On-Page SEO Guide for 2019 (Checklist included)

Published in

Writers Guild

8 min readJul 8, 2019

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2.8 Million blog posts are published every day, that means around 23 articles every second! Does it give you goosebumps to imagine that each post you write is competing with millions of pieces to be visible on Google search for a particular keyword? Unfortunately, Google doesn’t reveal its algorithm for ranking. Therefore, in this article, we will learn from the experts what they do to optimize their articles.

Writing an article that is loved by your audience and Google both, is indeed not a walk in the park. So, when you unleash your blog post, you must make sure it is equipped with all the necessary tools to fight and win the race.

First thing first, what is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?

It is the process of getting “free” and “organic” traffic from the search results in search engines. Moz defines SEO as ‘the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.‘

On-page SEO is a significant part of SEO Strategy other two being Off-page SEO and the Technical SEO.

On-page focuses on ways to optimise a particular webpage (page-level) for Google search. Affiliate marketing guru, Kulwant Nagi (Blogging Cage) says, “On-Page SEO is the backbone of any webpage of your website. Targeting the right keywords and doing proper optimisation tells Google about your target keywords.”

Why do you need to do on-page SEO at all?

Kulwant Nagi calls On-Page SEO to be the backbone of any webpage. 61% of the marketers say that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is the top priority of their inbound marketing efforts.

So, what is it that makes it a sought-after strategy?

When you create a webpage, be it your services page or even homepage you target keywords with your content. The problem is, Google cannot read the pages like a human. There are specific ways you can tell Google what your page is about.

Gone are the days when only keyword optimisation could help you rank for a webpage. On Page SEO has a lot to it.

Here is a detailed guide to On-Page SEO so that you don’t miss out any important aspect of optimising your webpage or your blog post.

On-page SEO technique #1: Keyword Placement

In the title tag: Not just your keyword should be in the title tag, it works better when placed as the first three words of the title.

<head>
<title> Your Title Here </title>
</head>

Primary Keyword- Secondary Keyword| brand name

So, Google gives you 600 pixels space to write your title that approximates 50–60 words. If your title has some words that are wide like W, M then your space will fill up soon.

Sandeep Rathore from QuickScream says, “If you ask me the top three points, I will say:

Use keywords at the beginning of the Title Tag
Use keyword in the URL string
Use keyword in the Title description

Here’s the screenshot of my post on the benefits of content marketing:

Keyword in the Heading

Have proper headings in your article: H1, H2…

Big chunks of dense text are scary.

Having headings makes your content quickly scannable and act as a breather. The readability score of your content goes up. So, you should include titles not only for SEO but also for your readers. The more they like the content, the more they stay. And, the increased dwell time on your page sends positive signals to Google about the usefulness of your article.

Bonus tip: Add a powerup word in your title and watch your page views go higher. Some of the title tag powerup words are:

Awesome

Amazing

Crazy

1st 100 words

Tell Google at the very start what your article/page is about. Use the keyword in the introduction of your article. It does not just help Google but you as well to escape pogosticking. What’s pogosticking? We’ll discuss it soon.

Keyword Density (KD)

There was a time when you put your competitor’s article in a keyword density tool, check out their keyword density, and write an article with higher KD and it used to beat them up. Unfortunately, that game is over now. We will discuss what exactly you should do instead, in this article, shortly. But, does it mean you should not check the keyword density? No.

Hear from the expert, Kulwant Nagi- “We make sure that the density of the targeted keyword is around 1% only. As Google will start penalising your site if you are doing any keyword stuffing in your articles.”

Take a note of this link below (not an affiliate link):

http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density

It’s a free tool; I use to check the keyword density of my articles. Try to maintain a balance- it should not be too low that Google cannot recognise which keyword you’re trying to target nor should it be stuffed. It will give you a density report that you can download also.

Text Body:

Evenly sprinkle the keywords in the body of your article.

Meta Description

The last place where you need to place your keyword.

Is On Page SEO all about placing your keywords in the right place?

It’s much more than that.

That brings me to the next important factor in On-Page SEO- quality.

On-page SEO technique #2 Quality Content

No matter how well you optimise your content for search engines, if you fail to provide value to the audience, your ranking will sink.

Find out what is the unique proposition of your page/article. Are you giving them some extra information, or helping them understand better by presenting the same info visually, or added a content upgrade that they can use?

Zubin Azmera, a columnist at YourStory and founder at Progressandwin, says “Write for humans, help your audience by writing what they want and need help with.” He recommends using Yoast for SEO.

Amidst this content shock, only the content that provides real value to the readers will soar and win the attention race in 2019.

On-page SEO technique #3 Pogosticking

So, What’s pogosticking?

When someone clicks on your link and immediately bounces back, then it gives a strong negative signal to Google. Pogosticking is different than Bounce rate.

A bounce rate is not always bad. It just means that the visitor came, read and went without exploring more pages on your website which is not bad at all if he got what he wanted from that one page. But, pogosticking literally means he came, puked and went immediately.

So, how do you stop people from pogosticking?

A- Make a compelling introduction, like a copywriter would have written to sell his product. You need to pitch in the introduction why they should read your article.

Tell the user right in the start what he is going to gain from the article and why your content is unique.

B- your article should look easy to consume (good images, illustrations, graphics, colours, and subheading).

On-page SEO technique #4 LSI/ Semantic/ Primary and Secondary Keywords

After the Hummingbird update, Google tries to understand what’s your page about. For this purpose, you should try to figure out not just your keyword, but also the secondary keyword and LSI.

“We make sure that we are targeting proper LSI keywords in our article to make sure that we are talking about a specific niche and make it more relevant for the search engine crawlers. If you have written an article about “windows,” how are you going to tell Google that about which windows are you talking about. So adding proper LSI keywords will tell Google that you are talking about Windows in the home or a Windows operating systems.”

Here’s this free tool that you can use to generate semantic keywords

LSI graph.

Credit

Now, sprinkle these related words throughout the article. It should look very natural.

On-page SEO technique #5 Links (Outbound and Inbound)

Outbound Linking

Outbound linking is when you hyperlink a particular word to other website or webpage. When you do outbound linking to a relevant and high authority site Google understands your niche and trusts you more. Always check the DA of the site that you’re linking to and make sure it is a do-follow link.

Inbound Linking

Inbound Linking, on the other hand, refers to connecting to your own web pages.

“Internal link building is very crucial for on-page SEO. I see a lot of people are not doing it properly. You must add a relevant article to your blog posts to keep your reader engaged nom your blog. This will increase the time spent on your blog and send positive signals to Google.”- Kulwant Nagi

On-page SEO technique #6 Image optimisation, Titles & Alt Text

Always include highly relevant images after every 200/300 words. As I mentioned, images act as a breather and help you escape pogosticking and increase dwell time on your website.

Make sure your images are correctly labelled and compressed.

Add a small alt text to all your images. While Google needs alt text to understand what’s there in your picture, it is an extra opportunity for you to add your keyword in the description/alt text.

With these On-Page SEO tips for 2019, I hope you are good to optimise your next blog post for search engines and your audience. Don’t forget to download the free, editable on-page SEO checklist. Before hitting the publish button tick mark and make sure you have optimised your article well.

Do share in comments what are the top three factors you keep in mind while optimising your article for the search engines.

This article was originally published at upthereach.com