What is on page SEO?
In simple and most basic terms, On Page SEO can be described as managing your website & its pages in a method which is welcoming to search engine. It indicates to aspects which have a consequence on your webpage/website listing in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These aspects are managed by HTML coding of your webpage. A few examples of On-page SEO are title tags, descriptions, keyword proximity, keyword density, keyword prominence etc.
Why Advanced On page SEO matters?
You might have listened to that off page SEO activities are more significant in deciding SERPs. This is true up to some extent, however keeping in view of the fact that on page SEO serves the basis for all SEO activities, this thing becomes critically important. If a keyword/phrase isn’t there on your site, you would not rank No.1 for it.
MOZ also conduct survey in 2013 on search ranking factor. Moz surveyed over 120 search marketers and they provided t opinions on over 80 ranking factors.
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Domain Level Factors
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Domain age : This factor is of low importance keeping in view of the Matt Cutts statements about domain age. However little, it does play a part.
Keywords as first word in domain: This implies that if your domain begins with target keyword; you will relish an upper hand with the ones that do not have target keyword in their domains or else having in the middle or last.
Keyword appears in top-level domain: There are no specific SEO advantages comes out of it however it can be used to make sense of regional relevance.
Domain registration length: It means the time period for which a domain is registered. The higher the domain registration length will be the more legitimacy it will get.
Sub-domain name: Target keywords coming in sub-domain help to enhance rank.
Exact match domain: This factor can provide a competitive edge if website is of high quality nonetheless the edge can backfire if your website is of low-quality.
Penalized whois owner: Google will also inspect other sites of a person whom it considered a spammer.
Domain History: Sites which have unstable ownership can be proved disastrous to site’s ranking.
Public vs. Private whois: Sites that are public whois will rank higher than private whois privacy protection service as it likely indicated by Matt Cutts (Head of Webspam team at Google).
Country TLD Extension: Possessing a country code TLD, for instance .in, .ac, .au assists to rank better on that definite country however backfire when it comes to global rankings.
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Page Level Factors
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Keyword in Title Tag: The content of the page and the keyword in title are 2 most essential factors.
Title Tag starts with keywords: Title tags which begins with keywords do better than title tags that have keywords at the end.
Keyword in description tag: Essential On-Page SEO factor that can’t be overlooked.
Keyword is most frequently used phrase in document: This factor provides the relevancy signal.
Content length: Taken as a general thumb rule lengthier content will cover more words than shorter irrelevant content. More or less it affects rankings.
Keyword density: Sprinkling right amount of keywords in your content can enhance your rankings however over-using it can simply give reverse results.
Latent Semantic Indexing keywords in content (LSI): It is an indexing and retrieval method that helps Google to dig out meaning from words that contains more than 1 meaning for instance Blackberry the fruit vs. the cell phone company.
LSI keywords in title and description tags: It helps search engines to differentiate b/w synonyms.
Duplicate content: Same and even somewhat customized content can degrade your rankings.
Page loading speed via HTML: Google spiders calculate your site speed by the HTML coding and size of the file and count it as essential page ranking factor.
Rel=Canonical: It is a tag that prevents search engines to consider duplicate pages content.
Page loading speed via chrome: To get a better tab on loading speed of a page, Google can as well utilize Chrome user data.
Newness of content updates: Google supports newly update articles especially when a user entered query with date.
Image Optimization: As Google can’t read images you need to fully optimize it with alt text, caption etc.
Magnitude of content updates: Practicing cosmetic changes and amendments with the content can be considered an important factor. Also, bigger changes are significant than minor changes of a few words.
Historical updates page updates: How regularly you update content also plays a role in On-Page SEO factor.
Keyword Prominence: It refers to the essential placement of keywords in the given content, for instance in the meta-tag, header, at the beginning of the sentence etc.
Keyword Proximity: It refers to the distance between the searcher’s distinct keywords in the content of a page. For instance: search for “surgery Manhattan dental”. A page optimized will perform higher in comparison with a page optimized for “dental surgery in Manhattan”.
Grammar & Spelling: Usage of right spelling and grammar in content give user a good experience, although it affects ranking or not is still under doubt.
Keyword in H2, H3 tags: Possessing keyword in H2, H3 tags is relevantly weaker signal than possessing in main heading.
Outbound link quality: A lot considered linking to authority websites is a fair practice to rank higher.
Outbound link : Google might use the page’s content you link to as essential relevancy determining factor. So it is good to link to those authorities which are in the same business like you.
Syndicated content: Your content should be original and unique so that it can rank well on SERPs else it will go in the supplemental index rather than the main index of Google.
Supplementary Content: It is considered good quality-wise to provide your users with resourceful supplementary content. Explain words/phrases that would be considered difficult for end-users.
No. of internal links pointing to page: Internal linking is a fair practice but as per Google guidelines you have to be well short of 50 internal links in a page unless you have a solid reason.
Broken links: Use online tools (many are free of cost) to find out broken links of your page as it degrades quality of your site.
Affiliate links: This is another important factor, if your site has too many affiliate links, Google will make certain the quality of your site.
Outbound links: Having too many dofollow of these may degrade search rankings.
Multimedia: Possessing multimedia elements in your site such as pictures, videos etc. can improve your rankings.
Quality of internal links pointing to page: Quality of internal links is internal linking on domain from authoritative pages helps to improve visibility of a site.
Reading level: This is another important factor as search engines calculates the webpage’s reading level.
HTML errors: A number of Hyper Text Mark up Language coding errors can affect the visibility of a site as it degrades the quality of a site.
PAGE’S Page Rank: The visibility of web pages of elevated PR is better in comparison with web pages of low PR.
URL path: The more a web page is identical to its home page; it will get an authority edge.
Page category: Web pages which are part of narrowly concerned category will rank higher keeping in view it gets relevancy edge.
Page Host’s domain authority: Between two web pages of similar quality, the one will rank higher which are on an authoritative domain.
URL length: Use Bitly tool to shorten your URLs as long URLs degrade rankings.
Human Editors: It’s controversial but some may believe that Google lets human editors to manipulate its search results.
Keyword in URL: A great relevancy signal.
References and Resources: Giving reference and resources can add weight to your content. But ensure these should be quality-wise rich.
Priority of page in sitemap: Another important factor which can be done through the sitemap.xml file.
Quantity of other keywords page ranks for: It gives search engines a positive impact.
URL String: Google spiders crawls the categories in this and give an indication to what a web page possesses.
Bullet and numbered lists: Breaking your content in bullet points and numbers can provide your user a good experience and hence search engines favor it.
Too many outbound links: It considered a bad practice as it can distract your visitor from the main content.
Page age: While search engine favors new content, a page that gets edits and amends at times rank better than new page.
User friendly layout: Search engines like Google favors it strongly.
Parked domains: It hurts rankings on SERPs.
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Site Level Factors
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Content gives value and unique insights: If you are a thin affiliate site, Google will penalize you.
Contact us page: Make sure you have relevant amount of contact information on your contact us page.
TrustRank: If you get inbound links from trusted sites, you will rock on SERPs.
Site Updates: This can be considered as a freshness factor and embrace by search engines.
Sitemap presence: This is an important factor which helps Google to index your web pages which in turn enhance your visibility.
Server location: This plays a bigger role when it comes to geo-specific searches.
Terms of service and privacy pages: These factors enhance your trust factor among search engines.
Architecture of site: Finely structured site assists search engines to manage your page’s content easily.
Number of pages: As a general rule of thumb sites with more no. of pages considered better than fewer no. of pages.
Site uptime: Site which remains down for maintenance or possesses server problems most of the time can be completed removed from SERPs.
SSL Certificate (Banks and Ecommerce sites): Sites such as ecommerce or site of banks with SSL certificates will rank higher than the ones without.
Breadcrumb navigation: It is style of architecture of a site that provides enhanced user-experience and also considered a ranking factor.
Breadcrumbs: They are very simple to put in and can add wings to your on-page endeavors; you should put them into operation for sure. If you mention the old matter of is the first anchor text link the merely one to reckon, in that case it’s an issue of how you knob the Cascading Style Sheets placement of those anchor text links in your Hyper Text Markup Language source. However taken as a whole, I comprehend each Search Engine Optimizer will mention, that in majority of the cases, possessing that breadcrumb navigation won’t mar and be able to benefit on some level, if completed correct.
Site usability: Make sure your site is user-friendly and the navigation should be effortless as it can determine many critical factors about your website such as bounce rate, pages viewed etc.
Use of Google Analytics and Google webmaster tools: Apart from making indexing of your site easy these help to rank better on SERPs.
Mobile Optimized: Ensure you got a responsive design that means it can adjust it resolution according to the screen of the device.
Youtube: Many claims that Youtube videos help to gain better rankings because of the fact it is the site of Google.
User reviews/site reputation: If your site is presented on the review sites such as Yelp.com, it can boost your rankings.