On-Page SEO refers to optimizing web page content for search engines and users. Therefore, it is also called On-Site SEO. Standard OnPage SEO practices include optimizing title, permalinks, meta description, content, internal links, and URLs against a particular query.
It is the type of SEO in which a web publisher optimizes a web page content for one or more specific keywords.
On-Site SEO differs from Off-Page SEO, which refers to optimizing for signals that happen off your website (referrals, backlinks, etc.).
OnPage SEO is vital for website rankings. It is the main factor that helps search engines decide what site content should be ranked where and how.
We have mentioned earlier in a previous post that Search Engines are the services available on the internet where people place their queries to find the content of their needs. Since people use specific words or phrases in search engine boxes while looking for something, such a relevant word or phrase is called a keyword.
Whenever a user places a query in a search engine box, he uses a keyword to refer to that query. The search engines look for that keyword (or its variants) in millions of web pages previously indexed. A search engine soon finds that keyword on multiple (thousands of) web pages. Then it considers other (Off-Page and Technical SEO) ranking factors. Finally, it assigns those pages a rank in search results against the user’s query. It all happens in a few milliseconds.
The above discussion mentions that search results are always based on keywords. Therefore, the OnPage SEO practices integrate a specific keyword (relevant to a particular query) in the web page content.
The focused keyword must be present in the following places of a web page content:
- permalink/slug (i.e., URL of webpage)
- Title (h1 heading of the page)
- First 100 words of the content (i.e., in the first paragraph)
- subsequent headings of the content (i.e., H2 and H3 headings)
- Content body.
- Image Alt attributes
OnPage SEO in WordPress is more accessible than a website built from scratch or any other Content Management System. Several Plugins, such as Yoast SEO, SEO Press, All-In-One-SEO, RankMath, etc., are available for On-Site SEO of a WordPress website.
