On-Page SEO Techniques with Checklist 2020 Update

I  am going to list a complete On age SEO Techniques to be used in 2020. 

Introduction

Search engine optimization is now becoming a viral topic, everyone talking about search engine optimization because of internet boom and business over the internet.

Lots of internet entrepreneur doing business online. Everyone wants to come in the top rankings of search engines.

Google is the most widely used search engine in the world and covers more than 80% geographic area across the globe.

I am assuming you have basics understanding of Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization.

Let’s come to the main topic and explore On-Page SEO factors.

Why On-Page SEO

In SEO, On-page optimization should be the first priority for any website. As per my knowledge, if you do 100% effort in on-page SEO then you don’t need to do off-page SEO day and night.

Most people don’t know more about on-page and waste their time in doing off-page SEO all day.

Never forget, on-page SEO techniques can change the direction of your website. A website with good on-page SEO factors can come in the top ranking with immediate effects or in 1st index stage.

But never optimize the website for Search engines only, write content for both user and search engines. Most of the website traffic coming from Search Engines only so we can understand how important on-page SEO is.

On-page SEO is not about title and meta tags only. Web crawlers read website content and HTML tags and collect information from the website.

How Search Works 

Before going to dive in On-Page  SEO factor lets see how search works.

As per Matt Cutts from Google, you are not searching the web. You are searching Google’s index of the web. 

And the ranking depends on, the keyword you search must be in page title, in content, synonyms of keywords must be in page etc. 

Below the video is must watch to understand, How Search Works.

This video is quite old and Google updates very often. And way smarter now than it was in 2012.

On-page SEO Factors

There are 100+ factors that decide keywords search rankings. No one knows 100% Google search algorithm and can not guarantee about it. 

But Google has guidelines for websites that help us to improve search engine rankings.

Let’s see some Search engine optimization On-Page checklist that affects most.

Title Tags

Google still give priority to keywords and index them by keywords in the database. If we talk about Title Tage,  It’s the first HTML tag that Google’s crawler read.

Page Title should be unique and should have keywords to be optimized for that page.

Never try to optimize multiple keywords for a single page. Target 1-2 keyword for a single page. There is 65 character limit for Google search engine.

If we analyze Google Search for any keyword then we will see that in SERP  that keyword will be in the title tag for all top result. 

So, the Title tag is still considerable On-Page SEO factor in 2020.

Content is king

Yes, content is king. For any website, content is the magical wind that can change website direction to top rankings in search engines.

Always use fresh written quality content for the website. Try to update content on a regular basis.

Never write content for search engine like never repeat targeted keywords on-page. Write content for users but use your targeted keywords, don’t overuse them means never do keyword stuffing.

How to optimize content

Always use your main keyword in the first paragraph of your content or put under the first 100 words in your content.

Because Google gives more preference these terms that show up early in the content. 

Google uses latent semantic indexing that translates your webpage in a natural way so always write content in a natural way for users, not for search engines. Never copy content otherwise you will be in deep trouble from search engines.

Content-Length

Content length is an important factor for Search Engines rankings. Less word count doesn’t perform well in search engines.

And such website rank low so always keeps in mind to have unique content and minimum content length of 2000 words.

Meta description

It’s also the most important on-page factor, it tells about the web page, it gives the basic introduction about the page. It should be limited up to 156 characters.

The meta description shows with the title tag in SERPs. Never over-optimized or spamming in Meta description because users first see Meta description in search engine ranking before clicking the link.

So always use good quality, unique introduction about the landing page.

Let’s take an example if we search new technology 2020 invention 5G phones term in Google Serch Engine. 

Above we can clearly see that term 5G has used multiple times and synonymous also used.

Optimized URL

Website URLs should be properly optimized. For landing pages, relevant keywords should be used in the URLs so that search engines also can know that the URL relevancy with page content.

Bad URLs – www.ecomspark.com/p=1
Optimized URL – www.ecomspark.com/on-page-seo

Also, SEO friendly URLs should not be too long. If we do the analysis,  we will find that short URL comes in top search engine rankings.

Headings

Always use headings H1 – H6 in content. You should use your main keyword in H1 tag but h1 tag should only be used once on a page.

Subheadings

Always use a subheading H2 for your main targeted keyword once in your content.

You can use other important keywords in other headings tags. H3- H6 tag can be used multiple times.

Headings give importance to keywords for users and search engines also.

Image Optimization

Always use alt and title tag for images. Images also indexed by search engines and alt tag play a vital role in on-page SEO. But keep in mind that heavy size images can make your web pages slow so optimize the images.

Keyword Density

Keyword density means, how many times you have used your targeted keyword in your content.

On a page, Keyword density should be 5-7%. Always try to use the most important keywords in the first 2 paragraphs of your content.

Don’t do keyword stuffing, use related keywords or synonyms also.

Google denies that they don’t prefer Keyword density for SERPs but without relevant keywords in the content,  how Googe will confident about the content attributes and search engine ranking for that content.

External Links

External or Outbound links mean links that are not from your website. External links help Google to understand your page topic but always link related posts from high domain authority websites only.

Outbound links also an important factor to increase the domain authority of your website. It will eventually increase your website rankings in SERP because it creates trust for Google when you linked to high domain authority websites.

Linkable content

Make your website’s interlinking better. Use anchor text in your content to connect users from one page to another page.

Always try to engage users in the website by navigation to quality content by interlinking. Always use your best and most important keywords for interlinking.

When Search Engines visits the page they also go through the links and read linked pages also. A good way to tell Search Engines about your important content.

XML Sitemap

Create an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines. You can also submit an XML sitemap to Google via Google webmaster tool.

Sitemaps used for instant indexing your pages in Search Engines.

Robots.txt

Always check your robots.txt file, you can find it in the root folder. It can be used to block some specific file, folder to be crawled by search engines.

So, have a look if u r disallowing your website for search engines. Below WordPress default Robots.txt file.

User Experience

Good user experience also plays a big role like link should not be broken, content should be easily readable and good navigation give a good user experience.

Page Load speed

Page load speed is one of the reasons for search engine rankings.

Slow websites never rank and sometime de-index from Search Engines. Always do a speed test to know the website speed score.

Google also has a tool for page speed test and gave a score for desktop and mobile for your website.

Also, list all issues related to low score that we can fix to have a high score and can rank better in search engines.

Using  CDN, optimized images and fast web hosting also ca help for website speed. If you are using WordPress then you can use a cache plugin to optimize website speed.

Mobile Responsive

Google prefers to show mobile-friendly website in high rankings and it’s also a factor for top rankings because more than 80% of Google searches are coming from mobile devices.

Also, Google’s crawlers are now mobile-first. You can test your website mobile-friendliness by Google’s Online tool.

Add Schema

Adding schema (structured data) help to improve search result. Google works hard to understand web page and structured data is a standard format for providing information about the page and content.

For example – we have an event and we published event with dates and event address on the website. We should use schema for the dates and address then dates and address will also come in search rankings.

There are tools available to test our web pages where we have added schema to check.

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

Webmaster tool

Create an account on google webmaster, to monitor your website performance for crawl errors, to submit a sitemap, to see keywords searched. You can monitor various stuff by webmaster tool.

Create an account and add your domain to start using.

Structure your Content

Writing content in a good way to make the reader happy while browsing. Always heading, subheading and bullet points, images for your content. 

So that your content will be more interesting and readable.  And it will decrease your bounce rate as the reader will spend more time on your website. Eventually, it will increase your Search Engine Rankings.

Hope the above Page SEO techniques will help in optimizing your websites. Please let me know in comments about what other activities you guys are doing that is good for On-page optimization.