On Page SEO: The Beginner’s Guide 2023 | 11 Actionable Tips

Do you want to optimize your blog article or posts for current search engines? In this guide, I will share the updated & latest 11 On Page SEO checklists that I use to fully optimize my articles so they come up in the search results.

You might have written high-quality articles but unless you tell search engines that what keywords your post should rank for chances are less to rank on page 1 of search engines.

Learn how these On Page SEO techniques can help your website rank higher, bring in more traffic, and convert more visitors.

What is On Page SEO?

The practice of optimizing your site’s pages and posts is called On Page SEO. It is also called On-Site SEO. It shows how you optimize the front-end & back-end components of your website so that it ranks in search engines and brings in new traffic.

In other words, it is a search engine optimization technique to help search engine bots understand what your page or post or article is all about and what information it is providing along with search terms it should come up for.

These on-page SEO components include content, site architecture, and HTML source code elements. By tweaking and optimizing features like titles, meta descriptions, alt-text, internal links, including anchor text, URLs, heading tags, you could increase the chances of achieving a higher rank in search engines.

In general, on page SEO is called “on page” because the changes you make to optimize your site can be seen by the audience on your page.

Why is On-Page SEO important?

On-page SEO is important because it tells search engines all about your site and how you provide value to your audience. In other words, it helps search engine bots understand what your visitors wanted to see or what value they will get by visiting your page. It helps your site be optimized for search engine bots.

It helps you to rank higher for those high-quality content about a particular search query (keyword) by reducing your bounce rate, increasing your click-through rate, increasing your dwell time, etc.

A lot has changed over the past ages. Gone are the days when simply creating and publishing a website isn’t enough. In order to rank and attract new traffic your site must be optimized to Google and other search engines.

The ultimate goal of on-site SEO can be thought of as attempting to make it as easy, simple & readable as possible for both visitors & search engines to:

• Know what a web page is about;
• Page must be as relevant to a search query or queries &
• Find that page beneficial and worthy of ranking well on a search engine results page (SERP).

Each part of on-site SEO is entirely up to you; that’s why it’s crucial that you do it accurately. Now, let’s discuss the ingredients of on-page SEO.

On-Page SEO Checklist (How-To Beginner’s Guide)

Before you read more, I assume you are aware of keyword research techniques and how to find the right keywords to target. Keyword research is a vital messenger to performing any actual on-page SEO.

Anyways, once you have your list of target keywords for a particular page or article, you are ready to get started.

Let’s dive in so that you can start to optimize your site, page by page.

SEO Friendly URLs

• URLs must be SEO-friendly & sprinkled with your target keywords.
• Keep your URLs pretty simple, neat, keyword-focused, and short.
• Avoid using special characters, symbols, brackets, commas, etc. within the original URL.
• Try to match the URL to the title of your blog post wherever possible.
• Keep your URLs as short as possible because a recent analysis found that short URLs rank best in Google.
• Try to use dashes to differentiate the strings in your URL structure. These are called permalinks.
• Example of a good permalink – https://www.yourdomain.com/title-separated-with-dashes

URL length – 100 characters or more is probably too much.

Page Titles or Meta Titles

• Put focus keywords at the beginning of the title of your page.
• Incorporate natural keywords.
• Don’t use jargon instead make it relevant to the page.
• Try mixing up your format by using questions or tag modifiers such as  “(2023 Update)” or “(NEW)”.
• Don’t repeat the same keyword more than once in the title tag.
• H1 tag & page title will be different. Both should be unique.

Page title length – minimum 30 characters to 65 maximum characters or more than 571 pixels and less than 200 pixels.

Meta Descriptions

• Meta descriptions appear under the title in search results as short page descriptions.
• Include your keyword phrase or targeted keyword here as well.
• Use a comprehensive & compelling ad-copy sentence (or two).
• Avoid alphanumeric characters like —, &, or +.
• Avoid duplicate meta descriptions across different pages.

Meta description length – 120 to 160 in characters and 430 to 923 in pixels.

H1 Tags

• It’s a staple of on-page SEO.
• Include your keyword-rich title.
• Add modifier tags when appropriate.
• One H1 tag is enough.
• Include your keyword at least once in an H1.

First Paragraph

• Here also, make sure you include your keyword in the first paragraph.
• Google puts more weight on the first 100-150 words of your article or post.
• The first paragraph must be a mirror of your entire article.

Use Table of content

• It helps users to navigate your long articles better.
• It supports you to earn jump links in Google search.

H2 and H3 tags

• Use proper H2 and H3 heading tags to structure your content for readers and search engines.
• Put your most important keywords here.
• H2 and H3 tags are for section breaks.
• In technical SEO language try to use H1…H6 tags for your subheads.

Image alt-text

• It tells search engines what your images are about.
• Make it clear, descriptive, and specific.
• Image optimization does help a lot in generating traffic.
• Make it contextually relevant to the broader page content.
• Try to put your keywords in the “image title” & the “alt text”.
• Make sure you give an image a meaningful name.
• Always compress your images before uploading them.

Internal Linking

• It is the process of hyperlinking to other significant pages on your website.
• It passes page rank & link juices to other pages of your site.
• Carefully try to use a keyword as the anchor text.
• Try to include internal links early in your post.
• It helps to minimize your bounce rate.
• Better link to 2-5 other pages on your site.

External Linking

• Always try to link out to 5-8 authority or trusted sites in your post along with dofollow links.
• Link only if the information on the external website is relevant to your post.
• Use a nofollow tag to avoid passing your link juice to bad sites when you have doubts about the authority.

Use Synonyms and LSI Keywords

• Use Latent Semantic Index Keywords, or LSI keywords are search terms that are synonyms or closely related to your keyword.
• These are visible at the bottom of the Google search results for any given search term.
• Use synonyms and LSI keywords, instead of using the same keyword 100 times.
• Again, don’t stuff these. Use them naturally in your writing.

Final Thoughts

SEO is not like a one-and-done deal instead it’s something you should continuously improve upon. Just remember that the absolute best thing that you can do for SEO is to optimize your articles or posts for your audience.

On a serious note if you want to get a reward from Google then write people-friendly posts. Mostly with writing and content appearance you can win the heart of search engines. In other words, always write your blog posts for your visitors, while keeping the search engines in mind using the above tips.

You should treat this On-Page guide as a living, breathing document that will help your SEO strategy for months (or years) to come.

I believe you found this new practical On-Page SEO guide helpful. Now it’s your turn. I wrote a lot.

I’d like to hear from you that which tip from today’s post do you want to try first?

Please, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.