To run a successful SEO campaign, on-page optimization is an important process. It allows you to rank higher on the SERP for a variety of keywords and attract tons of organic or free traffic from the search engine.

SEO on-page optimization techniques encompass all the efforts or activities conducted on the website to optimize it for the search engine crawlers and the users. If these techniques are not implemented in the right way, it can harm the search visibility of the website. In a worst-case scenario, the search engine may penalize you leading to a significant drop in rankings.

SEO has another dimension – off-page SEO, it includes link-building and other signals used to increase the reputation and authority of the domain.

In this blog post, we will provide you with a checklist for all the on-page optimization techniques you can implement on the website to increase search visibility and make the website user-friendly.

9 SEO On-Page Optimization Techniques to Improve Rankings

Now that we have a basic understanding of on-page SEO, let’s observe the techniques you can actually implement. Arguably, there are more than nine techniques. However, for the purpose of this blog, we will cover the most effective and the top ten techniques.

1. High-Quality Content

Content lies at the core of SEO on-page optimization. High-quality content can perform with or without SEO; however, poor content will still fail the purpose with or without SEO. Hence, publishing high-quality content should be the first step in improving the on-page SEO of the website. How do we identify quality content? The content must be original, unpublished anywhere else on the web, should include text elements to accompany other forms of content, should bring value to the users, and it must be in-depth.

2. Titles and Meta Descriptions

The page title and meta description is a basic SEO tip crucial for on-page optimization. Without proper title and description, the search engine may fail to identify the exact subject of the content and therefore, fail to rank it correctly.
When a piece of content gets crawled by the search engine, the title and description are analyzed and then, depending on the domain authority and other off-page SEO factors the content gets ranked on the search engine.
A good title and description include the target keyword and is brief. A general recommendation, the title of the page should be less than 60 characters and description 200 characters.

3. Optimizing Content

Optimizing content is probably the most extensive process of on-page as it involves curating the actual content on the page. It involves keyword research and implementing the keyword in various places of the content such as the title, description, first paragraph of the content, and sparsely within the body of the page. You would also want to include long-tail keywords as they bring relevancy to the content. After Rank Brain, Google has become intelligent at identifying content and keyword relevancy.

4. Content Formatting

Although Google has confirmed content formatting does not provide a significant SEO advantage, bad formatting damages the user experience and inevitably harms your SEO. The correct usage of H1, H2, and other headings make the content more palatable.

5. Multimedia Elements

Images play an essential role on a page. They make the page more appealing and easier to comprehend. Multimedia elements also improve the social media share and help the off-page SEO.
The inclusion of multimedia elements such as images and videos are highly encouraged for a page to perform better.

6. Optimizing the URL

URL optimization is another essential part of on-page optimization techniques. It has two parts – URL optimization and the URL structure.
A good URL as per Google is one that is unique on the website has less than 255 characters, and different words are separated by hyphens. The URL should link to a category or the main repository.

7. Internal Links

Linking to other pages on the website plays a crucial role in on-page optimization. It allows Google to discover other pages on the website and provides relevancy to the content. When Google crawls a website, if it finds links, it will follow those links and crawl those pages as well. It also allows the users to discover other pages on the website.

8. External Links

Linking to the content of other websites indicates the trustworthiness of your content. A lot of publishers abstain from including the link of other website fearing penalty, but to the contrary, it can benefit your SEO and should be a part of your on-page optimization process.

9. Mobile-Friendliness and Page Speed

The last SEO on-page optimization technique but not the least. Your website should be mobile-friendly i.e. all the elements of the page should be readable using a mobile device. The page should load within 3 seconds. Lately, Google has included these two elements as a ranking factor for websites.

This post is just scratching the surface of SEO on-page optimization techniques; however, they are an essential checklist you can use when improving the on-page SEO of your pages.