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Let’s be real: A lot of people like to pretend they know a thing or two about SEO (let alone on-page SEO specifically) and this makes the notion of SEO intangible and confusing. Fortunately, we’re here to give you the cold hard facts and actionable knowledge about on-page SEO.
The first thing to understand is that there are “On-Page Factors” and these are the content of the page, Title Tag and URL. We’ll jump into those specifics now.
The Content
What’s on a page is what makes it worthy of a search result position—people need to find the answer to their questions. Because of this it is obviously paramount for search engines. To capitalize on this you need good content. What makes good content? It has to fulfill a need and be linkable.
If there is no need for your piece of content then it simply won’t be searched for. But you’re here because you do have an audience and something to say, so let’s continue to the second requirement. Your content needs to be linkable. Content that is linkable is seen to be more valuable (in higher demand) and ranks better in search. So gated content, that isn’t in high demand won’t do as well as a super relevant and open to everyone article. Pretty simple, let’s move on.
SEE ALSO: Ideal Keyword Density for Content
Title Tag
Title tags are used on search engine results pages for previews for any given page. Therefore they are important in SEO and social sharing. A great title tag is a concise and fittingly describes the page’s content. Learn all about Title Tags on MOZ.
URL
Hierarchy and structure of a website needs to be reflected in the URL.
This is a good example of URL structure:
This URL not only gives the topic of what’s on the page but further context of what it is. Why this is important is because the search engine can deduce that the page isn’t about history in general but about Video Game History. It allows this page to rank and show up when “Video Game History” is searched.
This is a bad example of URL structure:
Clearly, this URL has little deductive clues about what the page contains. Search engines will see that it is a page on IMDB, but that’s about all the search engine will be able to pull from the URL. Essentially there’s no value in a URL that has little to no hierarchy.
SEE ALSO: Long Tail SEO vs Short Tail SEO
Hone in on these three components of on-page SEO and you will begin to build a strong SEO base for your site. It doesn’t end here though as there are tons of best practices to master and other intricacies of SEO to understand. Use this as your launching point, not your end all guide. Good luck!
