On-page SEO is the set of actions you carry out while a web page is being built.
It’s an optimization that on one hand helps Google’s crawler read the website, and on the other makes the page friendlier for the people reading it.
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On-page SEO: the benefits
- It takes more effort than simply positioning keywords, but (in theory) you do it once. Once the work is finished you won’t have to pour much energy into maintenance later on.
- It improves the website’s efficiency and performance: everything you’re about to do is aimed at increasing speed, code correctness and the clarity of the site’s information.
How to do on-page SEO
Let’s get to the point. Here’s a detailed picture of every area that feeds into on-page SEO optimization.
All the actions that make up on-page SEO can be grouped into 3 broad areas:
- Improving how fast the site loads
- Optimizing the HTML code
- Refining the information and content architecture
Optimizing site speed
Google offers a tool that lets you check your website’s speed and work out whether it needs optimizing.
Here’s the link: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
These are the parameters the tool takes into account:
- Image optimization
- Browser caching
- Minification of JS, HTML and CSS files
- File compression
Optimizing the HTML code
This is a crucial point, and one of the hardest parts of on-page SEO.
As in any field, some things can be done by “ordinary” people who aren’t specialists, while others call for skills you can’t improvise and are better left to someone who knows what they’re doing.
So if you have doubts, questions, or need an SEO consultation, scroll down and you’ll find a form to get in touch with us.
Back to the subject.
For a general overview of the HTML improvements your site needs, you can use http://validator.w3.org/, which will show you the errors present on your various pages.
Refining the information and content architecture
Refining what, exactly? Don’t worry if these terms aren’t clear straight away.
As far as the architecture of the information inside your site goes, you’ll need to handle:
- Fixing duplicates: crawlers take a very dim view of duplicate content. There are plenty of guides online explaining how to get into your CMS and improve its behaviour; our advice is to start with Google’s webmaster tools.
- 404 errors: these appear when content is moved or deleted. A site that keeps growing may have a lot of dynamic content coming and going, so take care not to let visitors fall into those gaps.
- Internal link network: if you didn’t already know — it’s essential that a website has a well-structured network of internal links pointing to other pages and articles on the same site.
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On-page SEO: managing your content
This is one of the most delicate parts of on-site SEO. You need to keep all the data inside your pages in order, which also helps you eliminate duplicates.
One useful exercise is building a table that captures the following for every page: URL, keyword, meta description, title, H1, H2, H3.
When you’re done you’ll have a table holding the details of every page on the site, and you’ll be able to see far more easily what needs changing or optimizing.
A few useful SEO tools
- One tool that can help you with everything SEO-related, especially as you get more experienced, is SEMrush. It’s a paid tool offering research and analysis features: keyword research, related terms, rank tracking for your website and much more.
- If you want software aimed at the Italian market, we recommend SEOZoom.
Conclusion
You’ve finished this lesson — well done! You now know the world of on-page SEO: what it is, how to do it, and the benefits of doing it well. You’ve seen that on-site SEO means working on site speed, HTML code, image alt text, keywords, the SEO title, the SEO description, H headings and more besides.
As you can see, it isn’t quick or simple work.
Stay with us: in the coming lessons we’ll go deeper still and walk you through every single step of on-page SEO optimization.
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