10 SEO On-Page Elements You Can’t Ignore

Achieving long-term success in SEO requires planning, optimizing and executing a lot of factors. SEO on page elements are one among them. The process involves fine-tuning various website components to help search engines crawl, understand, and rank pages for relevant queries. When it comes to SEO, on-page and off-page are two equally important factors. 

As the SEO landscape is evolving, it’s important to keep your on-page SEO knowledge updated. For experienced marketers, this shouldn’t be a problem, but for novice marketers, this can result in asking many questions, such as which element is most important for on page SEO, for example. 

This is why we are covering what on-page SEO is, how it matters, and 10 of the most important elements of on page SEO you can’t ignore.

On-Page SEO: Learning The Basics

On-page SEO is a set of practices used to optimize various areas of your website to improve its search engine rankings, visibility and organic traffic. It involves creating relevant quality content, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), optimizing images, etc. All these activities, when combined, improve your website’s visibility in the search results. 

When doing an On-Page vs Off-Page SEO comparison, most digital marketing experts consider off-page activities slightly more important as it focuses on building external authority through backlinks. However, implementing a balanced approach involving both strategies is the key to achieving effective results.

SEO on page elements: Why it matters

Why does on-page SEO matter? The short answer is that it helps search engines understand your website content clearly and increases search visibility by optimizing various elements onsite. Compared to earlier times, search engines are more sophisticated and capable of understanding the intent of what users are searching for and delivering exact results. 

By implementing on-page SEO strategies, you can ensure that your website and its content are visible to users and that the technical elements are visible to search engines. Another major reason why on-page SEO matters is that you get more control when optimizing website elements compared to off-page, where you’ll have to rely on external sources.

10 Elements of On-Page SEO

Which element is most important for on-page SEO? There are many elements in a website that have to be optimised to get the desired result. Due to this, it is difficult to pinpoint the most important element as Google’s algorithms are complex and consider many ranking factors. However, we’ll begin with one of the elements that is considered most relevant in SEO:

1. Title tags

These are placed in the initial section of the webpage’s HTML code. Apart from specifying the title of the page, the purpose of title tags is to help users and search engines understand what the page is about. They are shown along with the meta description and are often the first thing that users see in the search results.

2. Content freshness

Despite your content being original and relevant, it will lose its freshness and become outdated if it ain’t updated. Visitors are always looking for accurate content that matches their needs. Replacing outdated information with newer relevant information from time to time ensures its freshness factor and helps improve search rankings.

3. Relevance Factor

Continuing from our above point, ensuring content relevance is also one of the important elements of on page SEO. Just because your content is new doesn’t mean it will resonate with users. They have to be relevant and should match what users are looking for.

4. Meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are the brief line of text we see below each link in the SERP. This describes what the webpage is about to the users and search engines. The more compelling they are, the higher the chances of users clicking them.

5. E-E-A-T

Acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, this is one the key SEO on page elements used by Google to rank your website. Since Google prefers to rank web content from sources having first-hand experience on the topic, these parameters are used by human quality raters to evaluate that experience.

6. Keyword Cannibalization

Targeting multiple web pages to a particular keyword won’t lead to better rankings but instead results in keyword cannibalization. This isn’t considered an ideal strategy and has negative consequences for your SEO. If you have many webpages ranking for the same keyword, you are competing with yourself. Therefore, you must ensure that your website doesn’t have keyword cannibalization.

7. URLs

This is your website’s online address, which is used by users to check out your site. This is displayed in the address bar as a string of text and numbers. When it comes to on-page SEO, URL optimisation is one of the strategies you shouldn’t ignore. Including relevant keywords, using hyphens and keeping the URL short are some of the optimization techniques that allow your website to be discovered by search engines.

8. Geotagging

Even though digital marketing helps build global brand presence, most brands also prefer to do business at a local level. Optimizing these elements of on-page SEO helps connect with your local target audiences. But where to start? Make sure to consider these tactics, such as optimising business listings, local content, building links with local businesses, etc.

9. Internal linking

What’s the most important on-page SEO element? Internal linking is one of them. It is basically a hyperlink in which certain web pages on your site are linked with related ones on the same site, thus creating an interconnected network that improves website navigation for users. They are also helpful for SEO as it signals them to easily discover and index all the linked pages on a website.

10. Image Optimization

Visual assets are an important factor of every website. These are responsible for improving the aesthetics of your site and making it attractive to users. Just incorporating these elements isn’t enough; they must be optimized for SEO. This includes adding SEO-friendly alt tags, choosing proper size and format for quicker loading, making them mobile-friendly and more.

Answering what’s the most important on page SEO element isn’t boiling down to a particular factor but implementing a series of strategies that collectively work together to achieve higher rankings and visibility. 

Winding Up

The various on-page SEO factors explained here should help you enhance your SEO efforts with ease. However, we have only scratched the surface here, as there is even more to learn and implement. Consulting the services of a renowned professional on-page SEO agency is one of the best ways to get started, and that’s where GTECH Digital shines. We have served 300+ businesses globally and achieved tremendous success. We are backed by 30+ highly talented and motivated minds who work towards achieving success for businesses. Connect with us to learn more.