On-Page SEO: The Complete Guide for 2024 [Interactive]

Keyword Near Front

The post title (not to be confused with the title tag) is one of the most important parts of your post for both the reader and Google. So, you’ll want to make sure you put the keyword near the front.

Unsurprisingly, best practices of on-page SEO are common sense UX issues that are often answered by simply asking yourself, “does this look good?”

Wrap in H1 Tags

In the code of your site, your post title should be wrapped in <H1> tags.

This makes it the largest text on the page, ensuring that the focus of your piece is obvious.

Although wrapping in H1 tags doesn’t impact SEO directly, the size of your title does matter. Google has said they don’t care if you have multiple H1 tags, but realistically, having multiple tags set to the same size won’t help the reader understand the focus of your post.

While it’s not as important for your post title to be as click-worthy as the title tag, if you can match them, you should.

More on the title tag next.

Keep it Aligned with Post Title

The title tag of your post is what will show up in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). You’ll want to match this to post title best practices like keeping the keyword as close to the front as possible.

Keep Within 600 Pixel Limit

Don’t be afraid to match the post title, but know that Google has a pixel width limit to title tags. Use a tool like the one on Moz’s title tag post to check your length.

Make it Click-Worthy

The other thing to note is that you’re vying for attention in the SERP against all of the other search results, so you want to try to stand out and entice users to click.

How do you do that?

We’ve got a whole post about title tags that outlines our ideology on what drives clicks.

Minimize Image File Sizes

Whichever route you choose to go, you’ll want to keep the file size down. Large header images can easily slow page load speed, which, as we’ll see below, is a ranking factor.

Use Authors Who Are Credible for the Topic and List Author Name

Listing an author isn’t necessary on all pages. For blog posts or news articles where a name carries some level of trust, authors are a positive signal.

More importantly, there are some reports of sites recovering from the Google Medic update after building out author bios because they help illustrate a level of expertise.

(Note: An author name alone may not be enough if it is an unknown person. It is important to also show the user why the specific author is an expert. To do this, build out bio sections like we do at the bottom of our posts or link to an author bio page.)

This is a big part of Google’s big three ranking principles, known as E-A-T or Expertise, Authority and Trust. Marie Haynes does a great job at explaining E-A-T, but also why and how to employ author bios.

Link to or List Bio Where Possible

These bios can typically link to a bio page like Forbes does, or you can list the full bio on the bottom of the page like we do on Siege posts.

Dates Can Help Show Freshness

We mentioned previously how putting the year in the title tag triggers people to click. The same is true with the post date. Not every blog post needs a date, but in some industries, such as news, it’s very important.

Part of Google’s algorithm includes a piece that explains Query Deserves Freshness, which essentially says that there are some industries where “fresh” or new content is important.

We have a video on the importance of keeping your content fresh. In a nutshell, you should use the SERP as a guide for how recent your post should be to rank. If all of your competitors produce fresh content, you should too.

In general, old, outdated content can easily bring down your site and rankings if no one reads those posts.

Aside from having the post date on your page, Google also displays the date in the SERP, so having an updated date is just as important—especially if everyone else’s dates are more recent than yours.

What about that study that showed that adding post dates led to a drop in rankings? Let’s dive into that next.

Make Sure Content is Up to Date

Well, if you’re going to display dates, you need to make sure that your content is actually up to date. Suddenly highlighting all of your content from 2013 to Google and your users isn’t going to do you any good.

Don’t Manipulate

One last note here is that, in the past, users have tried to manipulate these dates by updating them automatically. Google has said that this will hurt you in the long run. Essentially, Google will simply stop believing that your dates signal freshness.

They also said in a patent back in 2011 that when changing a date and updating content, you need to update a considerable amount in order for them to recognize your post as “fresh.”

While this was somewhat disproven by Moz back in 2015, it doesn’t do you any good to simply change the date on a post. What value does that provide to the user?

Allows User to Click to Other Areas

Simply put, displaying categories can entice users to click through to more posts if they want to see more of what you’ve written about a particular topic.

Display So Google Can Understand Site Structure

There’s a slight difference between the category and breadcrumb, but essentially they serve the same purpose, which is to orient the user. It also helps explain to Google how your site is structured.

Breadcrumbs are typically used in e-commerce sites to designate things like browsing history (which page you clicked on before), product categorization, and site hierarchy (showing your place in the site structure).

Use the SERP as Your Guide

Use the SERP as a guide for what to include in your post and how to lay it out. If you see lots of ads and product pages ranking for a particular keyword, then the user is most likely looking to buy.

But if you see a SERP that lists “Top 11 Ways to do X” or “The Ultimate Guide to X,” a user most likely has a very different goal in mind.

Not matching the intent of your keyword is one of the top reasons a post won’t rank.

Match the Intent of the User

Another way of thinking about this is by determining the search intent. There are 3-4 main search intents (depending on who you ask).

Informational – The user wants information about something, like the capital of Texas, or how much it costs to own a boat.

Navigational – The user knows where they want to go and they search for the name of that particular site/store/shop and then will most likely click on the homepage of that site.

Transactional – These are users who want to buy something right now.

You can also roll commercial intent in there, where the user is thinking of buying something but wants more information on it first. This would be a keyword like “candle reviews” or “Samsung TV vs Vizio TV”.

But in essence, you want to figure out if your user wants to navigate, learn or buy. Then you can build your page to match that intent.

So, once you’ve matched the search intent, it’s time to make a better post.

Include Keywords and Related Keywords in H2

As you write your post, use your subheaders to include main and related keywords and topics around your main post topic.

Try to Anticipate Next Questions

Answer questions as users ask them. One easy way to determine these questions is by looking at Google’s People Also Ask box on the SERP.

Wherever relevant, you can include these without forcing them in. If users also ask these questions and you can provide answers without them having to leave your site, you will keep them on the page longer.

Add Keywords in the Post Where They Fit

In any post that’s centered around a keyword, you’ll want to make sure those keywords also appear throughout the post.

Is there an optimal number of times your keyword should appear in your post?

Unfortunately, there’s no magic number for Google. In longer posts, you should use them more often than in shorter posts.

Use Core Keywords and Semantically-related Keywords

On top of the main keyword, you also want to add semantically related keywords. These are keywords that have to do with your main keyword which will help strengthen the keyword signal to Google and explain what your post is about.

So, if you write a post about jeans, you should include terms like “denim” or “pants.”

How can you find these keywords?

There are tools, such as Clearscope, for this sort of analysis that look at all the posts in a SERP and identify the keywords that appear most frequently.

In addition to these tools, use the related keywords and People Also Ask boxes on Google.

These are keywords that users also search for in conjunction with your core keywords.

Fit them in naturally wherever you can. Chances are, if you’re researching a post as thoroughly as you should be, you’ll naturally hit all of these topics anyway.

What are LSI Keywords?

When adding semantically related keywords to a piece, people often refer to it as Latent Semantic Indexing or using LSI keywords in their pieces. However, the term LSI is a bit of a misnomer according to SEO By the Sea. While Google does like semantically related topics in posts, they aren’t exactly using LSI in their algorithms.

However you decide to look at it, you should include these similar topics in your piece. But you’ll want to make sure that you don’t overuse these keywords to the point where you’re “spamming” the user.

What constitutes spamming?

Google has some fairly obvious guidelines that they lay out in this post, using an example from a fake cigar selling site.

While these guidelines are helpful, you should be able to give it the eyeball test.

Your post (including the headers) should read as naturally as possible. If you’re forcing a keyword into a sentence where you wouldn’t normally put it, then that’s bad for the user experience.

Use Descriptive Alt Text

Alt text is also important with images. This not only helps Google understand what your post is about, making it a ranking factor, but it’s also key to accessibility.

(Just because it’s a ranking factor, you don’t want to stuff keywords into your alt tags. You can get penalized just as easily.)

Web accessibility, as set out by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), aims to make your website’s information accessible to everyone on the web.

The easiest and most direct way that you can do this is by providing descriptive alt text.

To truly understand how alt text is used and to make sure you do it right, try using a screen reader. Google Docs has one built in. Macs also have one in their accessibility features called VoiceOver.

Compress Image Files

The file size of your images is also very important because it can negatively impact page load speed, which, as you’ll see, can also hurt ranking.

If you use WordPress, we recommend plugins like:

• EWWW Image Optimizer
• ShortPixel Adaptive Images
• Compress JPEG & PNG images

When deciding on the type of file to use for your post images, here’s a quick breakdown:

• For photographs: .jpg
• For complex graphics: .png
• For simple graphics with only a few colors: 8-bit .png

Some non-technical image advice

We covered this with the header image section, but it’s important to reiterate that if you need to use stock photos, choose them wisely. It’s better to invest in top quality photography and/or graphic design whenever possible.

Pages Should Load in Under 3 Seconds

You may remember in 2010 that Google outright told us that page speed was a ranking factor. In 2018 they stressed the importance of page speed in mobile. In fact, in a post from the Think With Google blog, they say that the difference between bounce rate probability in pages that takes one second to load versus five seconds to load is 90%!

Use a site like Pingdom to understand how quickly your page loads and how it compares to the rest of the world. Google also has their own Pagespeed Insights tool.

There are various tactics that you can use to make sure your page loads quicker:

Core Web Vitals

Google’s Core Web Vitals are a specific set of metrics that measure different elements of the user experience on your website.

While Google looks at a variety of metrics to gauge the usability of your site, these are what they deem most important.

You can check your Web Vital scores for each in Google Search Console under “Enhancements”. Google has a great overview of how to interpret the Core Vitals report.

Since Core Vitals will impact rankings (how much it will impact is up for debate), it’s important to understand what they are and how to fix them.

They are:

LCP – Largest Contentful Paint

Put simply, this is the time it takes for the biggest part of your page to load in your main view.

According to Google, LCP needs to occur within 2.5 seconds or less when the user first starts loading the page.

FID – First Input Delay

This is how quickly you can click things and have the browser react. To get a good score here, your pages need an FID of 100 milliseconds or less.

CLS – Cumulative Layout Shift

This looks at how much content moves around on the page while loading. The pages need to have a CLS of 0.1 or less.

While there aren’t any silver bullets for any of these issues, there are some best practices and fixes for common problems. Aside from the many tips in Page Speed section above, here are some other ways to troubleshoot your Core Vitals issues:

• Set up lazy loading for your images – If your page has a lot of images, you might consider setting up a lazy loading plugin so that images load as the user scrolls to them.
• Specify image width, height and aspect ratio – This simple fix for CLS will ensure that your image has a space on the page to load into, rather than having it shift the text around after it loads. 
• Clean up CSS or render-blocking Javascript – A plugin like WP Rocket will help enhance the site loading time by optimizing CSS delivery and avoiding those blockers that can cause important elements to load slower than others.

Google’s Developer’s site has numerous tools and tips on improving your site’s Core Web Vitals.

Aim for at Least 2-3 Internal Links per 1000 Words

There is no exact number of internal links you should have on the page, but the longer the post, the more links you should use. You should aim for linking out to at least two or three other posts or pages on your site.

How do you know which ones to link to?

The best way to think about it is to add a link whenever you want to provide your users with more context on a topic. You can find the most relevant posts that you’ve written on a topic by Googling your site + the keyword.

Link to Other Topically Relevant Posts

To find an internal page to link to for “anchor text” in this post, it’s best to search:

SITE:siegemedia.com anchor text

This post that Ross did about varying your anchor text for SEO would be the most relevant choice.

What Is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the underlined text that you use when linking out to other pages (both internally and externally).

You always want to give context with your anchor text. The text that you chose to underline should help tell Google what that resource is about.

Link From Other Relevant Internal Posts

Similarly, you’ll want to find posts in which to link to your new post so that it becomes part of the site architecture.

You can do this in the same way that you found posts to link to internally. Find posts on your site where your new post would make logical sense to include.

But again, you should never force a link into a post.

Another easy place to add posts internally is to an HTML sitemap. If you have a link to the sitemap on your homepage (commonly found in footers) this will make your new post one click away from the homepage.

For instance, here’s an example HTML sitemap.

This click-depth makes it easier for Google to find/index and will hold more weight than a link that is deeper in your site.

Open in the Same Window

Our last pro-tip with internal linking is to make sure you set the links to open in the same window. This way you can keep users engaged with your site rather than risking them leaving to a new tab.

Link to Relevant, Authoritative Sources

Linking out to authoritative pages has been shown to help rankings in some cases, but that doesn’t mean that linking out to tons of pages will magically boost you to page one. The links should be to authoritative sources in the field, but don’t add them just to add them.

How many is enough?

Aim For at Least 2-3 External Links

One study from Cara Bowles of Northcutt found that five external links per page is average.

You’ll want to set them to open in a new window so that you don’t lose traffic.

Direct the User to Do Something Next

Users need to be told what to do next. Adding a CTA or call-to-action in your post will help lead them to the next relevant task. Those tasks should be tied to the goal that you’ve set up for your page.

These goals might include:

• Getting them to a conversion page
• Directing them to a related blog post
• Offering them a downloadable asset like a whitepaper in return for their information
• Asking them to subscribe to your mailing list
• Enticing them to share on social media by providing social share buttons

Quick note on social share buttons

Making it easy to share your post is one of the best ways to increase viewership. While social sharing doesn’t directly impact rankings, getting the increased traffic and links that come from social sharing can indirectly help rank.