On-page SEO is optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. It refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO, which refers to links and other external signals.
This guide will show you how to optimize your content and significantly impact its ability to rank. While I strive to provide as comprehensive information as possible, this guide covers pieces of the overall puzzle regarding online presence.
Key Takeaways for On-Page SEO for MyListing Websites
- SEOPress is my recommended plugin for successful on-page SEO optimization.
Recommended On-Page SEO Optimization Tools
- Google Search Console (Free)
- ExactMetrics Headline Analyzer (Free)
- Google Keyword Planner (Free)
- Google Suggest (Free)
- RightBlogger SEO Tools
- SEO PowerSuite (Deal)
- SEOPress (Deal)
Focused Keyword Phrase
Focused Keyword Phrases (“keywords”) are two or more words typed as a search query to find desirable resources on the web. Website owners can target and use keywords by placing them strategically throughout their websites.
There are many free tools and methods for determining the best keywords. While there may be some cases where a paid solution is needed, I recommend starting with free solutions. If someone tries to sell you expensive SEO tools right from the start, this should raise red flags.
I use RightBlogger’s Keyword Research within my businesses.
Keyword Density
Keyword Phrase Density is a factor, but it’s often given more attention than it should.
In the past, the thought (or action) was to place keywords throughout a website, whether it made sense or added value to the content. This practice, keyword-stuffing, is highly frowned upon and can negatively impact a website’s ranking.
Calculating the ideal density is not an exact science. Let the keywords appear naturally as you compose your website copy. Your keywords should always be in mind when creating your website content.
Ultimately, the goal should be producing fantastic content that visitors find helpful. To learn more about calculating your density, simply Google ‘keyword density analyzer.’
Post/Page Titles & URL
Let’s look at the current page as an example. The title of this page is ‘Successful On-Page SEO for MyListing Websites,’ and it contains the Focused Keyword Phrase for this page, which is ‘On-Page SEO for MyListing Websites.’
You want the title of your post/page to include your Focused Keyword Phrase as close to the beginning of the title as possible without completely sacrificing readability for your visitors.
For the URL (slug), you want to keep it as short as possible, contain your Focused Keyword Phrase, and maintain as much readability as possible. I use RightBlogger’s Permalink Generator within my businesses.
The best practice format for title tags is one of the following:
- Primary Keyword – Secondary Keywords | Brand
- Brand Name | Primary Keyword – Secondary Keywords
Headings / Heading Tags
- Use heading tags (H1, H2, H3…) in the correct sequence, starting from the top.
- I use RightBlogger’s Article Writer to generate my heading structure.
- I use ExactMetrics Headline Analyzer if I want to adjust headlines to find better ranking potential by simply plugging a headline idea into the analyzer and tweaking it from there, shooting for a score of 70 or better.
- Try to add a Focused Keyword Phrase to the H1 or H2 heading as close to the beginning of the heading as possible.
Important: Look at how your theme and page builder handle the assignment of the H1 tag and how you choose to display/not display your page titles. You want to ensure you’re not missing the H1 tag altogether and assigning it twice (title and heading).
Meta Description
Meta titles and descriptions give Google and other search engines an idea of the page’s content and what they should expect to see as they digest it.
- Problem: Missing meta, multiple instances of meta, same meta across the entire website, too short or overly long.
- Why It’s an Issue: It makes it difficult for search engines to understand the content’s subject matter.
- Root Cause: Lack of SEO plugin or incorrect plugin settings.
- Way to Discover: Use Google Search Console’s HTML Improvements section or an application such as Screaming Frog.
- Resolution: Install and properly configure SEOPress to help you fix current and potential future issues. If you need help creating an SEO-friendly meta description, I recommend RightBlogger’s Meta Description Generator.
SEO Friendly URLs
SEO-friendly URLs help search engines understand a website’s architecture and content structure. URLs should be structured (when possible) to be clean, short, memorable, and shareable.
- Problem: The URLs are set to numbers, contain funky characters, and lack hierarchy.
- Why It’s an Issue: It makes it difficult for search engines to understand the hierarchy and nature of the content.
- Root Cause: Incorrect settings in WordPress.
- Way to Discover: Review the website in a browser and use Screaming Frog or SEO PowerSuite to crawl it.
- Resolution: Set permalinks to ‘Post Name’ (WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks), using SEOPress and RightBlogger’s Permalink tool to optimize URLs further.
Images
The image file name should be your Focused Keyword Phrase, with each word in the phrase separated by a hyphen. Given that the Focused Keyword Phrase of this page is ‘on-page-seo-for-mylisting-websites,’ the primary image for the post/page should have a file name of ‘on-page-seo-for-mylisting-websites.jpg.’
If your post or page has multiple images, you’ll want to name those files using variations of your keyword. If you are SEO optimizing for your brand, entirely or partially, your brand should also be included in the file name. Your brand will appear at or near the beginning or end of the file name.
Image File Name
User-friendly image filenames are more likely to be recommended by Google. Filenames should be descriptive, include applicable keywords, and use hyphens instead of spaces to separate words.
Maintain proper filenames in the future, but don’t worry about re-uploading and renaming all your images. However, suppose this is something you want to do. In that case, free solutions (ShortPixel’s Enable Media Replace, ASE, etc.) allow you to upload new images and automatically update links, filenames, etc., without needing to first remove the old image.
Image Title
The image title doesn’t impact keyword rankings. That said, image titles are displayed when visitors hover over an image, so they do improve the user experience.
For an image on this page, we could use something like ‘MyListing Club | On-Page SEO for MyListing Websites.’
Image Alt Text
We want to include a written sentence as if we were describing the image to someone visually impaired. This sentence can contain your keyword(s) as long as they are related to the surrounding content and are not spammy.
Image Caption
Captions are the on-screen text that accompanies an image. Although they have no direct value for SEO, they can enhance the overall user experience, as some visitors choose to read content based on image captions. Not every image needs a caption, so deciding to use one should be made on a case-by-case basis.
Surrounding Text
For the image-surrounding text, the paragraph just before the image should essentially be a full description of what the image illustrates, and it should be between 3 and 5 sentences long. The paragraph after the image is bonus material or an afterthought about the image, and it should also be between 3 and 5 sentences.
Image Optimization
Uploaded image files should be the appropriate dimensions for their specific application, and images should be optimized to reduce their overall size.
Website Links
Internal Links
Internal links help people navigate within a website, establish a hierarchy of information, and spread link juice throughout it. Try to include at least 2-3 links to other content on your website within every page or post. More than five links, depending on the length of the content, would be recommended.
External Links
External links help people navigate within a website, establish a hierarchy of information, and spread link juice throughout it. Try to include at least 2-3 links to other content on your website within every page or post. More than five links, depending on the length of the content, would be recommended.
Backlinks
Backlinks are still essential in SEO. When a high domain authority site links to your website, it positively impacts its rankings.
A good sign generally is that the number of referring domains linking to you is on an upward trend, and I use RightBlogger’s Backlink Checker for this area.
Robots.txt
This file is created to instruct robots (from search engines) how to crawl and index website content.
- Problem: Missing entirely or incorrect usage and errors.
- Why It’s an Issue: Causes sensitive content to be indexed or incorrectly blocks search engines from searchable content.
- Root Cause: Lack of education or outdated configurations.
- Way to Discover: Visit domain.[com]/robots.txt (it’s publicly accessible on the web) or use the Google Search Console to look for entries that are inadvertently blocking content.
- Resolution: Use SEOPress to implement a proper Robots.txt and periodically review/monitor the health of your Robots.txt within Google Search Console.
XML Sitemaps
An XML file that helps search engines better crawl and understand your website while assisting with the prevention of duplicate content.
- Problem: Missing, the wrong version submitted to search engines, unstructured and without hierarchy or segmentation.
- Why It’s an Issue: It makes it difficult for search engines to locate all content and understand a website’s hierarchy.
- Root Cause: Not using a solution that produces a proper sitemap and website owners that lack the appropriate knowledge.
- Way to Discover: Google Search Console’s Crawl section.
- Resolution: Use SEOPress to implement proper XML Sitemaps and periodically review/monitor the health of your sitemaps within Google Search Console.
Duplicate Content
In this example, duplicate content refers to the same content displayed under different URLs within the same domain.
- Problem: Content that is the same but can be accessed by two URLs. For example, a blog post might be accessible by: https://www.blogpost[.com] and https://blogpost[.com].
- Why It’s an Issue: It confuses search engines and forces them to select one version while also being messy for human visitors.
- Root Cause: URL variations using HTTP vs. HTTPS or WWW vs. non-WWW pages.
- Way to Discover: One of the easiest ways to discover duplicate content is to enter ‘site:yourdomain[.dom]’ into Chrome’s address bar. Then, browse through all the results, ensuring there are no URL variations, as mentioned above.
- Resolution: 301 Redirect duplicated content to the correct/original content, set a preferred domain within Google Search Console, and no-index the correct taxonomies within SEOPress.
Mobile Responsiveness
Google now sees more search traffic from mobile devices than desktop computers. It increasingly focuses on mobile while adjusting its algorithms to handle mobile differently than desktop.
- Problem: A website that doesn’t adapt to mobile devices or themes that display poorly on mobile devices.
- Why It’s an Issue: Reduced search ranking in search engines and a bad experience for human visitors.
- Root Cause: Poorly coded “responsive” themes and misconfiguration of CSS by the web designer.
- Way to Discover: Browse your website on a mobile device and with solutions that test mobile responsiveness (e.g., mobile emulators) such as Sizzy.
- Resolution: Switch to a WordPress theme or use CSS to assist with website responsiveness.
Website Speed & Performance
Site speed is part of Google’s algorithm, and the importance of fast websites is a growing concern for Google and other search engines.
- Problem: Slow website.
- Why It’s an Issue: It makes it difficult for search engines to crawl content and creates a bad user experience for human visitors.
- Root Cause: Insufficient web hosting, bloated database, poorly coded themes, resource-intensive plugins, huge images, and overall implementation/design flaws.
- Way to Discover: Evaluate the performance of your website using your preferred solution (e.g., PageSpeed Insights, WebPageTest.org, etc.).
- Resolution: Switch to a better web host/hosting plan, optimize the database, switch or edit themes, remove/replace plugins, optimize images, implement multiple caching layers, implement a CDN, etc.
Malware
The term ‘malware’ covers malicious software designed to harm a computer, website, or network. While there are many different kinds of malware, the common ones include viruses, worms, spyware, or trojan horses.
- Problem: Content modifications, content additions, phishing, and loss of administrative control.
- Why It’s an Issue: Loss of traffic from human visitors, loss of ranking in search, and loss of credibility.
- Root Cause: Outdated software, low-grade hosting, weak passwords, and lack of overall security measures.
- Way to Discover: Web-based scans, plugin-based scans, or automated malware scanning and reporting from your web host.
- Resolution: High-quality hosting that provides automated malware cleanup, security solutions, CDN, strong passwords, and following best practices for overall security.
Indexability
The ability of search engines to analyze website content and index that content.
- Problem: Search engines can crawl a website but may not necessarily be able to index all of its pages or posts.
- Why It’s an Issue: If search engine crawlers cannot properly crawl content, website owners may find their pages are not indexed.
- Root Cause: Poorly structured content, lack of internal linking to relevant content, broken links, and blocking crawlers.
- Way to Discover: In the Chrome address bar, enter ‘site:yourdomain.’ Review the results, which show the actual number of pages and posts.
- Resolution: Use SEOPress to implement proper XML Sitemaps and periodically review/monitor the health of your sitemaps within Google Search Console. Strengthen internal linking, regularly update/add content to existing pages and posts, eliminate duplicate content, and improve your website’s overall performance.
Additional Indexability Notes:
- The index and actual counts are roughly equivalent – This is the ideal scenario. Search engines are successfully crawling and indexing your site’s pages.
- The index count is significantly smaller than the actual count – This indicates that the search engines are not indexing many of your site’s pages. Hopefully, you already identified the source of this problem while investigating the site’s accessibility. If not, you might need to check if the site is being penalized by the search engines (more on this in a moment).
- The index count is significantly larger than the actual count – This indicates that your site serves duplicate content (e.g., pages accessible through multiple entry points, “appreciably similar” content on distinct pages, etc.).
SSL
Google prefers trusted and certified sites. Implementing SSL is another way to gain Google’s trust, and I recommend the combination of Cloudflare and Kinsta WordPress hosting.
- Problem: Website communication is not properly encrypted.
- Why It’s an Issue: Data can be intercepted by external threats.
- Root Cause: Missing SSL certificate and elements not being securely configured.
- Way to Discover: Browse the website or use a tool such as Why No Padlock?.
- Resolution: Implement an SSL certificate and configure website elements to use secure settings.
Ideal Content Length
There are many differing opinions out there, and it’s hard to know which advice to take. I don’t pay attention to the length of the content.
I write naturally (i.e., nothing is deliberate in terms of stuffing in keywords, post length, etc.), and I stop when I feel I’ve provided all the information I need to share at that moment. Over time, I circle back to posts, adjusting them for accuracy, adding more valuable information, etc.
Below, you will find a general guideline when it comes to how many words to use:
- 200-400: These concise posts are best for discussions and engagement. They don’t get as many social shares and are inadequate for SEO. They are strictly geared toward descriptions of products or services and commentary.
- 400-600: These are considered smaller blog posts, although some say they are “the minimum length.” These are not educational posts, just bite-size, digestive reads for those less invested. They are pretty good for social shares and engagement but are too short to drive website traffic or affect SEO.
- 600-1,000: These are considered educational posts with a journalistic style. They are great for including influencers, reference links, and slowly building SEO.
- 1,000-1,500: Depending on your audience, these longer articles can impact your lead conversion. If you write valuable content, the length is a powerful tool to drive organic website traffic through link building, partnerships, and calls to action.
- 1,500-2,500: These articles are known as your “Google go-getters” because search engines love longer posts! I’ve heard that the highest-ranking posts are 2,450, which may be Google’s sweet spot.
On-page SEO Checklist
Note: Remember to look back at the abovementioned solutions when completing this checklist.
- Determine your focused keyword phrase.
- Create an SEO-optimized title (“headline”) for your post/page.
- Edit the permalink, inserting your keyword as close to the beginning as possible and keeping the permalink as short as possible while maintaining readability.
- Under the SEO section (depending on your SEO plugin of choice) of your page/post, edit the Title, placing your keyword as close to the beginning as possible and finishing with your brand/company name.
- Under the SEO section (depending on your SEO plugin of choice) of your page/post, edit the meta description, placing your keyword as close to the beginning as possible and finishing with your brand/company name. (Tip: End your meta description with text that leaves the visitor curious to read more (e.g., ‘Get your FREE…’).
- Include the keyword in the primary heading (H1).
- Include any additional keywords in the subsequent headings (H2-H6), remembering that synonyms of keywords are great to use here.
- Test post/page heading structure, making sure the headings (H1-H6) flow in the correct order.
- Write naturally (i.e., nothing is deliberate regarding stuffing in keywords, post length, etc.).
- The keyword should be within the first 100 words of your copy.
- Where possible, link to internal content, pointing to other relevant content on the site (up to 5 links).
- Link to external content where possible, pointing to other relevant content on trusted/authoritative websites (up to 2 links).
- Referring to the images section of this post, insert images that add value to the content and help break up long sections of text.
- Under the SEO section (depending on your SEO plugin of choice) of your page/post, attempt to fix as many recommendations as are provided.