Best On-Page SEO Guide For 2023

Overview On The Elements Of On-Page Optimization:

Part 1 - High-Quality Unique Content:

Every single page or post in your website must be unique, useful and serves its purpose. It must be of high quality - This is the main and most important factor that you need to focus on when building any kind of website. Your content must be not be scraped or copied from other sites. When you need to syndicate some paragraphs, you must give credits the original source through proper citation.

Part 2 - Meta Title Tag Optimization:

A title tag is a meta HTML element that defines the name or the title of the page. It must give a summary of the content in few words.

There are 10 main tips that you should follow when writing your title tags:

Tip #1: Brand Your Title Tags

You must always attach your brand name at the beginning or end of the title tag. Usually though, it is attached at the end of the title.

Tip #2: Start With Keywords

It is highly recommended to start your title tag with the most relevant keyword that your page is talking about. That is proven to give you a better search visibility and rankings.

Tip #3: Use Key Phrases

When you are dealing with competitive niches, long-tail keywords would be more suitable than short ones. As with long-tail phrases, you can target sub-niches and rank much faster than short competitive keywords. For example, your phrase can contain a location or city if your website is targeted for the local market.

Tip #4: Use Synonyms When Necessary 

If your desired keyword has a high competition, you can try to find a synonym to it that is less competitive than the original one.

Tip #4: Use Synonyms When Necessary 

If your desired keyword has a high competition, you can try to find a synonym to it that is less competitive than the original one.

Tip #5: Use Pipes 

Pipes (|) are well-known characters and very popular in title tags. They are used to separate the title terms and make them clean and more readable.

Tip #6: Relevant Unique Titles

Your titles must be unique and you must not repeat the same title twice in the same website or across multiple sites. Your title tag must also be highly relevant to its page or post.

Tip #7: Use At Most Two Keywords

Your title tags must not exceed the 55 characters or else Google and other search engines will truncate your title and it won't be visible in full in the search results. For that reason, you can't include more than two keywords in your title tags.

Part 3 - Meta Description Tag Optimization:

The meta description tag is the small paragraph that appears in search engines underneath the listed URL. Meta description tags are very important for the click-through rate (CTR). Optimizing them also helps in your search rankings and daily traffic.

There are three main tips that you need to keep in mind when optimizing your meta description tags:

Tip #1: Keep Your Potential Visitors/Customers In Mind

When writing a good description, you need to keep in mind that it must be easy to read and straight up to the point. It must encourage users to click on your link.

Tip #2: Optimizing The Length

Your meta description tag must not surpass the 155 characters. In most cases, aim at creating descriptions that do not exceed the limit of 150 characters.

Tip #3: Remove Duplicated Descriptions

Your meta description tags much not be duplicated. It is highly advised to have unique tags for every page.

Part 4 - Removing The Meta Keywords:

They are keyword tags that are defined for search engines. They are not used though anymore by search engines (including Google). If you have set any meta keywords in the past, try removing them as they hold  no value anymore. Search engines now have better ways and metrics to understand the content of your page rather than reading the keyword tags.

Part 5 - Use Bold and Italics Styles:

Use "Bold" and "Italic" on your keywords and relevant keywords. They tend to help a bit in boosting your relevancy rate. However, don't overdo it and keep it natural and within the context of your post or page. Some bloggers like to mention their main keyword again at the end of the article while applying the "Italic" style to it. Normally, using this technique once or twice in articles/pages is pretty much sufficient. 

Part 6 - Use H1, h3 and H3 Headers:

The H tags are used to define HTML headings. You can learn about them by clicking here.

When it comes to search engine optimization, those HTML tags provide a clear presentation of your page/post structure. Search engines would get a better idea of what your content is all about by reading those headings.

The most important tag is the H1 tag which indicates the main heading. It is always a good practice to have different variations of your keywords mentioned in the headers throughout your page or post. That of course, must not conflict with the user's experience or the general meaning of the context.

Part 7 - Images, Videos, and Infographics:

It is highly recommended to have relevant images, videos, and infographics in your pages and posts. They help in the conversion rate and in your search engine rankings. Remember when attaching images, you need also to define their ALT tags. Image ALT tags are small phrases or keywords that describe for search engines what those images are all about.

Part 8 - Social Buttons and Subscription Forms:

Adding social sharing buttons is really an essential part of any web page or post. You must always encourage users to share your content across the various social media platforms. Subscription forms are also a great way to collect your visitors' emails in case you are offering some special reports, news, updates and such.

Part 9 - Comments:

If you are building a blog post, it is always recommended to have a comments box in order for your users to comment on your post and engage even further with your content. This helps in your conversion rate and in building your brand and authority.

Part 10 - High Authority Relevant External Links:

In any given page or post, it is highly recommended to add at least one external link to a trusted source. As an example, Wikipedia links are extremely popular across pages and they add lots of trustworthiness to your page or post. Search engines in general including Google, tend to favor pages that links to trusted high authority websites over those that do not.

Part 11 - Internal Linking:

Internal links are those links that direct the user to other pages on your website. You must organize your internal links properly for enhancing the user's experience and for improving your search engine rankings.

The best type of internal links are those contextual hyperlinks - within the context of your post. You can also interlink to other pages or posts at the end of each page. That can be done through various ways; one way is to define a special related articles section where you list the posts/pages that are relevant to the current one.

Overall, your internal linking structure must be balanced and relevant. The process of arranging a good structure goes as follows:

1. Organize your pages and posts into categories and subcategories. 
2. The general categories must link naturally to the subcategories and the subcategories can link to even more specific categories or topics.  It is like a relation tree where the parent node links to the children nodes and the children nodes can refer back to the parent one (which sometimes can be the homepage).
3. The best rule when building your internal links is to keep your users and visitors in mind. If your internal linking structure is clear, friendly and logical for your users, then it will be friendly for search engines as well.

Part 12 - Rich Snippets:

Rich snippets are used to summarize the content of the post or page in order to make it easier for the users to understand its purpose.

Watch the video below from Google's Webmasters Channel to learn more about rich snippets:

You can also read more about it at Google's Support Pages or at Schema.org.