’ve read this far! We’ve already covered how search engines uncover keyword possibilities to target, how they crawl, index, and rank material, and how on page SEO tactics may help you locate your pages.