Now, in this part of the series (the second part of on-page optimization guide) it’s time for us to focus on the most important part of on-page optimization, i.e. Content and Image Optimization which constitutes the major portion of the on-page optimization. There is nothing that can replace a well-researched, resourceful, in-depth and unique content which appears nowhere other than your site and adds a unique value only to your readers.
Your content is the only reason because of which your visitors land on your site and it’s your responsibility to provide with what they are looking for.
Content/Body Optimization
The most important thing in on-page optimization is the Content Optimization without which all other optimization techniques fails to exist. Your first and foremost priority should be on writing a well-researched, easy-to-understand, informative, resourceful and unique content and everything else should come after it.
Focus Primarily on the Content
(Priority: High, Difficulty: High)
(Image Source: moz.com)
Your first priority should be on writing the best quality content as there is nothing that can replace a deeply-researched, well-written and unique piece of content. Every other on-page optimization technique should come after this.
The main idea here is to satisfy the searchers who have chosen to visit your website over others (from the SERPs). It’s clear that the searchers want some information because of which they are using the search engines and seeking for sites which can provide the information that they are looking for. Now it’s your chance to grab this opportunity and provide them precisely with what they want and satisfy them.
Always consider investing some time in researching about the topic prior writing on it. Also try to analyze what your competitors have already written about it as you need to be better than the best available. You also need to make your work exclusively different from others so as to leave a mark of your brand name on the minds of your visitors.
It is not always necessary that the searchers will look for some answers or information’s, as there are situations when they can search with some actionable queries, like buying a movie ticket, booking a hotel, etc. and the same rule of providing a unique and satisfying solution to the visitors applies here too.
Write in a Simple and Lucid Language
(Priority: High, Difficulty: Medium)
Try to write in a very simple and easily understandable language such that everybody reading your document understands what you are trying to convey. There is simply to need to unnecessarily make complex sentence construction and use ornamental words which can become incomprehensible to many readers.
The search engines consider this factor with significant importance and use various language-based algorithms to understand the readability of the document. The engines will always prefer to put a simple and lucidly written document before a difficult one, as the former can prove to be more useful to a much larger audience than the latter.
Also try to make your document free from spelling and grammatical errors as it not only creates a very poor user-experience, but it also compels the engines to favor other perfectly written, error-free documents over yours. So, it’s always a wiser choice to spend some time in proofreading your document several times before publishing it in the web.
Keyword Density is a Myth
(Priority: Medium, Difficulty: Medium)
It’s simply useless to spend time analyzing the Keyword Density of your pages anymore. There was a time a few years back, when search engine used to put a lot of importance in the concept of Keyword Density which slowly got faded away as the search engines became smarter day-by-day.
(Image Source: submitedge.com)
In today’s SEO world, there is simply nothing that the search engines consider about Keyword Density as there are many other factors which prove to be way better than just calculating the mere Keyword Density of the pages. So, there is simply no need for you to focus on this factor anymore and spoil your natural style of writing. Just write naturally in your own flow by just keeping your target keywords in mind.
Gone are those days, when the search engines used to count the no. of times a specific keyword has been used in a webpage and rank them on the basis of that. Just focus on your readers and write in your natural style.
Time to Focus More on LSI Keywords
(Priority: Medium, Difficulty: Medium)
Instead of wasting time on useless factors like Keyword Density, there is something much better to think about and that “better” thing is known as LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) Keywords. Fortunately, the idea is not as complex as the name seems but is extremely important in on-page optimization.
LSI Keywords are those keywords which have exactly the same or partially similar meaning as your primary (focus or target) keyword which can (or should) be used in your document to make them even more relevant in the eyes of the search engines.
Not only does these keywords help in making your document better understandable to the search engine bots, they also prove to improve readability for your real visitors too. Moreover, the use of LSI keywords also opens new doors for getting extra traffic from those synonymous keywords that you use along with your primary keyword.
Don’t Indulge in any Black-Hat SEO Practices
(Priority: High, Difficulty: Low)
As we have discussed a bit about the Black-Hat SEO practices before, you must already have guessed the reason for not indulging in any kind of black SEO practices. There are many Black-Hat SEO practices related to on-page optimization like Keyword Stuffing, Keyword Cloaking, Doorway Pages, etc. which can give you better and quicker results than the white-hat ways.
(Image Source: davidmcbee.com)
But in the long-run you simply cannot survive in the SEO world by deceiving or tricking the intelligence of the search engines. Whatever techniques you use to wrongly manipulate the search engines, will someday be caught and there will be nothing better waiting for you other than a penalty or a complete ban from the search engine index.
So, always try to play fair and be on the legal side of SEO. Be patient and continue to put your hard work on your content and follow the white-hat ways and success is bound to follow you.
Image Optimization
Image Optimization is something that many webmasters tend to overlook and therefore miss a great chance of grabbing a decent volume of traffic from the Image Search engines. Optimizing the images on your web pages is not something that can steal a lot of precious hours from your busy schedule. All you need to do is learn about some of the best practices of it and make a habit of implementing them every time with your images.
Optimizing the Size of the Images
(Priority: High, Difficult: Medium)
Many of us don’t bother considering the importance of the image size on our webpages, either because we are not aware of it or because we don’t care much about it. But the image size is something that contributes a lot to the loading speed of the webpages.
If not necessary, then so not use too high-quality or heavily-sized images in your webpage as it can drastically slow down the loading speed of your site. You also need to understand the difference between PNG and JPEG format and the judicious use of the appropriate file format. Try to use the JPEG format when your image contains a lot for color information’s while the PNG format is best suited for text and other simple graphics-based images.
(Image Source: uxbooth.com)
Also do not forget to compress the images as much as you can (without compromising the quality of it) because a few kilobytes saved can improve your loading time by a few seconds.
Using Meaningful Filename for the Images
(Priority: Medium, Difficulty: Low)
There exists a bad habit among many webmasters of using un-meaningful file names for the images like 1.jpg, 2.jpg, abc.png, etc. which simply does nothing to help the search engine bots or the users in understanding what the images actually mean.
While the real human visitors are capable of understanding an image just by looking at it, the search engine robots are still pretty weak with multimedia content like images, videos, audio clips, etc. But a properly written, meaningful filename can prove to be extremely helpful to the engines in understanding what the image is all about and rank it on that basis.
So try to make it a habit of using meaningful and precisely descriptive file names to your images as this simple practice can fetch you an extra amount of traffic from the image search engines without much extra work which could otherwise go into the pockets of your competitors.
Don’t Forget about the ALT Text
(Priority: Medium, Difficulty: Low)
ALT text means an Alternate Text (of the images) which can be used to describe what your image is all about. It’s just another step that you need to take to help the search engine bots to understand your image which they otherwise can’t.
Try to write a short yet precise description about the images and also consider including some of the target keywords in the description if it fits well. Do not dump keywords unnecessarily making it nothing other than an unnatural piece of junk.
You obviously have your freedom of using your keywords in it, only if they are precisely related to the image and fits extremely well with it. Also, if possible try pushing the keyword to the beginning of the description, as it can help you in improving the CTR from image search engines too.
With this, we have come to an end of the long two-part on-page optimization guide of the SEO series. We have covered almost everything you need to know in achieving the goal of an “almost perfect” on-page optimization. There is absolutely no doubt that you have learned dozens of new and unknown techniques and is now capable of perfecting a major aspect of SEO (which is completely under your control).
In the next article of the series, we would introduce the factor – off-page optimization which will not be under your control entirely and we need a different approach to tackle it. Things are going to turn even more interesting as we step into off-page SEO from the next articles. See you in the next article, till then take care.
