SEO or search engine optimization comprises of 2 components: on-site and off-site and to be able to rank for any keyword. This article explains what onsite or onpage optimization is, why it is important and how to do it right.
You can refer to this onsite optimization checklist when building a new site, blog or when writing content.
With that in mind, let’s go straight to the point.
What is onsite optimization?
Simply put, onsite SEO refers to all the activities you do on your own website to make it optimized for search engines, in particularly Google.
So what does “optimized” mean? Image a lawyer goes to court to defense a case. She has to be optimized so that her success chance is the highest.
She has to dress formally for the event, she has to look sure and confident, she has to come prepared with all necessary papers, evidences and all the possible scenarios thought through.
The same goes for optimizing your site for Google. Your site has to be prepared so that Google bots can come in and find their way around it easily and has to give the impression as a good, honest and quality site to Google.
Why is onsite optimization important?
Even though some people say that in SEO, on-site optimization accounts for only 20% of the results while offsite elements account for 80%.
This might be true in very competitive keywords, however sometimes only by focusing on optimizing your onsite elements, you can already win more than half of the battle.
The costs
While for competitive keywords, you will have to pay a lot of efforts (and money) for off-site elements, for example building links that are quality and look natural, onsite optimization costs you from very low to nothing.
Therefore I always try to make sure that my sites are well optimized onsite first before moving out for any off-site activities
Getting indexed and ranked
On-site or on-page optimization is especially important for new sites or for new contents of your site. Your site can only be indexed and be found on Google for a certain topic if its bots can crawl your new content and pick up the hints about which topic this content is about.
For example if you want to be found on Google through the keyword “organic gardening tips” but you only mention variables of the keyword here and there throughout the article, Google may not show your site to people who search for that exact keyword.
Many people say that you only need to write good content about the topic and Google will pick up all kinds of long tail keywords from there anyway. I do agree with that. But it is better to have contents that are both engaging and optimized.
Not optimizing your blog is like going hunting and shooting aimlessly at where the bird flock stays, hoping one will get hit. Meanwhile if you concentrate on one good chubby bird, aim carefully and then shoot at it, the chance it gets hit would be much higher.
You have all the control
Things change, people change, websites change. The sites where you place your links on before might not exist some days later, or decide to remove links to your site.
You don’t have total control over anything else other than your own property.
The onsite optimization checklist
Google and other search engines evolve all the time. Google alone rolls out several updates through out the year to their algorithm (way of arranging search results), therefore the criteria on how to optimize your website might change all the time.
In order to keep up with the trend, SEO savvy webmasters or Search engine optimizers should keep their eyes open for all the updates, announcements from Google and adjust their onsite optimization strategy from time to time.
I believe that onsite optimization now is not only restricted to keyword placement and density in your article but also other elements of your website or blog.
And here are a list of elements that you should apply to ensure your page is fully optimized for Google:
Easy for bots to crawl
Content should be unique to each URL: Google avoids duplicate content on their own site, so if you have the same content displayed in different sub-domains or URLs, you should canonicalize them by using a 301 redirect or the rel=”canonical” tag. Read more about canonical tag on Google Webmaster blog.
Meta robot tag allows indexing: if you are using All in One SEO pack plugin, there is an option “Robots meta noindex”, make sure that you DON’T check that box if you want your page to be indexed.
Robots.txt file doesn’t block bots’ access
User experience
Site design should look “the part”, which is clean, nicely designed, easy to navigate
Any content should be found and accessed by users not more than 4 clicks away from any page
Designed to be compatible with any browsers
Multi-device ready: your site should be responsive to different devices and screens
Fast to load: You can use Pingdom tool to test how fast your site load. If you can get technical, Google Developers offer a good series of tutorials on how to make your site faster.
Respoz theme by themify.me
Keyword optimization checklist
Even though Google recommends all webmasters to create sites that have great user experience and content that users would share, it is always good to have both.
Here is a checklist for keyword optimization for each page or article that is published on your site or blog. There is actually no official or standard way to optimize keywords. This is how I personally do it and have seen satisfying results over the years.
Be aware of character length limitations: Title at most 60 characters, URL < 90 characters and Meta description at most 160 characters
Exact target keyword should be in title and URL
Exact keyword should be in meta description
Keyword density around 2%. Some WordPress plugins calculate this for you, but you can also use SEObook’s keyword density tool to check.
Exact keyword in the first 200 words of article
Bold, italic or underline your main or related keywords at least once throughout the article
Image title and ALT tag should be keyword rich
Related terms to your topic appear throughout the article
Main keyword in the last 200 words of article
Descriptive anchor text: anchor text within the article should describe the destination page.
Social media sharing ready
Google really emphasizes the importance of social signals (how many people share your content over social networks) nowadays so there should be ways for your readers to share your content.
Social media sharing buttons before and/or after your post or along sidebar
Topic of your content is clear in the URL
Authorship markup
Google seems to favor strongly identity over anonymity by implementing the author and publisher “rel” tags. Having a person behind a post also help increasing the click through rate in the search engine result page as your picture makes your link more outstanding.
Therefore it is highly recommended that you add author rich snippets to your site, not only to be favorable in Google’s eyes but also to attract more search engine traffic. In the end of the day, this is what we are talking about right?
If you have a self-hosted WordPress blogs, there are many plugins that support this function. Authorsure is a good nifty plugin for this task.
You could also refer too Swellpath’s guide to insert Author Rich Snippets for a complete guide on authorship markup and how to implement it.
In conclusion
I hope you find all the guidelines in this article helpful for your onsite optimization efforts. This onsite optimization checklist is by no means evergreen. It would be changing slightly from time to time, even though I predict there would be no huge changes in the near future.
Be careful when you carry out keyword optimization though, there should be a balance in all of the elements to avoid being over-optimized. Keyword optimization should not compromise readability and user experience.
In the end of the day, your ultimate goal is still building a quality website or blog that readers want to read, follow, share and talk about.
And here are a list of elements that you should apply to ensure your page is fully optimized for Google:
