Tom Pick / July 3, 2018
While search engine rank is ultimately based hundreds of factors, it rests on three main characteristics: relevance (based on on-page SEO factors), trust (impacted by technical and social factors), and authority (based on backlinks and other factors like domain age).
The core element of SEO is content; no amount of technical excellence or high-quality backlinks will help thin, low-quality, or irrelevant content rank well. The best content is highly relevant to its target keyword phrase (and therefore to corresponding searches), well-written, and easily digestible.
Relevance and “digestibility” are the basis of on-page SEO. Just as elements like a table of contents, chapter titles, and an index make a book easier to read, so on-page SEO makes web pages easier for both search engines to evaluate and human readers to absorb.
This interactive graphic illustrates 14 vital components of on-page SEO best practices. It uses The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites as an example. That post has recently ranked between the first and third spots on Google for the phrases “best all in one SEO tools” and “best SEO tool suites.” Hover over any of the arrows to see the details.
Interactive graphic created with ThingLink
As this interactive graphic demonstrates, on-page SEO involves optimizing a number of technical, navigational, and design aspects. But the practice is most commonly thought of in terms of how and where target keyword phrases are used in posts and pages. Among the important places to include your target keyword phase are:
On-page SEO alone won’t guarantee high rankings. But it’s the essential place to start. Done right, this effort makes improves the experience of both readers and search engine crawlers.
This post was originally published on Webbiquity.
