How On-page SEO Helps To Improve Your Site’s Ranking
Have you ever heard about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? What crosses your mind when you hear about it?.. Mine is “oh, maybe Google is working hard to optimize their search algorithm” LoL.
However, my curiosity grew bigger when I heard one of my colleague in digital marketing team was working on it! And from that moment I was wondering “Whoaaa, what is he working on?”. So, rather than dying-of-curiosity, I decided to learn about it.
Several days ago, I just finished my free online course about Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals from University of California Davis Extension on Coursera. The course is very good and easy to understand for a n̶o̶o̶b̶ entry level like me who have no idea on what SEO is. So, this four-modules course focuses on introducing you about the three main areas of SEO: On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, and Technical SEO. Also, in the last module, you will learn about Keyword Search Theory.
If you are as curious as me about SEO area, don’t worry, I am glad to share you about what I’ve learned so far. In this part, I will share you about the On-page SEO!
On-page SEO
On page SEO is a technique to keyword-optimize every page on your website. What does that mean? Let’s take a look at this example. Let’s say I want to learn SEO online, but I don’t know where should I learn. So, I search for any information about learn SEO online, let’s say I search it on Google. Then I type “Learn SEO Online”. Here is the screenshoot of top 3 results (after ads).
The top 3 websites don’t show up randomly on my result page. There are some reasons that make them show up in top 3. Wonder why? Here we go.
- Keywords Frequency & Usage
If you look carefully on the bold words, they are exactly words you type on Google Search, that is what we called keywords. When you tell Google you want to “Learn SEO Online”, Google puts more weight on pages that mention the term “Learn”, “SEO” and “Online” in the first 100s words, so the pages show up early in your result pages. It is also important to mention the keywords 5–10 times because Google can be more confident about your page. However, don’t put keywords too much because your website will look like spam. Thus, Google will consider your page as irrelevant website.
- Create SEO-friendly URLs
Search engines use your webpage’s URL to understand what your content is all about, so it is a good idea to place important keywords as close to the beginning of your URL as possible. You can see the URLs, each website has subdirectory “learn” or “SEO”, as this keyword is specific to our search query. When you include a keyword in your URL, that keyword tells Google: “This page is about that keyword”.
Also, consider using punctuation in your URLs. Instead of using underscores “_ “ , it is highly recommended to use hyphens “-” because they are the standard way of separating words in a URL.
- Add Meta-Description
Meta description is a snippet that contain summarize of your page content, so meta description does help search engine to support your SEO strategy. It is best to keep your meta description under 160 characters length and include your keyword once in it. Even though Google sometime uses their own snippet, it is best practice to not leave them blank.
- Make Your Content Unique and Valuable
Your content should be well-organized because it will help search engines locate and identify most relevant content to the topic users are searching for. Adding some details such as images and videos will help your content stand out and valuable. Make sure your image or video is not duplicate with other websites.
You also want to link out to other sites. Before that, you need to make sure that the site is not spammy.
- Use Title Tags
Make sure your keyword is wrapped in an H1 tag. Although, Google stated that a website can rank fine with or without H1 tags, it helps google to understand the structure of your page.
This is a summary about what I’ve learned so far from the course. Of course,there are still many areas about on-page SEO that I haven’t mentioned above, so I still need to learn more about on-page SEO. Any discussion and suggestion are welcome :)
Other references (besides the online course material):
- https://backlinko.com/on-page-seo
- https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/urls
- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-says-fill-in-your-meta-descriptions-26599.html
- https://www.seroundtable.com/google-h1-tags-rankings-28305.html
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451184?hl=en
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en