SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It also means optimizing your website so that search engines can pick up your site easily and place them in relevant areas where people can see when they do a search. In simple terms, SEO provides your website visibility to the millions out there who uses search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing every day.

You may have a fantastic website with great designs and many useful functionalities however if your site is not properly optimized, search engines will not be able to crawl through your website that easily. Hence, causing your site to be placed at the neglected end of the search engine results.

Basically search engines works by sending automated robots called spiders, to crawl through your whole site from pages to pages through the links you have created. Once your site is being crawled through, they will then store the information in massive hard disk and only recall them when needed for a search query.

Search engine bots are still robots at the end of the day. They do not see your website like how you and I see it. This is where On-page optimization comes into play. We have to follow a certain website structure so that these spider bots can easily crawl through your website and identify the important text and pictures that are crucial to your business.

I found this useful 12 steps On-page info-graphic from www.backlinko.com. This can be used as a quick and easy basic guide or checklist to identify which are the areas you have neglected on your own website. Now let’s run through them one by one.

Permalink is your URL link. The best practice is to have readable URLs with rich keywords within them. Keywords are not compulsory as they will not help your site to rank up in your search engine results placing anymore but it’s still advisable to have them there when necessary.

Because firstly, you want readers to be able to have an idea where they will be landing to when they click on your link. Secondly, keywords will be in bold which gives users confirmation that what they clicked on is relevant to what they are searching for.

Readable URLs may not help much in rankings but they are important if you want the clicks.

Example of a bad URL:

http://www.tncseo.com/?p=123

Example of a good URL:

http://www.tncseo.com/basic-guide-to-on-page-seo

It’s important but not a must to start your page title with your keyword. It tells readers in relevance of what they are searching for in one glance. It’s also a crucial factor for search engines bots to identify those keywords in your title. However, it should be a natural heading tells readers what’s on this page and not just with keywords that you want to rank for. So use keywords when necessary.

Google always emphasize on compelling and unique content. They want users to have best experience when browsing your website. So it’s always good to add in engaging and compelling pictures or videos to get readers to stay. This also reduces your site bounce rate and more returning customers. Remember videos, pictures, diagrams will always provide more user interaction which is a good signal to Google.

If you’re going to upload images, remember to assign an “alt attribute” in html. This will provide search engines with a text description of the image you uploaded.

Outbound linking is another factor which you might want to take note of. Firstly, it enhances users experience by giving users related information on other websites that you do not provide. Secondly, if your outbound link is a source, your readers will know where you get your information from thus giving them assurance about your website. Most importantly outbound links also provide a good signal to Search Engines on the relevancy of your website.

Brian from backlinko quoted “keep in mind that the site you link out to reflect on you. So make sure to link out to authority sites whenever possible”. This is something I couldn’t agree more. Heed advice from the expert and start creating good outbound links.

Internal links on the other hand are links that sends users to other pages within your website. If you have a keyword that can be linked to another page within your site, then link it! Internal linking is especially good if your site have many different products or services. By doing so you are once again providing good experience to users with the ease of navigating through your products without having to always scroll up or down to access from the main menu.

Here’s a very good example of internal linking:

Well I do agree with this point but I feel keywords should also appear everywhere of your post as long as it’s fits naturally. Do not overdo it or stuff too many of your keywords till it’s unreadable. Use keywords when it’s necessary.

Example of keyword stuffing:

“Are you looking for cheap running shoes? If you’re looking for cheap running shoes, look no further. Our cheap running shoes website is the best place to order your new cheap running shoes. Feel free to check out our selection of cheap running shoes from our cheap running shoes selection below.”

Some say keyword density is about 2-5% but there’s not really a magic number. Just remember the whole idea is to give good experience to your reader. So use your keywords adequately. Mix them up with some LSI or synonym keywords (see point 12).

Now if you are already using Content Management Systems like WordPress than chances are they are already wrapped up with H1 tags. But better be safe than sorry, make you check by highlighting your title with your mouse than right click to inspect element.

To benefit those who don’t know what H1 tags are, H1 stands for Header 1. H2 stands for Header 2 and the numbers carries on. Differences between these Header numbers are:

Firstly, H1 size are the biggest followed by H2 then H3 and so on.

Secondly, H1 also mean it weighs heavier to search engines compared to H2 and H2 weighs heavier than H3 and so on. H2, H3 or H4 are usually used as sub-heading.

So it’s important to wrap a “<h1>….</h1>” around your title as it tells search engines this is the main heading for this page.

I wouldn’t say loading speed is an On-page SEO factor but rather a technical factor for SEO. Google’s main aim is to give users good experience right? Put yourselves in the shoes of a user. Will you have a good experience on a slow loading site? I am not sure about you… But I will definitely skip to the next site.

Your website should load in no more than 5 seconds. Here is a few basic ways you can use to test and increase site loading speed:

• Use Google’s Page Speed Tools , input your URL and get instant feedback on what’s slowing down your site. This will give you very specific action items.
• Use the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin to cache as much of your site as possible.
• Use WP Minify to compress all of your javascript, HTML and CSS.
• Use WP Smush.it to reduce the size of your images.

Its good practice to add modifiers like “guide”, “best”, “review” to your titles but I will also encourage putting some in your keywords within your content as well. By doing so you are creating long tail keywords that not only able to attracts readers but also targeted audience who searches for longer and targeted keyphrases in search engines. Example: instead of searching for “SEO Basic Guide”, there are people that search for “most updated SEO guide 2018”.

Social signals don’t really give you a huge boost in your rankings but it’s definitely free advertising. Getting users to share your post or articles to their friends is free advertising. You wouldn’t want to miss out on that would you? You never know how many thousands of people will get to your website through the network of these strangers.

Your content needs to have at least a text to html ratio of 20% to 75%. It does not really affect SEO directly but there are reasons why the amount of text or content should be higher.

Firstly, if your website has higher text content to HTML chances are it will be more readable and informative. And by doing so it gives the impression that your site is built for people rather than search engines. Therefore giving users better browsing experience.

Secondly, lesser coding also means lesser unnecessary HTML coding that slows down your site. So less coding allows your site to load faster which once again provide good experience to users.

Lastly, cleaner code allows search engines to crawl and index site more efficiently and quickly.

With all these compelling reasons… you should start writing more if you haven’t!

To decrease bounce rate, it’s important to have quality content. Even though bounce rate is not something that will affect SEO, it’s has rather a huge impact for your site after all you wouldn’t want your customers or readers to leave so quickly isn’t it.

If your site has a high bounce rate, chances are it’s is a low quality site doesn’t provide much value to consumers. So I will urge you to re-do from step 1.

LSI keywords simply mean synonym keywords that search engines uses to determine website’s relevancy. Example: With the keyword “seo”, search engines will expect to find words and phrases like search engine optimization, search engine marketing, search engine placement, search engine positioning etc.

To avoid Google panda violation of key word stuffing, one of the best ways is to replace main keywords with LSI. And by doing so, your site will be more readable and adds to good user experience.