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On-Page + Technical SEO – A Complete Guide from Basic to Advance in 2021
On-Site SEO is an important and starting point of ranking a site in search engines. Good site SEO is not only important for ranking but also some of its parts are compulsory for users’ engagement.
In this article, I am describing all about On-Page & Technical SEO in an easy way so that even a layman can understand and optimize his site himself.
What is On-Site SEO?
In narrow terms, we divide SEO into two categories – On-Site SEO & off-Site SEO. On-Site SEO includes all the actions that we have to do on the site from managing content to the coding of the site.
Types of On-Site SEO
On-Site SEO is a broad term. It can be further classified into two other categories.
- On-Page SEO – Dealing the content part & optimization of each page (either individually or collectively)
- Technical SEO – Dealing with the site in terms of coding
In more simple terms, on-page SEO includes adding content on the pages by following search engines’ guidelines. While technical SEO includes dealing with code to make it responsive for users and giving instructions to robots.
I have divided each section into further categories for better understanding. Let’s explore them one by one.
On-Page SEO To-Do List
I have divided on-page SEO settings into further 4 parts. Let’s see the respective SEO settings.
Part 1: Pages & Posts Individual Meta Data
Every post and page needs SEO optimization individually; it is an important routine practice in on-site SEO optimization. The text, images and the other media items can rank better in search results with proper optimization.
1. SEO Title
The title is an important part to tell users as well as search engines’ robots about the whole content. So, its optimization is important.
An optimized title is:
- Contain primary keyword
- Must be between 50 – 60 characters
- Tell the intent of whole content to users
2. SEO Description
Like the title, the description is also an important part. Generally, we do not display it to users. It is a meta-data in which we describe our page within a few words.
A good description contains:
- All the necessary keywords (without repeating keywords)
- It should be within 160 characters
It is important to mention that if your page does not have description then search engines will pick starting lines from the first paragraph.
Search engines not always display the description in search results. They find the keywords from the whole content and display the best matches part of the content to users. But, the description still has its worth.
3. URL Settings
URLs give a proper structure to your website. It is equally important for SEO and users. An easy to remember URL can help the users to come back easily.
An SEO optimized URL has the following properties:
- Must be as short as possible
- Contains only words (avoid choosing numbers structure, it has no SEO importance)
- Does not contain stop words (a, an, the, etc.)
4. Page Type (MicroData)
Webpages and all its content can be understood easily by humans. But, search engines have very limited sense. It is your job to tell them further details for webpages. The better you will explain, the better they will be able to arrange and rank your site.
MicroData is a set of HTML tags that allow you to specify a webpage type of telling more about its contents.
WordPress users can easily deal with it using any SEO plugin. Yost users can specify page type in Yoast panel that appears below the content while writing a post or page. It is named as “Schema“. You can read it with details on Schema.Org official site.
5. Google Data Highlighter
These are the snippets only for Google and other search engines have no concern with it. You can use Google data highlighter tool for this purpose.
6. RDFa
RDFa or Resource Description Framework in Attributes in a set of HTML or XML attributes that you have to add in webpages. It is just like the MicroData but it is old and standardized by W3C.
Important to Read: MicroDat, Google Data Highlighter & RDFa are needed to be applied manually if you are not using any CMS. If you are using a CMS like WordPress than plugins/extension (like Yoast SEO) are available that handle all these technical parts.
Part 2: Keywords Density & Optimization
Right keywords’ density is important to win a spot in search engines. Every page should be optimized keywords with good practices.
1. Manage the Keywords Density
Keyword density on a page should never exceed from 3%. But, keeping it around 1% is ideal. It also should not less than 0.4% otherwise search engines’ robots will not be able to know that on which keyword they have to show your webpage in search.
2. Keywords Stuffing
It will be called as keyword stuffing if keyword density exceeds from 3%. All search engines take serious action against the site that stuff keywords. Your site can be removed from search and even can be blacklisted as a penalty.
3. Keywords Prominence
Keyword prominence is a term used for the placement or position of keywords. Search engines look that what is the position of a keyword in the whole content, in heading & in the paragraph. Keywords at the beginning of the text will have higher prominence.
4. Keywords Proximity
This term is used that how close or far keywords are.
For Example: “Top 10 SEO Tools” so, if my keyword is Top SEO Tools but there is a word “10” between them so, I will say that proximity between them is one. Similarly, proximity will go increasing with the number of additional words and keyword importance will keep decreasing with the increase in proximity.
Part 3: Content Optimization
You have now enough knowledge about on-site SEO. Let’s apply the knowledge to optimize content.
1. Content Formatting
Content should be properly formatted having good length paragraphs, heading & sub-headings. Do not hesitate to highlight, underline or italic important words for better readers’ engagement.
2. Headings
Instead of writing bundles of paragraphs, it will be good to break the content into maximum possible headings. There are 6 headings and search engines take them seriously.
3. Paragraph Size
The paragraph size does not affect SEO but it is important for readers. For better readers’ engagement, keep paragraphs short.
Writing a single idea in one paragraph and starting 2nd paragraph for next is a good idea and ideal writing practice.
4. Hidden Text
Sometimes webmasters try to cheat search engines and write hidden text on webpages. It might work for a short span but I am sure those guys are going to face a big penalty.
Part 4: Internal & External Links
Links are not only for users but robots also follow them while crawling. Let see how they help in SEO.
1. Internal Linking
As the name shows, internal linking means attaching the pages of the same site with each other. Robots come on the site from one page and crawl all the linked pages (if contain do-follow tags) so, page linking is important for SEO.
Make sure you always link the same type of pages with each other and never stuff the pages with lots of links.
2. External Links
It means placing the link of others’ site in your page or post. It is also known as outbound links. Adding external links is a proof for search engines that you are providing accurate information and giving reference where important.
Do not add too many external links. 1 or 2 links for 1,000 words article are enough. Outbound links are important but no necessary so, no need to especially look for it.
3. Links Attributes
- Do-Follow Links – Links attribute that allow robots to crawl the page of that link. It is used for internal linking.
- No-Follow – Prevent robots from crawling that link’s page. Majority of the sites use it for external links
4. Anchor Text
A text that contains a link is known as anchor text. Using keywords as anchor text is very good for SEO. This technique is widely used in Off-Page SEO to rank against a specific keyword.
Technical SEO To-Do List
This is our last section of on-site SEO settings. It contains technical terms and some tags.
1. Geo-Targeting
Geo-targeting tags help to the rank site in a specific location. There are several plugins in WordPress and Google also provide this feature. You can use geo-tag.de to generate geo-tags for the desired location.
2. Language Settings
Like the geo-tags, language tags are also helpful and tell robots about the language of the site. You can specific language rules (different language for different locations) using its attributes.
3. Canonical URL Settings
Canonical URLs avoid your site your duplicate content error. Search engines will never count 2 versions of a single page as separate pages if you have specified the canonical URL.
Canonical URL HTML tag is:
<link href=”http://www.example.com” rel=”canonical” />
By default, all CMS and themes follow this rule and there is nothing to do manual unless you are not using the custom-designed site.
4. Website Speed
Users and search engines both hate slow site. Make sure your site loads within 2 seconds if you want to win a spot in search at top numbers.
Use GTmetrix.com to analyze your website speed and follow their recommendations if your site is slow.
5. Sitemaps
Your site must have an XML site for bots. It helps them to crawl & index site and know that frequency of content uploading.
6. Robots.txt
It is a set of instructions for all robots. You can also give instructions by specifying robots. Just add “robots.txt” at the end of any site’s URL to see that what instructions they are giving to robots.
7. Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the navigation that helps users to know their location on a site. With breadcrumbs, users can know how this page is linked and structure.
These are also helpful in SEO and Google shows them in search results as an alternative of URL.
8.htaccess File
This is a configuration file and controls the access to the site. It has several functions ranging from redirections to encryption. You can read more about .htaccess on WordPress.Org
9. Page Redirection
There are mainly three types of redirections.
- 301 Redirection – Moved permanently! This redirection method is used to if you have created a new URL of a page. This redirection method is recommended for good SEO.
- 302 Redirection – Found or temporarily moved. Sometimes, it error appears from server site and browser show this message to users.
- Meta Refresh – It will show a message to the user “Click here if you do not redirect within 5 seconds”. This is not a recommended technique for good SEO
These were all important On-Site SEO settings. Apply them and boost your search engines visibility.