SEO On-Page Optimization - Basic Practices and Guidelines

On Page Optimization is the practises of optimizing web pages to rank higher. When we attempt to optimize a page, first thing that we remember that is we are helpers of google to crawl a page easily.

In On Optimization google initially note URL (uniform resource locator) of a web page, after that crawl the areas SEO title, meta description, meta tags which are under head section. Then check body section (h1 tag, h2, h3 tags).

SEO Title Optimization

Title should contain focusing keywords, Relevant to topic or topic reflecting and meaningful.
Make title to more attractive and impressive.
Ensure that there is no spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes.
Title should be unique, means each page of same websites set different titles to avoid keyword cannibalism which negatively affect our ranking position.
Must contain minimum 3 words to build a meaningful title.
character limitations- 55-60 words are more advisable to make a title.
pixel width is maximum 512. Above 512-pixel titles shown in the snippet by using dotes due to insufficiency of space. Which lose its meaning and attractiveness.
Not write title in full capital letters (may be increase pixel width) and small letters (decrease attractiveness).

A questionnaire video published on googles official website. Which were about peoples concern on the spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes found in title. Matt Cutts, former head at google team replied to the question by arising another question. "When you search about a product in search engine that you like, but the site title contain so may errors. In the case you trust the site and by product?". This situation gave people to think about the seriousness of a SEO title.

What is Snippet?

Snippet is the search results we can see in platforms like google. Which is the short summery portion of website. Snippet part contains

Web site name
URL
SEO Title
Site description
Favicon (Website's logo miniature form)
Read more option (new feature)

What is featured snippet/Advanced snippet and its advantages?

In a featured snippet or advanced snippet have extra settings to make it more attractive and impressive. They are

Site links (When google index a page which contain a basic snippet contents and extra subpages are shown below. which are relevant to our page and informative.)
Star ratings are present.
Presents of relevant thumbnails.
Events included
Breadcrumbs (In advanced snippet we can see this symbol >>)

Advantages of featured snippet/Advanced snippets?

More attractive than basic snippets and also click through rate (CTR) can be increase by using this.

CTR- when user search anything in search engines, our website visible in results then that is counted as impressions. Also, there are some users click our website page. The ratio of impressions and click rate in percentage form is known as CTR rate.

In the absence of a perfect SEO title google consider h1 tag in body portions. secondly consider h2 tag and so on. In body portion biggest portion is h1 that's why search engines choose h1 in the absence of title.

Meta descriptions

Open directory project is a directory of business contain business details or listings. Approvals are done by volunteers so google trust them more.

Meta description should reflect topic and most relevant.
Use focusing keywords and synonyms to make a description
Keep more attractive and impressive
Character limitation 155-160 for a page, for article, blog post, news posts maximum is 150 characters because publishing date included in this case. So, it's better to limit characters in 150 for blog posts.
Pixel width 1024.
It's better to change meta description after a modification.
Meta description should unique.
Avoid spelling and grammatical mistakes for a perfect meta description.

On initial time period some error messages were displayed in search consoles or html suggestions are

Title is too long
Title is too short
Meta description is too long
Meta description is too short

It's better to start meta description with an action word.

Meta tags

Robots meta tags

Robots meta tag gives instruction to web crawlers that crawl our web page.

The above is the example of html view of robots meta tag. If we don't use meta tags, already web crawlers get instructions to crawl our page and follow links by default.

Another situation is shown below:

In this case robots meta tag gives instruction to web crawlers that no need to crawl the page and make the links no follow.

In case one link need to change no follow, we can change that link by editing hyper link area specify that link by using rel=no follow attribution.

noodp instruction: It's another type of instruction. The instruction is, do not use the description provided at in open directory project.

noydir: Do not use description provided at in yahoo directory.

Key word meta tags

Currently this meta tag is not used. Google does not consider this as a ranking factor.

e.g.: <meta name="keywords" content=" Seo company Kochi, Seo services Kochi, Seo company Ernakulam etc."/>

It's better to limit maximum 3,4 keywords, which are most important to our page (155-160 characters). The key word meta tag irrelevancy in current situation is due to the overuse of unwanted keywords and keyword stuffing. Key word meta tags do not use statement officially published by google in 2009 September.

Head section meta tags are over, now let's understand body meta tags.

Meta tags in Body portion

h1 tags:

The h1 tag is most important area in body section, because of its visibility due to large size. Also, most user attention generating area.

It's better to give one h1 tag in a page. If we give more than one h1 tag, a doubtful situation created by google and that will be saved into a temporary data base known as sand box. Also, this doubtful situation happened in case of a page contain different meaning contained Seo title, meta description and body content. Sometimes it may be due to over optimization. It's very difficult to understand whether our page is in sand box.

When we choose a h1 tag should follow the below points:

Should be topic reflecting content
Make the sentence more meaningful by using focusing keywords.
Not too long, maximum 7 or 8 words to maintain attractiveness of page.
Ensure that contents are error free by both grammatical and spelling.
One h1 tag is advisable.

h2 tags and h3 tags:

One h2 tag is better
In case of a content rich article, we can use more than one h2, h3 tags.
Ensure that no spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes.
we can give main keyword on h1 tag and secondary keywords on h2 tags. Its beneficial, because secondary keyword searched user also land our page.
Contents which are under h2, h3 tags should be relevant to heading.

What is overview page:

Not for a particular one. All items or products contained in a page are listed.

Landing page:

It's for a particular item, all about its description and more information's. The chance of conversion is very high when we reach on landing page.

Major points we focus on content portion optimization:

Give simple sentences for improve its reading easiness and also help to deduct bounce rate.
Sentences not too long. When our sentence is large split them into two but, should give space after a full stop and comma.
Topic reflecting content.
Improve clarity of content, it's better to give matching background color for reading easiness.
Give importance in starting sentences use keywords in this area because we know, when the absence of meta description there may chances to take first sentence and displayed in snippet.

Image optimization:

It's better to upload image in webp format. Google notice 3 criteria for an image optimization. Should be careful about the uploaded image is topic relevant.

Image called area in html is img alt="image name". Don't forget to give alt name.
Image file name helps google to identify the image. Not give spaces for file name.
Content description in image published page helps google to identify the image.

After following these 3 factors google trust the uploaded image completely. More than 2 or 3 image uploading case we can use lazy loading option by apply "lazy" in image called area. It solves loading time issue for our webp image with high quality.

Anchor text Optimization

Anchor text optimization is the process of choosing clickable words in hyperlinks to clear context about linked page.

Advantages of using Anchor texts in webpage:

Boost crawling process. In body portion most visible area is anchor tag contained area.
Help google to easily understand the topic.
When we give hyperlinks to highly trustable sites such as Wikipedia, it makes our website also trustable.
Internal links are helps to users to navigate our different pages and improve trust value.
Click rate and user interaction increases through these anchor texts.

In anchor text optimization we careful about some points they are listed below.

Don't give hyperlink from our focusing keyword. Because if we add hyperlink from our keyword to another site is counted as recommendation for that site hence, our rank reduced and recommended site's rank increased.
Don't give hyperlink to non-trustable website.
Over anchor text optimization may be punished by google.

Old school SEO practices

Earlier time there are so many practices done by people are not currently used. These old practices are known as old school SEO practices. Also, they submit some articles about these both wanted and unwanted practices called myths. These articles are known as old school SEO articles. In that time one of the main practices is keyword bolding. They believe bold keywords are boost ranking process. Finally, google officially declare a questionnaire video related with this practice. Matt Cutts officially declare that bold keywords never depend on ranking process, but he conveys 3 important messages through this video. They are,

If we use tough paragraph, it's better to give some words are in bold for improve reading easiness.
Give bold property for keywords which are in starting sentence.
When we are ready to optimize a page not only consider web crawlers but also consider users.

Key word occurrence in a webpage

In old school SEO practices, they used 5% keyword density. At that that keyword stuffing activities increases. Google officially declare that keyword density is not taken for ranking priority. But use minimum 2 keywords for better ranking.

Keyword density= (Keywords/Total word count) *100

When we choose keywords just understand the priority of terms contained in that keyword for example, SEO company Kochi most important term in these words is SEO, secondly company and last Kochi. If we want to use more keywords just use synonyms.

I have already published a blog on History and Evolution of SEO.

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Seethal SEO Analyst