On - Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) : All you would like to know about

On-Page SEO (Search Engine Optimization) : Tips & Best Practices

We had a detailed explanation about SEO and different parameter of SEO in last post "All you want to know about SEO". Today we will be talking about On - Page SEO.

There are different standard factors of On-Page SEO :

1. Web Content
2. URL Structure 
3. Title Tag
4. Meta Description
5. Meta Keywords ( Not Important from Google point of view, but some search engines still give preference to meta keywords)
6. Alt Tags (Image Tags)
7. Heading Tags
8. Title Attribute
9. Sitemap.html
10. Sitemap.xml
11. Robots.txt

Here we will be discussing each and every point in a detailed manner.

Content Writing

Web Content

As we all know that "Content is King" in digital world. We all need to be very particular about how we write our web copy content. 

Writing content for web is completely different from article writing, blog writing or any other style of content writing. 

Writing for Web:

Writing for web is different then writing for any other properties like news paper, magazine etc. Web Content always should be responsive, interactive, informative and detailed descriptive for the product or service offered by your website. 

Web content should be always written keeping users in mind and should include keywords which a user can generally search for. 

Identically web content should not be more then  250 words and should written in different paragraphs ( each paragraph having a different heading). Also it should be taken care that uses of keywords should be limited ( 3% to 4%). 

"Google and other search engines always look for fresh and quality content, so it should be kept in mind that there should not be any copied content on your webpages."

URL Structure:

URL structure is another important factor for search engine ranking. Most of the search engines prefer URL's which contain targeted keyword in the URL structure.

There are basically two kind of URL's 

- Dynamic URL

- Static URL

Dynamic URL's are the one which are system generated. These URL's will be mainly seen for E-Commerce portals where products are listed in database and whenever a query is generated for specific product, it's product ID is added to URL with special characters like ?,&,#,= .

"Previously Google was not considering dynamic URL's SEO friendly as it was not able to read and understand special characters but now Google has started ranking dynamic URL's as well."

As per Search Engine Land Google say, in bold, “avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static.” But Google also admitted that “static URLs might have a slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates.” However, Google said “dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.” 

Statatic URL's are the one which contains proper folder structure and page name and creates a user friendly URL. Static URL's are considered to be more SEO friendly as they are easy to understand for users and search engine crawlers both.

Dynamic URL's can always be converted to static URL using 301 redirection. 

Title Tag

Title Tag is basically used to define what individual pages are talking about. Title tag is one of the critical factor for every web page as Google and other search engines provides top level priority to it. 

Title tag should contain at max four keywords separated by , or | . Top priority keyword should be placed at first place while writing title.

Ideal limit for a title tag should be 65 to 70 characters, as Google display limit of title in search results is around that. But it should also be kept in mind that a message should be completely conveyed through it and should have some call to action, which can motivate users to click on particular URL.

Title tag should be unique for each page.

Meta Description 

Meta description is a short description about the page. It should contain product specification, or service details present on this and should have a call to action which can provoke user to check the page. 

Ideally a message which you want to convey to your audience should be written with in the limit of 150 characters as Google can not display more characters then that in search results. Your audience will be able to see only 150 characters and they will take their action based on that.

Unique meta description should be written for individual pages, which creates a differentiation between them.

Only thing to note is that there should not be a unnecessary repetition of keywords. 

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords are no more useful for higher search engine ranking on Google. It is absolutely fine we we don't include them on our page. But since there are other search engines who considers meta keywords as one of the ranking factor, you should always include them. 

Ideal length of meta keywords is also 150 characters where different variations of targeted keywords can be included.

Alt Tags

Alt tags or image tags are used to define an image for search engines. For every image present on your webpage there should be an Alt tag as it tells search engine what that image is talking about. 

It should be kept in mind that images should be named properly before using it on webpage, should not leave image names as image1.jpeg, image2.jpeg etc. Naming images helps search engines to identify images. 

Also it should be taken care that images used should be in .jpeg or .jpg format as they are lighter in weight.

Heading Tags

Heading tags are basically used to tell search engines about the important topics on a particular web page. There are six different heading tags starting from H1 till H6. H1 is provided to highest and most important heading of the page.

It should be taken care that heading tags include your keyword and it should not be way too long.

Title Attribute

Title attributes are assigned with hyperlinks present on website. Hyperlinks informs search engines what that hyperlink is about.

You can check title attribute by moving mouse over hyperlink (if present).

Sitemap.html

Sitemap.html is a file which contains all the links present on website (hyperlink format) arranged as per the folder structure. 

This is an another page present on website where user can check for all the available pages on the site and navigate around.

Sitemap.html is also helpful from search engines point of view as it one of the good way for internal linking, which is considered to be good from SEO point of view.

Sitemap.xml

Sitemap.xml file is created for search engine crawlers. This file is uploaded on root folder of website ( on server where website is hosted) and then verified through Google Webmaster. 

Sitemap.xml file is not directly visible to users. It contains all the URL's of website which works like a single destination for search engine crawlers to crawl all the pages present on the site. Crawlers don't have to navigate through the site to find the links present there.

You can also define frequency of crawling over here.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt file is created to inform search engine crawlers that which pages on website they are allowed to crawl and which they are not. 

This file is a .txt file uploaded at the root level or web folder. 

Overall we have covered most of the important On-Page SEO factors. Will keep posting about online marketing in future.