Top 10 On-Page SEO Factors

One of the most basic things which a webmaster should understand is how to do on-page SEO and the top 10 on-page SEO factors to consider when both creating a new website or when adding new content and pages to an existing website. Building great content or beginning a new website takes work. If you want the traffic, you have to appease the search engines.  Both On-Page and off-page factors (see the top 10 off-page SEO factors here) work in synergy to help you accomplish just that – awesome web traffic, visitors and (with good ad-copy) Sales!

The Quick and Simple Top 10 On-page SEO Factors to Implement Include:

1. Keyword(s) In Title Tags: The title tag is the line of clickable text which appears in Google’s SERPs for each ranking page. This is the text that appears at the top of your browser’s window in naming or identifying the page which you are currently browsing. It’s important to work your best keywords into your title tags as Google will consider this over most factors when indexing and ranking your page and in general in determining what it’s about.
2. Keywords in Heading Tags: Effective use of heading tags helps Google to know what is most important on your site, and what text it should pick out over the rest. It’s been estimated that most people when opening a new page will first instinctively read the top left of your page before other elements. Consequently, your most important message using your most important keyword that you want to get across should be here and ideally using the H1 tag. From here, less important keywords should be put in H2, and even less important and noteworthy keywords should be in H3 and so on. Using heading tags effectively is a valuable skill to have in on-page SEO.
3. Keywords in the Body: a large part of good content is effectively including keywords where applicable. This means no over saturation because this will get you penalized and possibly de-indexed.
4. Keyword In Domain Name: This takes some careful planning, but many SEOers agree that this has a decent amount of bearing on how Google ranks a site for a keyword. In continuing with this point, you can set your site up as it expands to be more SEO friendly by naming subdomains after keywords, as well. So be as specific as possible when naming if you can. For example name a subdomain of a music site “Gibson-guitars” rather than just “guitars”. Note the use of the hyphen in the example. Hyphens represent spaces, so if you are using keywords in your URLs, break them up. While keywords in the subdomains don’t carry quite as much weight as the top level of the domain, they’re nonetheless important and helpful to Google in identifying what your site is about.
5. Keywords in Image Tags: If you’ve got pictures on your website and want them to show up in image search results, you’ve got to tag them by placing the appropriate keywords inside the alt tags of each image. It’s also helpful in case some web browsers don’t load your page/its images properly, so that web users can still see what the image was meant to be as most browsers will still show the keyword which you included in the alt tag.
6. Keywords in Meta Tags: About where you included the title in your site’s code, you can include a Meta description and Meta keywords. The Meta description is the short summary of what your site is about which appears below it. If you leave this blank, Google or other engines will form their own description of your site using some of your content. If you don’t like the sound of that, you can add your own. Keep in mind that while it doesn’t have much bearing on your ranking, it’s important for display purposes/what the web users will see when viewing your site in the SERPs.
7. Internal Links: If you have a number of pages on your site like a blog with a lot of posts, and say that one post in particular has gained some attention and began ranking well for itself on its own (maybe from a little off page SEO), by linking back to a second page on your site from that popular page, you have increased the power of that second page. Internal linking is a beautiful thing because if you’re lucky enough to have several pages on your site ranking well, you can spread that link juice to the rest of your site without having to rely on anyone else.
8. Updates: Google is far more likely to rank a page which is updated regularly and adds fresh content on a regular basis such as articles, blogs, or any new content in general rather than a similar site which just stagnates. This is just more evidence supporting the fact that if you want to rank well, you’ve got to constantly be working towards optimizing your site as no one gets to the top of the SERPs, retires, and stays there for long.
9. Site Maps: In continuing with the point of making a site easily maneuverable, including a site map and linking to it on every page can be a major help to search bots when they crawl your site, plus people can use it to easily navigate, as well. Use a freebie plugin like Google Sitemap Generator to take care of this with a couple of clicks.
10. Google Fluff (Privacy Policies/Contact Us): Your site should have these either way, but similar to the site map, Google likes a site to have both a privacy policy and contact section with site wide links to them on every page as it gives a site much more legitimacy and promotes trust as people browsing your site like to see these things, as well.

SEO can be very daunting at first and if you need some professional SEO advice, you can find out more at Undrcut Digital. It takes time to study what makes a good website rank well on the major search engines.  Remember, quality over quantity!  If you provide solid content, structured well, you’ll be loved by both search engines and visitors and both with praise you well.  If you feel these top 10 on-page SEO factors aren’t up to your standards, comment below and let me know!