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The Ultimate Guide to On-page SEO – Beginner Friendly

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing web pages to rank higher in search engines. Remember when your web pages are ranked higher in search engines, you’ll bring more traffic to your website.

On-page SEO is about making your content stand out and providing value that users want to read AND that search engines want to rank.

Difference Between On-page & Off-page SEO

This is a table comparison between on-page and off-page SEO.

Source: https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo

You also need to optimize your content, not just for keywords:

• User experience
• Search intent
• Click-through rate
• Bounce rate and dwell time
• Page loading speed
• Desktop and mobile devices

On-page SEO is important as it improves individual rankings and traffic of your website pages and posts targeting specific keywords. This will drive traffic to your website, turning subscribers into customers.

Why are Keyword Optimization and Title Optimization Important Ranking Factors for On-page SEO?

Based on the “How Search Works” Report by Google, for Google to determine if your content is relevant, there must be the presence of the same keywords as the user’s search query. Google’s crawler bots crawl for your site for keywords.

If you search for any competitive keyword, you’ll notice that the top-ranking pages almost all use that exact keyword in their title tag (aka Meta title).

Optimize Meta Title and Meta Description

Meta Title

Your meta title shows search engines an accurate overview of what your page is all about, this is called “front-loading” keyword.

Although your keyword doesn’t necessarily need to be at the very front of the meta title. In most cases, the closer the keyword is to the beginning of your meta title, the searchers can instantly spot that your content matches their search query, which makes them more likely to click on our website.

There is also another way to make users click on your website. Modifiers!

Modifiers like “best”, “checklist”, “top”, and “fast” can help you rank for long tail versions of your target keyword.

Here are two ways out of many ways to generate keyword ideas with modifiers and other word extensions … ChatGPT & Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator

ChatGPT

ChatGPT offers an amazing brainstorm potential title, use it as a starting point to find keywords you want.

Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator

Type in the keyword into the search box, in this case “Malaysian food”.

The Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator will generate a list of many long-tail keywords with modifiers like “best”, “top”, and “free”.

Meta Description

While Google doesn’t use meta description for ranking. Additionally, search engines often choose their description to display in our meta description based on how search engines think it may satisfy search queries.

Still, you should optimize it as a good meta description helps your website stand out, resulting in a boost in organic click-through rate (CTR).

How do you write unique, relevant meta descriptions?

First, you definitely want to include keywords in your meta description. Why? Google will bold the keywords that match the searcher’s query. In this example, the search query we’re using is “Depression symptoms”.

Second, follow this meta description template!

Few more tips to make your meta descriptions stand out:

• Keep meta descriptions under ~160 characters to ensure full display in search results (under ~120 characters for better mobile visibility).
• Prioritize important information at the beginning to avoid truncation.
• Create unique descriptions for each page to prevent duplication and boost click-through rates.
• Be clear about your page’s content and purpose to set accurate user expectations.
• Emphasize value by showcasing key selling points or essential details that make your page stand out.
• Avoid clickbait—ensure your meta description accurately reflects your content to maintain user trust.

Semrush’s On-page SEO Checker Tool

This tool allows you to know you have your keyword in all the key locations like the H1 and body content, and also it suggests related keywords you can use to enhance your content.

Semrush’s Site Auditor Tool

This tool identifies pages that don’t have a title tag or that have a duplicate title.

How to Create Unique, Valuable SEO Content

Create Unique Content

Unique means you have lots of information such as tips and tricks in your blog posts that nobody else is talking about. Of course, there should be also tips and tricks that you can find anywhere mentioned in your blog posts.

Maybe you’ve included guest posting:

Included free downloadable checklist for readers:

Provide Value

There are literally millions of new blog posts come out every single day! To get noticed, your blog posts should be way way way more VALUABLE.

Detailed content: From the beginner stages to more advanced stages, providing a clear step-by-step guide, images, screenshots, and links allows searchers follow along while learning.

Up-to-date content: Write recent, relevant strategies with fresh examples.

Solid copywriting: Write more engaging content

Expert source: Nowadays, there are a lot of copywriters writing blog posts about topics that they’ve never experienced themselves. Experts who live and breathe SEO every day, these people with first-hand experience are going to be more trustworthy and valuable than random freelance copywriters.

Use Original Images

Stock Images could be hurting your SEO, if you’re using stock photos that a thousand other sites use, consider creating custom images.

Shai Aharony tested the effect that stock images had on Google rankings.

First, Shai created a bunch of brand new websites just for these experiments. These were fresh domain names that had never been registered before.

He used generic stock images on some of the sites. And original images on others.

The results were clear: sites with unique images outranked the sites that used stock photos.

Satisfy Search Intent

Satisfying search intent means your page has to be PRECISELY, EXACTLY, SURELY what searchers want, or else your page would likely be buried on the 3rd page.

An interesting example by Backlinko:

They wanted to rank for the keyword “backlink checker” for their new blog post titled “What’s the Best Backlink Checker? [New Data]”. However, after a few days of publishing the post, they went to check out the SERPs for that keyword, and they realized they’d made a silly mistake of not noticing that 100% of the type of content on the first page results were tools, there weren’t any blog posts on the first page! This means that their post has zero chance to rank for this keyword on the first page.

After they changed the blog post into a comparison article PLUS a free interactive backlink checker tool, their blog post instantly made it to the first page!

Optimizing Your Content for Key SEO Factors

Use Your Target Keyword in the First 100 Words

Google puts more weight on terms that show up early on your page, which is the first 100 words or so.

Wrap Your Keywords into Headings

Google has stated that using an H1 tag “ helps Google understand the structure of the page.” (It’s best practice to include a single H1 per page.)

You want to check your site’s code to make sure your page title is wrapped in an H1. And that your keyword is inside of that H1 tag.

Use Semrush Site Audit Tool to find pages that are missing H1 tags

Using your target keyword (and other relevant keywords) within the H1 to H6 tags communicates the topical relevance to search engines. It also enhances the user experience by providing a clear hierarchy.

Backlinko has also done experiments showing that wrapping your target keyword in an H2 tag can make a dent.

Here’s an example of this strategy in action (target keyword=”content marketing tools”):

Keyword Frequency

Pretty self-explanatory, keyword frequency means how many times your primary keyword appears in your content.

Even though Google may deny that using the same keyword multiple times helps, SEO experts with experience proved it works!

Let’s imagine you’re Google.

Do you think this web page could be related to the keyword “Keto diet”?

Maybe.

What about this web page with the keyword” Keto diet” mentioned 10 times?

Do not confuse high keyword frequency with keyword stuffing. There isn’t a “keyword density” that you should aim for.

What you have to do is to just mention the target keyword a few more times to confirm to Google that your page is relevant to the keyword uses are searching for.

For example, this post with 2957 word counts ranked top five in Google for the keyword “Depression symptoms”. How many “Depression symptoms” keywords do you think they added? Only 4 times.

Backlinko’s YouTube SEO post with 3200 words ranks in the top three in Google for the keyword “YouTube SEO”. Only 8 times of “YouTube SEO” keyword mentioned (including once in H1).

Remember, these key places to include your keywords on your page include:

• Title tags and meta description

• Alt text

• URLs

• Headings

• First paragraph

Use Semrush On-page SEO Checker to check if your keywords are at these key places:

Internal Linking

For example, you want to improve your rankings for (blog post).

So you added an internal link from one of your most authoritative pages to that blog post. Simple means, you want to link from high-authority pages on your site to pages that need a boost (You should use internal linking across your entire site anyway).

For example, Backlinko recently wanted to improve our rankings for our press release guide. So, they added an internal link from one of our most authoritative pages to that guide. Very simple.

External Linking

Reboot Online ran an experiment to see if external links helped improve rankings. They created 10 new websites, 5 of the websites linked out to the authority sites (like Oxford University), and another 5 had no outgoing links.

Websites with outgoing links outranked sites without outgoing links:

External links help Google figure out your page context. It also shows Google that your page consists of high-quality content with informative outgoing links. Google thinks you’re useful to the users, so Google ranked you higher in SERPs.

A few tips to keep in mind:

• Your outgoing links should be linked to high authority, relevant, and quality sites. Never low-quality and spammy websites.
• Don’t just include outgoing links for the sake of adding it — they should also be valuable for users.

URL Optimization

including keywords in your URL also helps Google understand your page context. Parts of your URL can appear in search results meaning optimized URLs can help users understand your page context.

With that, here’s how to create SEO-friendly URLs:

1. Make your URLs short
2. Include a keyword in every URL

That’s it.

For example, Backlinko page about link building is optimized around the keyword “link building.” So I used that keyword in my URL.

That’s not to say that your URL should ONLY have your keyword.

It’s perfectly fine to add an extra word or two to your URL…

…or to have your keyword come after a subfolder.

Image Optimization

Image optimization is important for a few reasons:

• Search engine crawlers can’t “see” images (at least not as well as humans can), so it’s important to help them to understand all the types of content on your page, including visual content
• Optimizing your images can help you appear in image search, which can increase your visibility in search overall
• Properly formatting and optimizing your image files can make a big difference in improving your page loading times

You want to give every image on your site a descriptive filename and alt text.

This helps Google (and visually-impaired users) understand what each image is showing.

Also, optimize images around your target keyword (if it’s possible and make sense).

So, use a filename that includes your target keyword (for example, on-page-seo-chart.png). And use that same keyword as part of your image alt tags.

Another reason to optimize your images for SEO: it gives search engines another clue of what your page is about, which can help it rank higher.

Put another way: when Google sees a page with pictures of “blue widgets” and “green widgets” it tells them: “this page is about widgets.” It likely won’t have a massive effect on your rankings—but it’s still a useful context signal.

Here are a few tips to write optimal alt text that is beneficial to both users and search engines:

• Be descriptive
• Avoid keyword stuffing
• Keep it concise
• Be specific
• Include key details
• Consider the audience
• Avoid repetition

Besides filenames and alt text, you should also optimize your images so they don’t affect your page load speed. You can check out our image SEO guide to find out about techniques like lazy loading, optimal image file size and types, and more.