Do you know what are the factors that influence On-page SEO and how they can help you improve your organic positioning? When we begin to take our first steps with a new Digital project, taking maximum care of all the internal details of our website is of vital importance.
If you understand what SEO is, you also understand that it is obvious that Google will not take us very seriously if we do not first put our own house in order. For example, among other factors, we can’t waste your time or give you wrong guidelines about what pages to crawl and index on our site.
All this, and much more, you will surely understand better if you study in detail the factors of On-page SEO and its influence within an Internet positioning strategy. Precisely, that is what I intend with this guide: that you know how to determine what “On-Page” actions to carry out in favor of your Online visibility.
What is On-page SEO?
On-page SEO are all those techniques and actions that are carried out within a website, with the aim of optimizing or improving its organic positioning in search engines.
In other words, it is to work within your website all those technical and usability aspects that can make life easier for Google (or other search engines), when crawling and indexing our pages and deciding how they should be classified in the result lists.
For this reason, here also comes into play, in addition to technical issues of the Web, the semantic and thematic understanding of the contents. And, regarding the understanding of the contents by the search engine, there is a very obvious idea:
Despite the fact that Google’s algorithms are becoming more complex and intelligent every day, they are still not capable of understanding texts in the same way that a person does.
Therefore, at the same time that we optimize technical factors of On-page SEO, it is also necessary to incorporate an information architecture that is as clear as possible in terms of the search intention of our content (keywords), so that the algorithms can better understand it. .
What is the true importance of On-page SEO?
A very high percentage of projects fail before completing their first year of life, largely because they do not have truly relevant traffic.
Therefore, if you do not have great knowledge about positioning, the best option you have is to optimize all those basic factors related to the On-page that we will see below.
Think that the great advantage of On-page SEO is that how well or how poorly you have implemented your strategy will only depend on you. These are internal factors of your website and that you can control yourself. Contrary to what happens with the Off-Page, since by covering factors external to your domain, they are largely beyond your control.
On-Page SEO Mega Guide The internal factors that will help you position!
1. Website adapted to mobile devices and computers
If we talk about optimization of On-page SEO, we also do it about adaptability to different types of screens and terminals. Therefore, your entire website must be YES or YES adapted to all types of devices, both mobile and desktop.
For some years now, mobile traffic has increased significantly and the number of searches carried out from mobile devices already exceeds those carried out from desktop on many websites.
Consequently, users demand a good user experience on these devices, regardless of the size of the screens. And, of course, Google is aware of the importance of mobile traffic, which is why it has included it among its requirements.
That is to say, what a few years ago was nothing more than a mere recommendation, today it is an obligation for a better On-page SEO.
It is for all these reasons that, for some time now, AMP technology has been implemented, promoted by Google itself.
2. Search intent
Search intent is the why? behind a Google query. In other words, it is the type of information that a user expects to find in relation to a specific search.
Finding the right keywords for your project and the content that best suits the search intent of those Keywords, whether we are talking about a blog, an eCommerce or a corporate website, is one of the first steps to start working on the information architecture of that site.
Although choosing keywords well is not a direct On-page SEO factor, but one of the quantity and quality of the traffic that we will obtain, a bad choice of them can negatively affect the entire project.
Therefore, keep in mind for this election, the competition that these terms have and the way in which your potential readers are going to search for those words on the Internet, whether we are talking about commercial or informative keywords.
In the same way, think that we are not talking about a single word in the literal sense, but that our keyword can also be an important phrase or group of keywords: what we call “long tail”.
There are free, easy-to-use tools that can help you choose those key terms better.
Free tools
Here are two of my favorites, in addition to which I have published extensive guides.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner
- Google Trends
Another super simple procedure is to use the same search engine as your ally, because when you start typing a word in the search bar, before we finish, the search engine itself will show us different suggestions that can complete the phrase that we are writing.
Another option is to look at the related searches that appear at the bottom of the page, because who better than Google to give you advice on the most relevant keywords?
Payment tools
But it is clear that, if you want your project to take a step forward and be somewhat more competitive, you will need more information, such as: what semantic or long-tail keywords are closely related to the main chosen one, what questions do users ask in around that seed keyword, etc.
For this we have other PRO tools, which due to their complexity and large amount of information they offer, are obviously paid.
The ones I personally use with these:
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- Screaming Frog
- DinoRank
- SE Ranking
3. Information architecture and organization
In order for Google and other search engines to give greater importance to your commercial or informative content, it is advisable to properly categorize and structure all the elements that you include.
In other words, just as it is convenient to include the products of your eCommerce in the categories and subcategories, the articles of your Blog should also be included.
In short, this advice benefits the On-page SEO of your website insofar as you are able to facilitate the tracking of Google’s “spiders” their work, which will cause them to optimize their Crawl Budget or crawl time assigned to your site ( don’t waste their time!).
4. URL syntax
The URL is also a way to describe your content so that search engines better understand what terms you are trying to rank your content for.
These URLs must be friendly, that is, not include unnecessary symbols or numbers.
At the same time, a good URL should be precise (although not necessarily too descriptive), relevant, and above all, include your keywords.
And be very careful with spelling errors, since a title or any detail within the text/images can be corrected and edited at any time.
However, the URL is immovable, that is, correcting it after it is published will make the previous one stop working wherever it is. And if you have web domains that link to you externally, that link will cause an http 404 error on your site.
5. Titles and subtitles of the content
I don’t want to get into a debate about who comes first, the chicken or the egg, but in my experience, content with well-optimized text for SEO doesn’t rank the same if its title isn’t as well.
Although above what is said in the title, both the H1 of the page or article in question and the metatitle or SEO title, is the fact of whether the content meets the real needs of the user.
It is important to use our most relevant keyword in the title and as far to the left as possible. These tips are usually forecasts by specialists but, as we all know, the absolute truth is only known by the search engine.
Also, Google won’t show more than the first 60 characters in search results (so it’s important not to dwell on them too much). You may also be interested in: How to write more viral titles?
The title H1
This is the highest level HTML title tag that most websites associate with the main title of the content.
Search engines will also pay special attention to those H2, H3, H4 tags… Always keep in mind that you should only use one H1 per page.
Subheadings H2, H3, H4, etc.
They are a complement, not a repetition of the main title. They serve us to subdivide and categorize our text according to sub-themes (don’t forget to include keywords in them).
Likewise, well used with an appropriate size, typography and format, they are of great help for readers who like to scan the content more than read.
Snippet: the Title and the Meta description
The snippet is the block of text that is displayed in Google results and is made up of a URL, a title (or Title) and a meta description of each web page. Optimizing this snippet serves to encourage users to click on it and go on to read the rest of your content.
This is a factor of SEO On Page, but its great influence is caused by an Off-Page action. That is, optimizing the Title and the meta has a great influence on the CTR (Click Through Rate) or percentage of clicks that take between 1000 times that all the results that the search engine puts in the SERP are shown.
And consequently, this CTR has a good influence on the overall ranking of the site.
The Title must have a maximum of 60 characters or 512 pixels, to ensure that it is displayed correctly in Google results.
If this Title is greater, it is cut off and with ellipses (…). There are studies that say that in the results whose SEO titles (Title) appear with ellipses, fewer clicks and visits occur.
In a meta description, the number of characters displayed so far is approx. about 140-150 on desktop and 110 on mobile, although Google will measure it in pixels (+/- 927 pixels ) and not characters, which is why I always say “approximately”.
6. Content quality
A bad SEO strategy and structure of your content can ruin all the technical work you do.
Keyword density
We must add a number of keywords of around 1% of the total words of the content that we include within the page or entry.
But this is not a fixed rule either, although it is true that there is talk of approximately that percentage, due to the evolution of the Google algorithm over the years, since 10 or 15 years ago it was not strange to see how the main keyword for the that we wanted to rank appeared repeated ad nauseam.
But not in any way, but in the most natural way possible. To do this, use synonyms and related or similar terms that are semantically linked to the keyword for which you are trying to position your post.
Google, especially with the Hummingbird update, put much more emphasis on semantic search, so it is a key aspect to take into account when defining which terms to use.
In short, try not to fill your content with repeated phrases that do not add value to the whole.
Remember that you are not only writing for search engines, but also for people to read you, whether you create an informative article or a page where you describe your professional services.
A very repetitive text, or with those keywords placed “with shoehorn”, will end up being boring and will tire your readers, increasing the percentage of abandonments (or rebound effect) of your blog.
Include keywords in the first 100 words
Search engines give greater relevance to the first paragraph of your post, therefore, you should put more emphasis on including the keywords for which you want to position your content in those sections.
The length of your content also counts
Another “unwritten” rule in matters of On-page SEO is that content containing less than 300 words approx., may be seen by search engines as Thin Content or irrelevant content.
In general, more than the extension, what Google takes into account in this case is whether what you offer the user meets the expectations they had and why they came to see your content, whether informative or commercial.
Likewise, here each “teacher has his booklet”, so my advice is to generate pages or articles of no less than 600 words.
In addition, a greater extension will allow you as a professional to “play” more with the keywords and therefore give your texts greater richness.
That is why I bet to improve my On-page SEO for quality, naturalness and content of a fair extension to offer the most complete response possible to my community about their problems or doubts.
So the posts published on my blog usually contain more than 1800 words.
