On-site SEO is the practice of optimizing elements on a website in order to rank higher, earn more traffic and potential customers from search engines.

SEO performs as an organic ecosystem, where each small snippet of code directly or indirectly ties into the performance of the website. CloudVandana is providing such top 5 on-site SEO factors that a marketer should keep in mind when designing and auditing the website.

1. Content

Content is the most important asset for any website. But only having content is not enough to help the site rank for the keyword term it is targeting. Understanding user intent is the future of search engine development. Without getting too much into the details, Google’s algorithms are working tirelessly to better understand the syntax and semantics of user searches. Content relevance to user searches plays a very important role in search engine optimization, but if the content is not relevant to a search, then it will be devalued.

Content Optimization

Understand the intent of the given keyword.
Analyze the keywords and show the results of the ranking.
Research the similarities and optimize content around those terms.

Deep Content

The deep or long-form content directs to many users while providing a fresh perspective over a topic. Search engines seem to prefer long-form content for many informational user searches. Researches found that content 2250 and 2500 words receive the most organic traffic. Though creating pages much longer than 2500 words, when necessary, can also be beneficial.

Optimization

Research is needed to target the keywords of top-ranking pages for a target keyword and analyze their content.
Semantically related keywords are needed to flesh out the content with additional sub-topics.
A marketer should answer all the queries users may have about a particular topic.

Organized Content

SEO tags play an important role in content creation. Optimizing title tags and header tags can help in communication with the intent and syntax of the webpage document. It also organizes the documents to make it easier for users and search engines to read and making pages more scannable.

Optimization

Focus keywords should be inserted into title tags, URL slug, and page titles.
The header section(H2, H3, H4s) can be created using related keywords.

2. User Engagement

Websites are designed for both people and search engines. For user engagement to the website, a content creator must look at the website from a fresh perspective. User engagement is a ranking factor for Google.

Pages Per Session

The pages per session metric indicate how many pages a user views before leaving the site. All metrics can be found in Google Analytics. These metrics indicate how interactive ad engaging the website is. This also helps in conversion. If data shows that a user is spending more time on the website that defines the webpage is being able to engage the audience through relevant and interesting content.

Optimization

Pages with high bounce rates should be analyzed and opportunities needed to encourage longer session duration or more pages per session.
CTA(call-to-action ) button should be there to increase the conversion rate.
Additional navigation options within content, like placing interlinks in body content should be provided for a better result.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is another important metric that could either be positive or negative depending on the view. Finally, bounce rate indicates how satisfied users are with the landing page or website.

High bounce rate has two different perspectives. The first perspective indicates that the pages might not be able to engage satisfy user intent, especially for the eCommerce pages. User bounces also indicate that users are satisfied and got the result they were looking for.

Optimization

A story should contain a compelling hook.
Intrusive interstitials and pop-ups should be avoided.
Page load time should be improved.
The landing page should be relevant to search queries.

Click-Through Rate

The Click-through rate is an indicator of whether the interaction was successful or not. A low CTR indicates that the content is not relevant to a user search. It also indicates that the meta description or the title ta is not relevant enough.

Optimization

Exact match keywords should be created for title tags and meta descriptions.
A marketer has to be ensured that the length of the tags should be proper.

3. Technical Structure

Technical structure is a very important part that influences te user engagement and keyword ranking. Technical SEO is considered the foundation pillar of SEO.

Crawlability

The secure a better SEO ranking, the websites need to be crawled as much as possible. Search engine crawlers only get access to the links provided in the sitemap that is available from the homepage. The crawl budget decides how many pages search engines will crawl during a crawl session. This is also determined by crawl rate and crawl demand. Crawl rate is a measurement of how many requests per second a search engine spider makes to the site while crawling determines how often search engine spiders will crawl to the site.

Optimization

A sitemap should be created using the CMS or Screaming Fro and submit it manually through Google Search Console.
The page owner can block all pages that are not important to be crawled.
Redirect chains should be cleaned and parameters should be set for dynamic URLs.

Security

An HTTPS secured website is very valuable for ensuring the security of transactions on the site. It is also a soft ranking factor for Google. While pages redirect to their HTTPS counterpart, it is an advantage to have links to mixed content.

Optimization

The hosting provider can solve any issue regarding SSL certification and implementation.
A crawl needs to be done to identify the errors.
A sitemap needs to be placed.

Clean URLs

Clean URLs is equally important as the content should not be linked up to broken URL. Not only it affects the speeds, but it also can impact indexation and crawl budgets.

4.Interlinking

Interlinking is the most important factor from multiple SEO perspectives.

Crawlability
UX and IA
Content
Link Building

If technical SEO is considered as the foundation of SEO, then internal links are the doors that allow the user to move from room to room. Here the word represents pages.

Deep Links

Deep links help create an organized interlinking structure around similar topics lower pages on the site to pull some authority from higher authority pages. It also provides users with additional actions to take on the site, such as reading more about a particular sub-topic or traveling to another section of the website.

Organized Hierarchy

All websites are comprised of a topic hierarchy that is designed to communicate to users and search engines the purpose of each section of the site. Tags are even implemented to help organize content and readers understand the context of certain topics.

5. Mobile Responsivity

In today’s mobile-first index, it is very necessary to present a website in a mobile-friendly way. The mobile-first index has become Google’s primary ranking index, so it should be updated before its desktop index. Long scrolls are preferable to links that will engage users to load another page and improve the surfing experience in a smooth way.