On-site SEO (also referred to as on-page SEO) is that the practice of optimizing elements on an internet site (as against links elsewhere on the web and other external signals collectively known as "off-site SEO") so as to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from search engines. On-site SEO refers to optimizing both the content and HTML ASCII text file of a page.

Finding or carrying out search engines interpret page matter, proper on-site SEO also helps users quickly and fairly know what a page is about and whether it addresses their search question. In essence, good on-site SEO helps search engines understand what a person's would see (and what value they might get) if they visited a page, in order that search engines can reliably serve what human visitors would consider high-quality content a few particular search query (keyword).

• Understand what a webpage is about;

• Identify that page as useful to a search query or queries (i.e. a particular keyword or set of keywords);

• Find that page relevant and worthy of ranking well on a search engine results page (SERP).

In the past, on-site SEO has been synonymous with keyword use — and specifically, including a high-value keyword in several key locations on an internet site .

To understand why keywords are not any longer at the middle of on-site SEO, it is vital to recollect what those terms actually are: content topics. Historically, whether or not a page ranked for a given term hinged on using the proper keywords in certain, expected places on an internet site so as for search engines to search and graps what that webpage's content was about. User experience was secondary; simply ensuring search engines found keywords and ranked a site as relevant for those terms was at the guts of on-site SEO practices.

Now a days, though, search engines have grown exponentially more sophisticated. They can extract a page's meaning from the utilization of synonyms, the context during which content appears, or maybe just by listening to the frequency with which specific word combinations are mentioned. While keyword use still matters, prescriptive methods like using an exact-match keyword in specific locations a requisite number of times is not any longer a tenant of on-page SEO. What is important is relevance. For every of your pages, ask yourself how relevant the content is to the user intent behind search queries (based on your keyword usage both on the page and in its HTML).

In this way, on-site SEO is a smaller amount about keyword repetition or placement and more about understanding who your users are, what they're trying to find , and about which topics (keywords) can you create content that best fulfills that need. Pages that fulfil these criteria have content that is:

• In-Depth."Less" content was one among Google Panda's specific targets; today it's more or less assumed that content must be sufficiently thorough so as to face an honest chance at ranking.

• User-Friendly. Is the content readable? Is it organized on your site in such how that it's easily navigable? Is it generally clean, or suffering from ads and affiliate links?

• Unique. If not correctly addressed, content duplicated from elsewhere on your site (or elsewhere on the Internet) may impact a site's ability to rank on SERPs.

• Authoritative and trustworthy. Does your content stand on its own as a reliable resource for information on a specific topic?

• Aligned with user search intent. It's a Part of creating and optimizing for quality content is also delivering on searcher expectations. Content topics should align with the search queries that they rank.

Beyond the keywords (topics) utilized in content on a webpage and the way they're discussed, there are several "keyword-agnostic" elements which will influence a page's on-site optimization.

Those include things like:

• Link use on a page: How much links are there? Are they internal or external? Where do they point to?

• Page load speed

• Use of Schema.org structured data or other markup

• Page URL structure

• Mobile friendliness

• Page metadata

All of those elements tie back to an equivalent basic idea: creating an honest user experience. The more usable a page is (from both a technical and non-technical perspective), the higher that page's on-site optimization.