On-Page SEO Basics
Build the fundamentals of on-page SEO, by learning what it is and which elements of the site it taps to catch more interest of search engines and users.
Seeing our website appear higher in Google’s search results requires optimizing it for several important elements. Optimizing elements that are on the web page falls under the category of on-page SEO while optimizing those outside the scope of the website is called off-page SEO.
While off-page SEO also impacts search engine rankings, it’s not of much use unless we practice good on-page SEO first. The website owner may not always have control over off-page ranking factors. In contrast, on-page factors are always in our control. It only makes sense to focus on these before working on the external factors.
What is on-page SEO?
On-page SEO is a combination of techniques used for optimizing individual web pages to improve the website’s ranking in web search results.
On-page involves optimizing the visible content, HTML tags (title, meta description, headings, image alt text, etc.), media, internal links and other parts that search engines encounter when they crawl and index our site, or those that users experience when they visit it.
On-page SEO is a diverse discipline on its own. It extends far beyond the website’s content. This multifaceted area also deals with page load speed, mobile optimization, crawlability, and more. We will discuss these technical aspects of on-page SEO at length in the next chapter, "Technical SEO." For the lessons in this chapter, let’s focus on optimizing our website’s content for SEO.
Note: Although the word “content” often refers to only the part of the web pages visible to users, we will use it to cover all parts of the website, visible to both users and search engines. So the “content” of a web page includes its text, media, metadata, HTML code, JavaScript, and more.
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