Top 5 On-Page SEO Elements to Get Your Site Ranking

It’s no secret that search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of every digital marketing strategy. Achieving high search engine rankings not only boosts organic website traffic, but also drives leads for your business.

To put it simply, SEO can be split into two critical categories – on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Off-page SEO focuses on improving your website’s backlink profile by obtaining high-authority, relevant, and authentic inbound links. On-page SEO emphasizes the importance of the content and HTML of your webpages.

While a strong backlink profile has a remarkable effect on search engine rankings, on-site efforts are the foundation of your SEO strategy. Here are the top five on-page elements to optimize to help you build a strong SEO foundation.

1. Title Tag
Both users and search engines use title tags to understand the relevance of a webpage for a given search query. Your title tags should clearly communicate what the page is about while incorporating your keyword naturally.

Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of the title tag. Be sure to incorporate the keyword as close to the front of the title tag as natural.

2. Meta Description
The meta description is the snippet of text that is shown below the page title in the search engine results pages. In conjunction with the title tag, both users and search engines alike use the meta description to determine what the page is all about. Therefore, it’s important to integrate relevant keywords in a natural manner.

In addition, a well-constructed meta description can have a positive impact on your click-through-rate. Be sure to use a call-to-action to entice clicks, which will in turn, boost traffic.

3. H1 tag
An H1 tag is a specific piece of HTML code that is wrapped around text. This typically indicates to both the user and the search engines what your webpage is about. Stick to having only one H1 tag per page and utilize H2-H6 for sub-topics.

4. On-Page Content
I’m sure you were waiting for this one. That’s right. Cliché but true. Content is, in fact, king. Create relevant, high-quality content that integrates your strategic keywords and variations in a natural manner. Your content should be insightful, valuable, and most importantly 100% unique.

5. Internal Links
Use your content to link to other relevant pages on your website. In addition to keeping your users engaged, this also ensures all pages of your site are easily indexed by Google. Internal linking also sends a signal to Google that the page being linked to is relevant for that search term. Make sure the anchor text in the link is natural and avoid overuse.

Hopefully this article helped you identify some low-hanging fruit to optimize on your own website. Using these tips, you can start building a solid foundation for SEO. Do you have any tips to share? Tell us in the comments!