On-Page SEO Basics: How To Fully Optimise Your Web Pages

In this post, l will quickly share with you some of the key factors that you need to consider when optimising your blog posts for on-page SEO.

These includes:

1. Include Your Target Keyword(s) In Your Title

2. Include Your Target Keyword In The Meta Description

3. Make Correct Use Of Header Tags

4. Use Short Descriptive Urls

5. Use Alt Text For All Your Images

6. Interlink Your Content

7. Take Note Of Word Count

Without further ado, let me explain each of these.

1. Include Your Target Keyword(s) In Your Title

The first and most important thing is to include your target keyword in the title(s) of your blog post.

Remember, Google is a search engine which uses keywords to better understand your content.

Thus, if you include your target keyword in the title, Google can easily understand what your content is all about – thus, allowing it to rank it accordingly.

For example, if you're trying to rank for the keyword ‘Make Money Online', you should include that keyword in your title e.g.

‘How To Make Money Online In 2022’

‘How To Make Money Online As A Teenager'

’10 Best Ways To Make Money Online During The Pandemic’

*I think you get the idea!

But you shouldn't try to game the system by doing keyword staffing – because Google will catch-up on that & they might penalize your site.

For example:

‘Make Money Online: Read These Strategies For Making Money Online If You're Serious About Making Money Online’

If your target keyword appears too often in the title, it will be regarded as keyword staffing – which is unethical not only to the algorithm – but also, to the readers.

The bottom line is;

You should include your target keyword in the title of your blog posts – but you shouldn't overdo it!

2. Include Your Target Keyword In The Meta Description

It's also a good practice to include your target keyword(s) in the meta description of your blog posts.

This helps Google to better understand what your content is all about – thus, it'll rank it accordingly.

Also, try to include the target keyword in the first 100 words of your blog post – since it also helps a lot when it comes to SEO.

3. Make Correct Use Of Header Tags

The next tip is to make use of correct header tags i.e.

H1 for titles

H2 for headings

H3 for sub-headings

This is so important because Google also looks at these metrics when ranking your content.

This also makes your content easier to skim for the readers – since they can easily browse through the headings before reading the full article.

Thus, you should try by all means to make use of these header tags.

4. Use Short Descriptive Urls

It's also a good practice to use short descriptive urls.

For example, if your target keyword is ‘make money online', your url can be something like:

mywebsite.com/make-money-online

Instead of including the whole title in the url like:

Mywebsite.com/the-10-best-ways-to-make-money-online-in-2021

Google easily understands short descriptive urls as compared to long ones – thus, it's important to make your urls short – but at the same time, they should include the target keyword(s) of your post.

5. Use Alt Text For All Your Images

For images, you should write some alt text/short description.

This helps Google to better understand what your image is all about – thus, it can rank it on the Google Images section.

You shouldn't stress too much about this issue!

The key is to include your target keyword in the alt text – so that it can potentially rank on the Images section.

Using our previous example, your alt text can be something like;

‘Image showing teenager making money online in 2022’

6. Interlink Your Content

Interlinking is also crucial when it comes to on-page SEO for various reasons;

• It helps to pass the link juice to other pages on your site – thus, boosting the Page Authority (PA) of your web pages.

• It shows Google that you have more articles based around that topic i.e. topical relevancy – thus, Google might start ranking your pages for that topic.

• It helps to increase user experience for your readers – since you can easily transfer your readers from one post to the other.

For these reasons, you should try by all means to interlink your blog posts (where possible).

7. Take Note Of Word Count

Last but not least, it's also important to take note of word count.

This is so crucial as it is one of Google's major ranking factors – thus, you should write articles that are long enough to compete with what's currently ranking on the first page.

For example, if the currently ranking articles are 2000 word long, it will be a good practice to write something that's longer than that i.e. something more detailed than what's currently ranking.

By doing so, Google will view your content as thorough & more detailed – thus, Google will rank it over time.