What is OnPage SEO?

OnPage optimization is one area of search engine optimization. OnPage means "on the page". OnPage optimization covers both the entire content visible to visitors and the invisible HTML code of a website. The goal of OnPage optimization is to move important factors of a website up in the rankings and so receive more traffic. It includes, among others: the URL, keywords, loading times, title and meta description. The aim is a better ranking in the search results of Google, Bing or Yahoo. A high ranking is the basic precondition for a high number of visitors and more traffic. The second important area of SEO is OffPage optimization.

OnPage analysis - finding problems and deciding on measures

The analysis of the website comes before any OnPage optimization. It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of a site and serves the webmaster as a checklist. At the same time it is the basic precondition for successful optimisation. The analysis examines technical and content factors. Beyond that the website is tested for optimal usability. Different tools are used for this. The results form the basis for the optimisation that follows.

What tasks does OnPage search engine optimization cover?

OnPage optimization covers three areas in total and therefore also works as a checklist for webmasters:

• technical SEO
• classic SEO
• content optimization

Technical SEO

Technical search engine optimization concerns adjustments to the HTML code or to the template of a CMS that have to be made in order to improve rankings. That affects, for example, websites built with WordPress or Joomla. Technical SEO work is done less for the visitors of a website than for the bots of the search engines. Technical SEO further includes optimising loading times for mobile devices and adjusting status codes or the robots.txt file. A chapter of its own is the delivery of dynamic content, see JavaScript SEO.

Classic SEO

Classic search engine optimization concerns, for example, the URLs of a website. URLs of sites built with a content management system (CMS) are often unreadable for visitors and for search engines. A URL that is readable for humans and machines helps to grasp the content of a page. Further measures concern the structure, the navigation and error pages. Beyond that the meta data (title and description) can be adjusted and optimised. Meta description and title are shown in the results after a search. The more informative and accurate these texts are, the higher the chance that search engine users click the result and visit the website. The title should additionally pay attention to keywords.

Content optimization

Content optimization is another important area of OnPage optimization. It concerns all relevant content elements displayed on the website that are visible to visitors but also important to search engines. That includes, for instance, the structure, outline and formatting of the content. Well-structured content is easy to read for visitors. At the same time the content should be unique. So-called duplicate content is text that is already used on other websites. As a rule it leads to a penalty from Google, which results in a worse search ranking. Duplicate content has to be avoided in every case. In some cases placeholder text can be an alternative during development.

Content optimization also includes optimising keywords. The important question is: which keyword is the website supposed to rank for in the search results? Or: through which keyword should internet users find the website? The answers to these and further questions concerning the keywords of a website are worked out in close coordination with the site operator and the keyword optimisation is carried out accordingly. Optimising keywords is a central part of content optimization.

Further important optimisations are internal links. Internal links make it easier for the visitor to find their way around the website. They are also an important aid for the crawlers of the search engines, since they allow them to capture the site in its entirety. Another important point of content optimization is image SEO. That includes, for instance, the image caption and the so-called alt attribute. The alt attribute is a short text that describes the image and is shown when visitors have disabled images in their browser. The correct use of images is often underestimated. A webmaster should know: many website visitors find pages through Google image search. Doing without images or using the alt attribute incorrectly should be avoided at all costs.

What is the difference between OffPage and OnPage optimization?

OffPage optimization or off-site SEO covers all factors that are carried out outside the website. The most important goal of OffPage optimization is improving how the site is perceived by search engines and visitors. Suitable measures optimise the relevance and authority for a certain topic as well as the popularity of the website.

The most important measure within OffPage SEO is optimising the relevant link profile of a website. That is achieved through deliberate link building and high-quality backlinks. A backlink is a link from another site pointing at the destination page. The number and above all the quality of the backlinks are an important criterion for a search engine such as Google when determining the relevance and authority of a website for a certain topic. The higher the relevance from the point of view of Google or another search engine, the higher the ranking generally is. How strong a link profile is overall is estimated by third parties through Domain Authority.

Advantages of OnPage optimization

OnPage optimization is just as important as OffPage optimization and has two decisive advantages: it is simple and it is cheap. Simple for the following reason: a webmaster needs hardly any prior knowledge and can optimise every URL of their own website. For optimising the meta title there are free tools such as the SERP snippet generator. Writing an individual meta description for every URL is time-consuming, but it needs no help from third parties. It is therefore easier to check a title for keywords than to earn a high-quality OffPage link from someone else's website. Whether the work pays off shows afterwards in two metrics: a rising click rate in the search results and a falling bounce rate on the page itself.

Finally it is worth knowing that OnPage optimization of a website is not a one-off measure that leads to permanently better rankings. OnPage and OffPage optimization are an ongoing development. The changes have to be reviewed again and again and adapted to new requirements. Google's guidelines play a central role in that.