The Ultimate Guide to On-Page SEO in 2022 (Step-By-Step Guide)
Ren Hao
Updated 15 October 2022
What is On-Page SEO? It is a powerful method that uses on-site techniques to improve your page’s ranking in relevant search results. Before diving into On-Page optimization, let’s take a closer look at how impactful SEO can be.
SEO has the potential to drive thousands of visitors to your site. Unlike paid ads, it attracts highly relevant traffic by aligning with user intent. As a result, you get more engaged visitors actively searching for what you offer. You can learn more about Why SEO Matters here.
One key advantage of SEO is control—you shape your website’s focus. By conducting keyword research and understanding user search intent, you can enhance your content’s visibility. Check out How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide) for more details.
To succeed, your website must target the right audience. This is what we call a niche market. Ask yourself: Who is your target audience? What content are they looking for? Once you identify these factors, you can plan your keywords and content accordingly. Although this process may seem overwhelming, it is also incredibly powerful.
Once you complete your On-Page SEO, your website will grow faster and rank higher. From there, you can explore What Is Off-Page SEO & Why You Need It? (+Helpful Checklist).
By understanding which factors influence rankings, you can optimize your content more effectively. In the next sections, we’ll break down these factors and show you how to use them to your advantage.
In this content, you will learn how to start to do On-Page SEO by following 5 sections, as follows:
What is On-Page and Off-Page SEO?
Let’s dive deeper into the details. On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, refers to the factors and methods used to optimize aspects of a page that you can control. In contrast, Off-Page SEO focuses on external factors and strategies that promote your business online.
The On-Page SEO process involves optimizing both the frontend and backend components of a website. It includes three key areas: content elements, website architecture, and HTML elements. These are collectively known as On-Page elements, and we will explore each one in detail later.
Another important aspect to understand is how Google ranks websites. Its ranking algorithms are primarily based on three core parts: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, and Technical SEO.
To gain a deeper understanding of Technical SEO and its role in both Local SEO and International SEO, check out What Is Technical SEO? (Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide 2022). This will help you see how it can set your website apart from the competition.
Why is On-Page optimization so important?
Every part of SEO is important, but what makes On-Page SEO essential? Let’s explore why optimizing it matters. By improving On-Page SEO, you can achieve higher search rankings, increase traffic, and ultimately boost conversions.
Not only does On-Page SEO help Google’s search engine bots understand your website’s content and value, but it also enhances the user experience. A well-optimized page attracts human attention, increasing your click-through rate (CTR) when users search for relevant information.
Although On-Page SEO takes time to implement, once your strategy is in place, it can significantly improve your rankings and sales.
Simply publishing content isn’t enough. To achieve better rankings and more targeted traffic, you must optimize your pages for Google. This leads to higher conversions, helping your business generate more leads and drive revenue growth.
How to Optimize Your Content for On-Page SEO
On-page optimization focuses on improving your website’s search performance. Implementing page-based SEO helps optimize individual pages to boost rankings and enhance user experience. By understanding key elements that influence search rankings, you can build a website that not only attracts visitors but also drives high conversion rates.
Up next, I’ll walk you through the entire On-Page SEO process, covering essential elements you can apply and advanced SEO techniques to take your strategy to the next level. Let’s get started!
What Are These On-Page SEO Elements?
1. Use your target keyword in the first 100 words
This classic On-Page SEO strategy can make a real difference. One simple but effective technique is to include your primary search term within the first 100 to 150 words of your content. This helps search engines recognize the relevance of your page while also making your goal and topic clear to both readers and search engines.
For example, imagine writing about the Keto Diet. Should you include the term “keto diet” in your article? The answer is yes—naturally incorporating it in a few key paragraphs helps reinforce the topic and provides valuable context for readers.
However, instead of just repeating your primary keyword, it’s crucial to use related semantic words and phrases to enrich your content—without keyword stuffing. Words like weight, low-carb, and keto diet plan can help strengthen your topic naturally. To find the best semantic terms, try using a Free Semantics Tool for deeper insights.
2. Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
The title tag appears below the URL but above the meta description in search results. It is one of the most valuable SEO elements on your website. A well-optimized title tag not only improves rankings but also helps users quickly scan results pages and decide whether to click on your content.
Your title tag directly impacts your CTR (Click-Through Rate). Users rely on it to determine if your content aligns with their search intent. A clear, compelling title with a well-placed keyword can significantly increase clicks and traffic.
For optimum rankings, always include your focus keyword in the title. However, don’t just stuff in keywords—consider why users are clicking on your result. Balancing SEO with user intent is key to driving both traffic and engagement.
Every word in your title matters. Matching the search intent of user queries is crucial. For instance, if the intent is informational, using words like Best Guide, Review, Checklist, or Quick Overview can improve rankings for long-tail keywords. To learn more about keyword strategies, check out How To Do SEO Keyword Research (Step By Step Beginner Guide).
You can use this Free SERP Title Tag Preview Tool to get an idea of how your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) will look.
3. Fill in missing Meta Descriptions
A meta description is a short summary of a page that appears below the title tag in search results. While it doesn’t directly impact rankings, a well-crafted meta description is essential for SEO as it can boost CTR (Click-Through Rate). It provides users with a quick preview of your content, helping them decide whether to click on your page.
We also found that pages with meta descriptions had roughly 5.8% higher clicks than pages lacking meta descriptions.
4. Image optimization
Many people tend to overlook this aspect, assuming it’s not important. However, it directly impacts website speed performance, which refers to how quickly your webpage content loads. Additionally, it affects how Google’s crawlers (search engine robots) interpret your images, as they cannot inherently understand visual content.
In this section, I’ll cover three key aspects that play a crucial role in optimizing this element.
4.1 Image file name
Please remember to add your related keyword and put the related name for this image file name before uploading to your page’s content. It will help you to boost the image exposure.
4.2 Image Sizes
If you do this part, it will help you to load your overall page elements quicker than before. Here is a problem, most of the people do not know how important it is to optimize the image size and let their site be affected by site speed issues, in particular the E-Commerce site.
You can go to tinypng to optimize your image before uploading, which means compressing the image.
4.3 Image Alt Text
Image alt-texts are similar to SEO for pictures. This is important because Google has nearly as many image results as text. This will not only let the Google search engine robots know what the image is, but it also lets the user know that it is this when your image hasn’t fully loaded yet.
5. Internal linking
Internal links are important in on-page SEO to ensure the relevance and accuracy of the content of each page of the webpage. The fundamental of the internal links is actually doing link building from “A page” page to another page “B webpage” to let users know more other pages related content.
It can help your webpage to often let crawlers crawl and update if you know which page content at your website is actively crawling. So we know it’s important to create content authority, but if you don’t know how to get your content seen. It’s a fruitless effort.
Not only about internal links, a comprehensive external linking framework strengthens context and relevance along with the depth you have covered on any particular topic are also very useful to the user. It helps people learn about your website by providing links to other articles or valuable examples.
A good internal linking strategy can improve conversion rates and other data metrics. Combined with internal links and external links, you can provide more relevant content and websites to increase your content authority.
6. URLs Help On-Page SEO
URLs can be used in many other ways. When you create a URL that uses key phrases, the content becomes clearer about the subject of the page. The site’s URL must give users the best way of understanding the content of the webpage. Ensure your URL structure is clearly visible. Keep things short and refrain from stumbling over something.
Also, They are crucial in the design of site structure as well as creating a variety of pages in a sub-page or blog post. Here’s some helpful information to create an SEO-friendly URL Structure.
A. Keywords in the URL separated with a hyphen (-)
B. Keywords in the URL joined together
C. Simple , descriptive words, structure category in the URL
7. Write Unique, Optimized Content
I mean releasing something that does more than simply repeat what was once there. Content dominates search engines. Google’s sole purpose is to offer the searcher precisely what he wants, thus focusing on the most relevant, valuable content that fulfills all the needs of search engines.
Its contents are balanced by authoritative and keyword-searched information. Moreover, the blog post contents of the site are unique. This will help you distinguish yourself from the competition. We will talk more later.
7.1. SEO Copywriting
Copy writing can increase the SEO effectiveness of the website. Having a great content strategy can boost the engagement of the customer. The best copywriting practices for SEO do not only benefit the SEO engines either. They help you improve content promotion for your readers.
As we know, You need to have the semantic keyword and focus keyword to appear in your content. Let me share with you, you can use this SEO Copywriting Ai Tools to help you in SEO Copywriting. Besides this, I have found that how Google actually wants, how the Google algorithm works, it does not only focus on keyword input only. One of the algorithms is about its quality of content. You can see more at How Google Search Works.
7.2 Write Readable Text
Although readability doesn’t determine the ranking factors, it is a necessary element in your online SEO efforts. This is because re-readability of texts makes search engines digestible and ultimately helps SEO.
Depending on how difficult your text is to read, your text could be an issue for your conversion rate, sales, revenue and profits. Do you agree with this? Be remembered to write the word optimize for search engines and also good for readers.
8. Heading (H1, H2, H3…)
Headers commonly referred to as body tags refer to HTML elements. This tag makes your website searchable for readers and helps Google determine if you are important and useful based on your search intent.
This tag shows Google the structure of your content. The headings and subheadings also give key clues about material in the pages following this heading, this allows the search engine to easily register important info about this material.
Google prioritizes content with an attention to user experience. Often the contents appearing as large walls can make the reader difficult to read especially on mobiles. Organized pages make finding pages easy for searchers.
Advanced On-Page SEO Techniques
Once your basic understanding of on-page SEO is complete you can start looking at more complicated aspects of On-Site SEO. Actually, it is quite more on the Technical SEO part, I think it is important so I talk a bit here.
1. Snippets Featured
This snippet of information appears above ganic searches and is extremely important. There are different types of featured snippets.
2. Structured data (Schema)
Structured Data helps Google understand your content more effectively and should become an important part of an SEO audit. Users can know more details before they click the search results like product structured data will display pricing, availability, reviews and so on.
There are many types of structured data. The easiest means of managing structured data is using the Structured Data Markup helper. Enter the URL and Google will show you how to add structured information. You can also test structured information using Google’s Structured Data Test Tools.
3. Site Speed Optimization
Your web pages can be loaded rapidly. When looking for online SEO, page speed is of the utmost importance. Google is focused on ensuring that users are satisfied with the site. If your website loads slowly, your customers might not stay there.
Also, the speed of websites affects conversion and site visitors returns. Check your web page speeds using Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool to know why your website loads slowly. Optimizing web pages is a must, but there are still many people who don’t care about it.
Once you did the test, You will get some metrics in your page speed test results, including First Content Paint (FCP), Speed Index, Maximum Content Paint (let’s call it LCP), Interaction Time, Total blocking time and cumulative layout shift. Then, you can go to optimization by following the suggestions shown.
Starting your SEO success is hard work.
To read more about SEO knowledge, check out my other guides:
Now, it’s your turn to start SEO Today.
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Ren Hao
Ren Hao is a full-time Google SEO Specialist and Funnel Designer. Join Ren Hao’s SEO Community and read on renhaoseo.com to learn how to scale your influence at Google. Before becoming an SEO Specialist, Ren Hao is a Full Stack Web Developer, who helps companies develop their business website. Now, Ren Hao helps companies achieve sustainable traffic growth and reach the right target audience to get higher conversion rates with a strategic plan. He fully combines White Hat Google SEO & Content Funnel Design for sustainable traffic growth and conversions.