SEO Basics: ON-Page Optimization

SEO is an abbreviation of the words Search Engine Optimization and means every action that is carried out on and off the site with the aim of better ranking of the site on search engines for certain areas and keywords. This process improves organic visibility on search engines, i.e. free search results. When we mentioned some general explanations of terms in one of the previous texts, you can see them in one of the previous texts...

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On page SEO includes a number of visible and invisible elements on the site that need to be paid attention to during optimization. As for the search engines and their robot that scans the site, it observes as many as 200 elements that are on the site affect the ranking on the search engines. So some of the basic elements are Title Tag, H1, H2 tags, meta description, site architecture, URL structure of the site , quality of text content, site speed, appearance for mobile devices and many other factors, which we will deal with in detail in a separate text.


1. The three most important elements:

Title Tag

URL

H1 Tag


The title tag represents the title of the sites that are listed on the search engine, after you have typed and received the requested results on the search engine. The title tag is located in the head section of your site in Html. Just some of the important recommendations on how to write quality title tags are:

- every page you want to rank must have a unique title tag

- the length of the Title tag is about 70 characters

- without too many keywords because Google penalizes it

- main keyword to be at the beginning
 

The URL is the link that is displayed below the title tag. It also represents one of the very important items for SEO, and some of the basic rules of how a link should loo

- to be readable

- to contain the primary keyword from the page

- be short and clear

H1 tags represent the title of each of your pages on the site. They are located in the HTML code in the part of the html called the body tag. For better optimization, it is best to have only one H1 tag on each page rather than several, because the H1 must contain the main keyword. If a subheading is needed as part of this, H2, H3, H4 tags are used...

1. Metadescription

Metadescription is the text or description that is displayed in the search under the Title tag and the link of your site. This text does not affect the ranking of the site on search engines, but it is important from the point of view of visitors who will certainly read this text. However, there are some situations when the Google robot (mentioned in the previous text) decides that the text is not adequate for the description of the site, so it decides to pull some other text from your page

So, for the reason that the metadescription is not a ranking factor, it is not necessary to accumulate keywords in it, because that can also be one of the reasons why Google downloaded some other content from your site and displayed it there.

2. HTTPs Protocol

This element for the last 6, 7 years represents, in addition to the factors mentioned above, one of the important elements for ranking in the On site group. This protocol concerns the security of your site from the point of view of visits. Today you can still come across some smaller or older websites that do not have https, while on more serious sites such as e-commerce sites, this plugin is absolutely necessary. Such is the situation with all serious sites. In essence, it represents a guarantee of security for the site visitor.

The listed elements, such as the title tag, H1 tag, URLs... if you want to test whether your site has it, we recommend the free program Screaming Frog, which scans these items and many others really well.

4 Site architecture

Site architecture refers to the structure and the way the site's pages are connected to each other, as well as how easy they are to be found by visitors. If the site's architecture is well designed, users will find it easier to reach all pages in a simple way. While bad architecture results in some pages on the site being left without visits.

Why does architecture matter?

If a certain page is two or three clicks away from the front page, googlebot will have no problem finding it and indexing it on Google. If it is more complicated to reach the page, Google understands it as less important compared to other pages and it is possible that it is not indexed. .

So, if the architecture is simple for the visitor, he can access all pages without any problems. It will automatically be a good basis for a good evaluation by search engines. And the basic elements of the architecture are


Url structure

Site mapping

Site menu

Breadcrumbs

Internal links


URL

The URL structure should be simple to include only what the user needs. Therefore, the url structure must be designed so that the links are not long without any sense and order, because Google will evaluate it negatively, and it will significantly affect the ranking in searches. The picture below shows examples of how the URLs on your site should look and how it would not be desirable.  

Photo: Neilpatel.com 

Site loading speed

Ten years ago, Google introduced an item that the speed of opening and loading the site becomes one of the important ranking factors on Google. Their conclusion is that sites that load faster have a better experience for the user and that for this reason they should get an advantage in ranking compared to slower ones.

However, one of the same important items also refers to competition in a certain area. This means that based on how fast the websites of those who are your competition in the field you are engaged in open. That is the speed that your website needs to reach as well. It means that the speed of your website does not have to be at the maximum 100% if the competition has a slower loading speed. This happens if we are talking about more massive sites that contain large databases with a lot of content.

According to the information presented by Google, the speed of the site is analyzed from several different sources. And two sources that are included in this group are Googlerobot, which scans the site, as well as Page speed insight services, which also belong to Google. Tools that can be used to measure site speed are, in addition to the above Page speed Insight and Lightrom, GT metrix.

Basically, there are many factors that affect the loading speed. Just some of them are the response speed of the server on which the site is hosted, then whether the photos are optimized, whether unnecessary css files are compressed, whether there are any javascript elements, whether there are any plugins or themes for the CMS platforms in which they are most often used sites slow down loading And many other factors. In any case, by testing and scanning with the previously mentioned services, it is possible to determine exactly what the loading problems are.



Photos

If you place unadjusted photos on the website and in such an environment you scan the speed of the site on the service, you would see that very bad ratings come from images that slow down the operation of your site. So without proper photo optimization, you are losing a valuable SEO tool.

Photo optimization creates many benefits, such as a better user experience, faster page loading and additional ranking opportunities. And it gets an increasingly important role. Although there are many image formats to choose from, PNG and JPEG are the most common for the web.

PNG: Produces better quality images, but comes with a larger file size.

JPEG: You may lose image quality, but you can adjust the quality level to find a good balance.

WebP: Choose lossless or lossy compression using this, the only image format supported by both Chrome and Firefox.

Some approximate sizes, depending on the size and quality of the image, should not contain more than 200 to 300 kilobytes on average. There are many online services on the Internet for compressing photos into appropriate formats, some of which are free. One such program to recommend is Short Pixel, which when registering in the free version gives enough options to optimize all images within one site.

Content optimization

Content primarily represents the text content on your site. According to a recent Google Searchmetrics study of general ranking factors, overall content relevance was more of a ranking factor than the number of words or keywords in the body text, description title, or H1 tag. True success - for search engine rankings, user experience and overall branding, whether personal or business - is achieved when the art of SEO and the art of writing come together.

There are many rules that are used to ensure that the content is of high quality and contributes to being considered as an SEO factor.


- The content of the text should be useful to the reader, to provide him with answers to the most common questions, as well as the dilemmas he has.

- it is necessary to adjust the explanations with as few technically incomprehensible phrases and theses as possible, but with a simple dictionary, because most readers of the text probably do not have this technical knowledge.

- the content should be original and told if possible in a specific different way than the competition, because in that case you stand out from them at the start as someone better.

- necessary before writing the text, it is necessary to have some prior knowledge about the consumer to which target group he belongs...

- in the text it is necessary to insert keywords from time to time, but discreetly and not often.

- If keywords are overwritten, so-called cannibalization occurs, which Google treats negatively

- Titles should be convincing and written in such a way as to arouse interest in further reading

- The appearance must not be monotonous, so it should often have a space with several paragraphs, have sub-headings, and have a photo. If the text is monotonous and combined into one whole, at the start many will not even try to read it.