How to improve your Onpage Optimization
On Page Optmization, why does a budding SEO Analyst have to familiarize this?
The World Wide Web is similar to a busy marketplace. What should you do to make your online presence heard in such a high traffic place? The first step is to ensure your website is upto date with the basics of On-Page SEO, the process is called SEO- On Page Optimization. As a result the performance of your website increases and will become visible to target users.
Looking at it from a broader perspective, a website is created by its owners with the intention of being viewed, read and thereby interactively used by users. To achieve this purpose your website should arrive in the top search results. A website which follows Google's latest updates increases its probability of arriving in the top search results.
SEO Optimization is broadly classified into two major parts:- On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization.
What is On Page Optimization?
On Page Optimization refers to the practice of optimizing web pages to improve their position in search engine results and get relevant traffic. To achieve this you need to optimize both the content and the HTML source code of a web page.
Following are some of the key factors that you should focus when you are attempting On Page Optimization:
- Rich Snippet
- Technical Quality
- Relevant content
Let us delve deeper into each of these factors.
* Rich Snippet:
A Snippet is displayed when a search engine shows your website in its search results. The snippet gives users a small preview of your website's content.
Here is an example of a normal snippet as it appears in Google's search results page.
Contents of a snippet include the following:
- SEO Title
- Meta Description
- URL
SEO Title:
SEO Title or Meta title is created for your snippet by making necessary changes in the head session of the HTML page of your website.
Here is how the code for SEO Title looks like:
<head>
<title>Your SEO Title </title>
</head>
Do's and Dont's for an optimal SEO Title
- An SEO Title should not consist of just 2 or 3 words, instead, it should be written as a sentence- as told in SEO Starter guide. 'Webmaster Search Console' Tool of Google shows an error- " Too short Title" when the SEO Title is just a few words.
- The SEO Title of a snippet should not exceed a maximum of 55-60 characters length(~ approx one sentence). Maximum Pixel width prescribed by Google is 512 pixels.
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- If the SEO Title length is longer than the prescribed length then the complete title will not be shown in the snippet. Instead, your snippet will be appended by dots by Google search engine. Reason for such a length restriction is because Google's search text box has a maximum of 70 char length.
- An all uppercase SEO Title shows error in the search console tool as it needs more pixel width.
- SEO Title for a web page must be unique, there should be no title duplication on your website.
- An SEO Title should be free from spelling or grammatical errors.
- SEO Title must be impressive in style and Content. Hence an all lowercase SEO Title is not impressive enough.
- When there is no SEO Title available, Google takes h1 for SEO Title. In case h1 is not available, h2 tag is taken for SEO Title. In turn, if h2 tag is also not available, Google takes bold words or anchor text from a powerful link in your website
Rich Snippet:
Additional data should be displayed to convert a normal snippet into a rich snippet. The following are some of those :
- A star rating
- An event mentioned or information on the date, location, etc.
- A search box in a snippet
- A cached image in a snippet.
This extra data is taken from structured data found in a page's HTML.
A rich snippet is more eye-catching when compared to a normal snippet, increasing the probability of click on your website.
Meta Description:
Meta Description is an HTML tag which summarizes a page's content. It is shown in search engine results mostly when the searched phrase is present in the description. Hence optimizing a meta description is very important for On Page SEO.
Example for meta description in a snippet is:
Do's and Dont's for an optimum meta description:
- Meta Description must be unique
- Meta description could be part of a sentence in <body> portion of the same HTML page.
- All uppercase letters are not encouraged in a meta description.
- A meta description can be a maximum of ~155-160 characters in length. An optimal meta description length is between 50-160 characters.
- If a meta description is not given, Google takes sentences from the content of your website.
Here is how a meta description attribute looks like:
<meta name = "description" content = "This is where your meta decsription lies">
- A reader's curiosity should be inspired when he reads your website's meta description. You need to provide just the needed information.
- If your meta description is longer than 154 characters, search engines cut off extra characters and show dots appended.
Body session:
Following are the highlights of body session needed for On Page Optimization.
- h1 tag is the most visible part of the body session
- Next comes h2 tag
- Only one h1 tag in a webpage as multiple h1 tags will confuse Google crawlers. When there are multiple h1 tags Google puts your webpage in a "Sandbox", instead of putting your website in the regular Google database.
- the h1 tag must have a maximum of 8-9 words, it plays a major role in deciding whether the user has to go into the website or not.
- There can be more than one h2 tags according to need.
- Similarly, h3 tag also can be used more than once.
- h3, h4 tags must be related to h2
* Technical Quality:
The code of your website should be high in quality. You need to confirm whether you are unknowingly blocking crawlers from indexing your website. You can use the help of SEO- friendly platforms like WordPress, etc for taking care of most technical SEO issues.
* Relevant Content
Users will visit your website only if it contains information they are looking for. Hence your website should contain good and relevant content. High ranking for a website is mostly based on the content on the website. Hence the content should have the right keywords, the right information and must be easy to read.
