In today’s digital age, a website is not just a tool but a fundamental necessity for businesses. It serves as a platform to establish an online presence, enhance brand awareness, and attract clients, and it can even function as a full-fledged store to sell products and services online. A website is not just a face but a powerful channel to drive sales and profit.
Design is undoubtedly essential. However, a good website shouldn’t only be easy to navigate and pleasant to look at—it should be, above all, easy to find online and thus undergo SEO optimization that allows for a better ranking in the results of search engines, such as Google and Bing.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which comes in many forms. Today, the focus of this article will be on-page SEO. So, what is on-page SEO, and why is it crucial to implement it in your business? Continue reading to find out!
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Was ist Onpage-SEO und warum ist es wichtig?
Beyond on-page SEO: Different types of SEO
The key elements of on-page SEO
Abschließende Gedanken
Was ist Onpage-SEO und warum ist es wichtig?
Websites are like ecosystems hosting many entities: pages, buttons, words, links, tags, pictures, and more. On-page SEO is about optimizing only the elements that populate a single page so that Google can push the page towards the top of search results.
These elements include titles and subtitles (also called the “H tags”), keywords, meta descriptions, URLs, texts, descriptions, and captions of multimedia content and internal links. While optimizing these, there are four central aspects to consider.
Beyond on-page SEO: Different types of SEO
Different categories of search engine optimization play a crucial role in determining your website’s ranking on Google and other search engines when users search for queries.
The main types of SEO web admins can perform on a website are on-page SEO, on-site SEO, technical SEO, and off-page SEO. This article focuses on what on-page SEO is, so all the details and techniques are below.
How on-site SEO is different from on-page SEO
Often confused with on-page SEO, on-site SEO is the overall optimization of the entire website, not just individual pages, and includes structural and content elements that enhance user experience. On-site SEO includes:
- Website structure and user experience (UX): A good website should feature a logical, straightforward structure so that users can navigate easily and Google crawls it without problems.
- Die Ladegeschwindigkeit von Webseiten: This refers to how quickly a browser can load a website’s pages. The higher the speed, the higher the rankings.
- Handy-Kompatibilität: Every website must display perfectly on mobile devices in the smartphone era.
- Sicherheit: HTTPS-Protokoll und SSL-Zertifikate ensure that a site is secure.
The role of technical SEO
Technical SEO walks arm in arm with on-site SEO as it focuses on the optimization of technical aspects of a website to ensure that search engines can access, index, and understand the site’s content. The main elements of technical SEO include:
- Robots.txt file optimization: To manage which parts of a website search engines can index.
- XML-Sitemap: Creating and submitting a sitemap helps search engines discover and show pages in search results.
- Datenstruktur: Structured data markups allow search engines to understand a site’s content better.
Off-Page-SEO
Off-page SEO concerns everything that’s going on outside the website but enhances its positioning in search engines. It is crucial for building site authority and increasing organic traffic.
- Link building and guest posting: A good website always has high-quality links from other websites.
- Sozialen Medien: Promoting the website durch soziale Medien increases visibility and traffic.
- Markenerwähnungen: Search engines can see when a website is mentioned on other websites and online platforms.
The key elements of on-page SEO
So, the goal of search engine optimization is to improve organic positioning on search engines through different techniques.
If off-page SEO includes activities related to acquiring backlinks through link building and digital PR, and technical SEO is all about code optimization, on-page SEO focuses on a series of elements on which you can work to make a website rank high.
The role of content, keywords, and tags
When optimizing a single web page, content is king. Any writer or copywriter has to put themselves in the user’s shoes and try to anticipate the so-called “search intent” through carefully researched keywords.
Every piece of content published on a page should be built around a single primary keyword and a few secondary keywords that are closely related to the topic of the text. The primary keyword must also appear in the title (H1), subtitles (H2 and H3), and, of course, in the text.
However, avoiding “keyword stuffing” is essential, that is, using the keyword too often or unnaturally. Such behavior could even penalize the website in rankings.
Improving user engagement for on-page SEO
Search engines use some metrics to define the level of interest of website visitors toward a specific page or website: pages per session, bounce rate, and click-through rate (CTR). Once again, the better these values are, the higher the rankings are because Google aims to show users the content they would be most interested in.
And there’s more. The number of pages per session—the number of pages visited by a single user before leaving—also helps companies detect any site errors that affect navigation. The bounce rate indicates user satisfaction on a landing page: the higher it is, the less engagement the page creates. By analyzing the pages with a high bounce rate, you can understand how to intervene to improve the pages per session.
Finally, there is the CTR, the first interaction a user has with the website. When this value is low, the user didn’t find the meta description and title tag in SERP exciting or relevant to their search.
Are links important in on-page SEO?
Right at the intersection between on-page, on-site, and technical SEO, links significantly impact the optimization of every single page of a website.
First, each page should feature at least a couple of internal links that refer to other pages on the same website. Then, it’s always a good idea to insert some external links; these are links to content on other websites, preferably with high domain authority and well-known in your industry.
A website that loads slowly and needs to be more responsive for mobile devices, with pages that are not scannable by search engine spiders and do not respect the HTTPS protocol, won’t rank high in the SERP. Links are crucial because they guide the user and search engine spiders. For this reason, a broken link that leads to Error 404 significantly damages the site.
Meta-Beschreibungen und Alt-Tags
The meta description is a summary of the content of a web page, which search engines display in search results under the page title. Although it does not directly influence SEO positioning, having a well-crafted meta description is essential because it increases CTR, meaning a user will likely click on the link in search results if they are interested.
The meta description provides users with a preview of the page’s content, helping them determine whether it meets their needs, thus leading to higher engagement and time on site. That can also reduce the bounce rate, improving the user experience. Of course, every meta description should include the primary keywords used in the page.
The alt (alternative text) tag is a powerful tool for inclusivity. It’s used to describe the content of images on a web page, making it accessible for blind or visually impaired users who use screen readers. But its benefits continue beyond there. It also plays a crucial role in SEO, making it a must-have for any web developer.
Search engines use the alt tag to understand the content of images. Accurate and relevant descriptions can improve the ranking of images in image search results, increasing traffic to the site. Including relevant keywords in your alt tags can help improve your page’s overall relevance for those keywords, helping your search engine rankings.
Abschließende Gedanken
So, what is on-page SEO? In summary, it’s a group of techniques used to improve a web page’s visibility and ranking in search engine results. Every element, from content to keywords, from meta descriptions to alt tags, plays a crucial role in determining the website’s success in terms of organic traffic and user engagement.
Implementing an effective on-page SEO strategy requires attention to detail and an in-depth understanding of user and search engine behavior. However, the visibility, traffic, and conversion benefits justify this effort. Proper SEO optimization can significantly increase sales and customer loyalty for companies, online stores, bloggers, and freelancers, making the site a critical resource for business success.
