On-Page SEO 2024: A Step-by-Step Guide + Advanced Tactics

No doubt backlinks are really important to date. But we cannot achieve and retain top rankings in Google without solid On-Page SEO in 2024.

Google is giving more and more weightage to on-page SEO factors like user experience these days.

Today I will share the right way to do on-page SEO optimization with real-life examples so you can learn and implement the same on your website or blog to get more organic traffic from Google in 2024.

What is On-Page SEO?

Definition — On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing the web pages of your own website.

It is all about optimizing website pages to help them get rank in Google & other search engines. While off-page SEO is mostly about building links, in on-page seo, we work on fixing the page-level elements of a website.

On-page optimization is the key to any website’s success. On-page SEO is the quickest and easiest way to optimize your website pages for SEO to get higher rankings on Google.

As a beginner, you may confused between On-site SEO and Off-page SEO. But these both are different than On-Page SEO.

Here is the difference between On-page SEO vs. On-site SEO vs. Off-Page SEO;

On-page SEO is about optimizing a webpage of your website by improving page quality. While On-site SEO is about optimizing the elements of the whole website like HTML code, website speed, etc. But Off-page SEO is about efforts that you make without your website to improve your website SEO like guest posts, Social media, PR, etc.

On-page SEO techniques in 2024

Importance of On-Page SEO

You may have heard that SEO takes time to get results.

But if you want quick SEO results and rankings then On-page is the best SEO technique to do that.

On-page can be done by optimizing webpage elements like SEO title, Meta Description, Content, etc. That’s why you can improve these On-page SEO factors anytime. Once Google re-crawls your website your ranking will be improved.

This is the reason On-Page SEO is the most important part of SEO to get results that you should learn and practice to become a master at On-page SEO.

What Are the Top On-Page SEO Factors

these are the elements of a webpage that you can optimize to improve your webpage SEO.

Here are the top on-page SEO factors;

  • SEO Title
  • Meta Description
  • Page Content quality
  • Schema Markup
  • Keywords
  • Heading Tags
  • URLs
  • Internal links
  • Pagespeed
  • Images
  • User-Experience

How to Do On-Page SEO Optimization in 2024 With Examples

When you browse the Internet to fulfill your thrust for various on-page optimization techniques in 2024, you will find too many optimization techniques, and lots of them don’t work in 2024.

So in today’s post, I’m including top On-Site SEO activities that you should give utmost importance that really works with Google latest algorithms in 2024.

Presence of Meta Keyword tag has no influence on your website rankings as far as Google is concerned.

So you can simply ignore that. So you need to be sure about the tips that you are implementing on your website and whether they are compatible with latest Google Algorithms or not.

On-page elements make use of lots of HTML tags including Title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, image tags, bold letters, italics, underline, list type tags etc.

We need to make sure we are using the targeted keywords in a natural way in our website contents.

1. Writing SEO Optimized Titles Most Important

If you are not focusing on optimizing your titles for both search engines and humans, you will never be able to drive more organic traffic to your websites.

If you are asked to work on only one On-site SEO factor, this is the biggest factor you should pay special attention to.

When writing your page titles, you should make sure you are including targeted keywords towards the beginning of your title. You should restrict your title to only 55 to 60 characters (including spaces).

You should write a Title copy that people will find interesting enough to be clicked as that will help you get higher CTR in search engine result pages.

Action Element: Use the target keyword towards the beginning of the title and write it keeping CTR in mind.

2. SEO-Friendly URLs: Keep them short and sweet

By looking at your website URLs, people should be able to understand the content type they will be served on those pages.

So you should include your targeted keywords in your URLs. Always try to include the target keywords towards the beginning of the URL and try to keep it short so that people can remember it with ease.

You should avoid using special characters (brackets, commas, plus, colon, semicolon, question mark, underscore, Tilde etc) in your URLs.

Unoptimized Sample URL: bloggerspassion.com/p=212 (Gives no hint at the content type)

Optimized Sample URL: bloggerspassion.com/off-page-seo/

Action Element: Use your target keyword in URL and keep it Short

3. Single h1 Tag on the Page: Keep Your Headline Text Here

First of all, you need to make sure there is a single h1 tag (heading tag) on all of your website pages. You can cross-check the same by checking the source code of any of your website pages.

With most of SEO-friendly WordPress themes, the headline for the post used to be in the h1 tag. Otherwise, you can set your title to H1 tag by yourself or ask your theme provider to get help with that.

Having multiple H1 tags on a webpage doesn’t harm your rankings most of the time. However, using an H1 tag for the page/post title is the best way to help Google and users understand your website.

H1 tag in action on this Post

Action Element: Make sure there is only one H1 tag and the target keyword should be there.

4. Use Targeted Keywords & LSI Keywords in H2 & H3 Tags

Apart from using primary keyword once in h1 tag, it is advised to use the the primary keyword and its related keywords (LSI keywords) in h2 and h3 tags as well.

Suppose for this post, primary keyword I’m targeting is On-Page SEO, I will try to include it once in h1, h2 and h3 tags. Apart from this, I will try to include other related keywords like SEO, off page SEO, optimizing content, on page optimization, search engine optimization etc in heading tags.

Use of Target Keyword in h2 tag

Action Element: Use Primary Keyword once in H2 and H3 tags as well once.

5. Do Internal Linking to Pass on SEO Juice & for Better Engagement

Internal linking is all about adding links for relevant posts and pages from the content you are working on.

Internal linking will help you send more targeted traffic to the linked pages and users will also spend more time on your website as they will keep browsing the relevant linked pages.

This way, you will be able to pass on the much needed SEO juice and domain authority to the linked pages.

This will help the linked pages rank better on Google & other search engines.

Action Element: Link to relevant pages for better search rankings and user engagement.

Read: Link Whisper Plugin Review: Is it the Best Plugin for Internal Linking?

6. Use of Primary Keywords in first and last 100 words

Keyword placement is really important when it comes about getting top rankings on Google.

It is advised to use your primary keyword once in first 100 words and then once in last 100 words of your content.

Use Primary keywords towards end

Action Element: Use target keyword once in first 100 and last 100 words.

7. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly

Google has already lowering down the rankings of websites that are not mobile friendly (Responsive design).

You can check the mobile friendliness of your website home or any of internal page from Google Page Speed tool here.

Do Mobile Friendly Test

Action Element: All of your website pages should be mobile friendly.

8. Move Your Website to HTTPS (Secured Site) Version

If you spend some time researching top results for any query in Google, you will see lots of https websites showing up.

Google is giving ranking boost to websites that are secure (on https version).

If you haven’t moved your website from http version to https version, do it instantly.

Most of well known hosts are offering free SSL configuration to their clients.

So moving to secured version should not be a much headache for you.

Action Element: Make sure your website should be fully secured and all pages should be on https version.

9. Write Engaging Meta Description to Get More Clicks from Google

It’s very true, your meta description copy does not play any role in your website search engine rankings directly.

But most of time, Google used to show up meta description data as part of your website listing in search results.

So writing a good meta description copy could help get more clicks to your website even if your website is placed below your competitor websites in search engine result pages.

Here is an interesting video from Matt Cutts (Former head of the web spam team at Google) where he talks about changes in title, meta description and its impact on organic CTR.

Action Element: Write CTR driven meta description.

10. Optimize Image Names & Alternate Tag to Get More Search Traffic

ALT tag plays a key role in increasing your traffic from Google or any other search engines.

If you have appealing images in your blog posts and have properly optimized keywords on their alt tag, you will tend to get massive traffic from Google image search results.

Your image names should be created keeping your targeted keyword in mind.

Apart from using your targeted keyword as part of image name, you should add alternative text with each image used on your website pages.

If you are using images from Google or any other website, don’t forget to link to the original owners of the images.

This way you won’t face any copyright issues in the future. Click this link in case you don’t know how to find free high quality images for your blog posts.

You should also check out some free image editing tools from here before uploading next image in your blog post.

Action Element: Optimize all of your website images (Names, Alt tag, Caption)

11. Link To Trusted Domains to Improve Your Domain TrustRank

Outbound linking is also considered one of the major ranking factors in on-page optimization.

If you want to get better search results for your keywords on Google, try linking to trusted domains that are highly relevant to your content.

Google maintains TrustRank for each website, which is calculated on the bases of who you are linking to and what kind of websites are linking to you.

So whenever you link to external websites, make sure you link to websites and blogs having good TrustRank in the eyes of Google.

Action Element: Add few external links (Link to authority websites only)

12. WWW Version vs Non WWW Version: Pick the Preferred One

Canonicalization is all about deciding whether we want to use www version or non www version for your website home and internal pages.

We need to be consistent with that and should go with only one version and later should be redirected (301 redirect) to the first.

And when linking to our website pages, we should link using the preferred version.

Suppose if you have decided to use www version for your website pages, in this case, all non www version should be automatically redirect to their www versions.

And when getting links for our websites, we should make sure we are using www with our website URLs not the other versions (i.e. non www).

Action Element: Make decision about preferred version from Day 1.

13. Write High Quality and Unique Contents

High quality content should be considered as one of the most important On-page optimization technique.

When writing contents for your website, you need to make sure you are delivering relevant contents and not copying all or fractions of your website contents from other popular websites and blogs on Internet.

If you are copying others contents, you are doing a blunder and you will also get penalized by Google for doing such plagiarism practices.

After latest algorithmic change from Google in the form of Panda Update, Google has become very strict against use of duplicate or low quality content.

In the recent times, Google has lowered down the rankings of lots of popular websites as they were delivering scrapped contents.

It’s not easy to write great blog posts all the time, so here are few tips that will help you create quality content:

  • Always come up with problem solving content ideas
  • Read what others are writing
  • Read hot topics in your niche
  • Start brainstorming blog post ideas and keep a ideas folder to never forget your content ideas

Action Element: Write high quality content only and don’t copy even a single line of content.

14. Use Your Robots.txt File Smartly

Robots.txt file plays a vital role in getting your web pages and contents crawled by Google bots.

Robots.txt file is basically used to block certain kind of content types from our website in search engines including Google. We can use this file to block certain files, certain folders and specific URL patterns being crawled in search engines.

With each websites, there will be certain content type that we don’t want to show to search engines. And we fulfil that motive through robots.txt file.

Action Element: Block thin and duplicate pages using Robots.txt file

15. Keyword Density: Don’t Overdo it

Keyword density is all about repeating the targeted keywords in your website contents.

Keyword density is calculated on the basis of total number of times a keyword is used in your web page content and divide it by total number of words in that page content. And then multiply the result with 100 to get your keyword density percentage.

Suppose the targeted keyword ‘On page activities’ is used 8 times in page content and the total word count in that page is 400 words. So the keyword density for ‘On page activities’ term in that web page will be 2%.

Ideally you should try to limit your keyword density to 1% only.

Never overdo it and make sure you are using relevant keywords (LSI keywords) instead of repetitive one’s. Here you can find Matt Cutts views on ideal Keyword Density:

Action Element: Don’t think much about keyword density, write naturally.

16. Website Loading Speed is Really Important

Google has started taking website speed very seriously and is one of most important ranking factor in Google.

By improving your website speed, you can expect better ranking in Google.

We took action in this direction and tried to load all of our website pages within 2 seconds.

I just checked my blog homepage speed using GTmetrix tool and it was loading within within a second.

Bloggerspassion.com homepage speed test

You can use Pingdom, WebPageTest or Google Developers page speed insights tools to check your website home and internal pages speed on desktop & mobile.

Note: We are hosted on WPX hosting which is really fast, customer friendly, offers free SSL and have their own custom CDN (WPX Cloud)

Action Element: Make sure all of your website pages should load within 2 seconds for better Google rankings and user experience.

17. Add Social Sharing Icons on Prominent Positions

Make it easy for people to share your contents on relevant social media channels.

Add important social media icons (Relevant to your niche) on prominent positions in your blog posts so that most of your blog readers can notice and share them.

We have added Floating sharing icons using Social Warfare for Facebook and Twitter on BloggersPassion.

Bloggerspassion social sharing icons

They will remain with you by the time you will keep browsing the contents of your interest (at Post level).

We have also written about best social sharing plugins for WordPress here

18. Don’t Ignore These 3 Essential SEO Elements

Most WordPress users forget the most essential things to implement on their sites. Here are four such incredible SEO elements that are must for any site to get higher search results.

Google XML Sitemap:

xml sitemap for WordPress

In simple words, an XML sitemap contains all the pages of your site and gives an easy access to the search engine crawlers to easily crawl your site. It’s so helpful in finding your newly published content on search whenever you post or update something.

You can download this plugin for free from here

Google Webmaster Tools:

Google webmaster tools help you monitor your Google search results for your entire site. If you have just launched a new site or if you have not yet access to them, make sure to create an account as quickly as possible.

Not only it’s free but it lets you improve your site’s overall performance by giving access to free reports, tools and resources.

Broken link checker:

This plugin helps you find all the broken or dead links that your website has. It’s really hard to find broken links and you can’t check for broken links on your sites regularly.

To overcome this problem, there’s a plugin that’s made just to find and fix all the dead links of your sites. So make sure to install and use this and flush out all the unwanted or non working links to get better search rankings.

19. Get Tactical About Promotion

Most bloggers only think about on-page optimization and they often forget about the importance of off-page SEO such as getting links from other blogs, social media submission etc.

Here are few things I personally do after publishing each post on my blog and I highly recommend you to follow the same if you want to double your website traffic.

Submit on forums: Blogging forums such as Indiblogger.in, Blog Engage, Blokube etc are free to submit your blog posts and give you good social boost.

Submit on social bookmarking sites: Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Stumble Upon can send you a lot of traffic if you have compelling headlines.

They also help you in getting quality links as these sites still have great DA and authority.

Share on social media: Immediately after publishing your blog posts, make sure to submit on all the social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc.

We all know social media sites can get you massive traffic if the content and headlines are viral.

Use a friendly writing tone: Don’t write in a corporate tone while creating content.

It’s the surest way to irritate your audience. Always use the word YOU and avoid all the jargon.

Use simple words so anyone who’s reading your posts should be able to easily digest what you are talking about.

Use a call to action: Have you ever noticed how I wrap up my blog posts? The all end up with a call to action.

I always encourage my reader and that’s YOU to leave comments or continue the discussion relevant to the content I publish. Use the same formula if you want to get more interaction from your users.


FAQs About On-Page SEO Techniques

Here are some of the frequently asked questions about “on page optimization” techniques.

What is on page SEO?

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and its content to improve its search rankings. Examples of on-page SEO include optimizing your titles and meta descriptions, creating high-quality content, etc.

What are the best on page SEO techniques?

Here are some of the best on page optimization techniques to follow in 2024.

– Always perform keyword research
– Optimize your posts for selected keywords
– Use eye-catchy titles and meta descriptions
– Use short URLs
– Don’t stuff the same keywords too many times

What are the top 3 on page SEO factors in 2024?

Here are the top 3 on-page SEO ranking factors.

– Optimize the page titles
– Optimize the meta description
– Write high-quality content and  use proper URL Structures

Is SEO still relevant in 2024?

Yes, SEO is still relevant in 2024 as SEO can help your website rank higher on search engine results. Ultimately, SEO helps with better online visibility, high conversions, and sales.

What is the most important on page SEO factor?

Hands down, content is the MOST important on page SEO factor. Make sure to create in-depth and high-quality content that helps your target audience.

Why on-page SEO is important?

On-page SEO helps search engine crawlers identify if a searcher’s query is relevant to the content you’ve created. By targeting relevant keywords and optimizing your content for those keywords, you can improve your chances of ranking your web pages higher on Google.

Browse more SEO Tutorials:

Final Thoughts

If you are blogging for a while, you know how hard it is to grow traffic to a blog. But by following the on-page SEO techniques that are mentioned above, our chances of doing well for targeted keywords on Google & other search engines increases.

So what are your views about increasing search traffic? Do you have any more quick onpage optimization technique or factor that can boost organic traffic of a website in 2024? Do share your thoughts in the comments.

About Author
Anil Agarwal is the Founder of Bloggerspassion. He is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable blogs for over a decade Now. He has been featured in Over 100 Publications including Forbes, The HuffPost, HubSpot, Shopify, Semrush, Kinsta, Bluehost, Hostinger and G2.com etc. Know more about Anil Agarwal from here.

Reader Comments (31)

  1. On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. A page’s content and its HTML source code can both be optimized as part of an on-page SEO strategy, as opposed to searching for external signals, like links.

    This article provides information about it and discusses all related topics, which can be helpful to us in understanding it better. Thank you for sharing this information, which seems helpful.

    Reply
  2. Great explanation. Very useful concepts discussed in this post!
    I knew some of the on-page seo techniques, but after reading your blog I have added more techniques about on-page on my list. I hope this will going to help me a lot to rank my website. Thank you for sharing.

    Reply
  3. Thanks For This On Page Seo Technique Well I Thinks I Was Doing Keyword Stuffing In My Article Now I Understood How To Write Article Properly

    Reply
  4. Hi Anil,
    Very Informative Blog post. Gives us much knowledge about SEO on page and also how to optimize our site. Have one questions i am new to digital Marketing and also new to blogging. What to know any suggestion for Blogging.

    Reply
    • Hi varun, glad to know that you’ve started your blogging journey. My suggestions to you would be, focus on one niche instead of covering too many topics. Write less but post only high quality contents (even if you are posting once a month, make sure to it’s worth reading). Another thing is, be consistent for at least 1 or 2 years. That’s the only way to succeed.

      Reply
  5. Hi Anil,

    Everything is explained in detailed in above SEO On-page article. i like it very much
    I have a question that how can we rank coupon website in the first page of google.

    Reply
    • Don’t try to rank your whole coupon site in the first page. Instead try to create high quality and really in-depth individual pages on your site by attracting links from other sites. That way you can increase traffic to the whole site.

      Reply
  6. Hi Anil…
    Right now I am finding your blog post from your facebook page.
    You write really great and detailed information on on-page SEO techniques.
    In my thoughts on-page SEO is one of the best way to getting higher search engine rankings but many people only focus on creating spammy links on verious sites and forums so that the reason they are not able to rank on 1st page of Google…
    I already experienced that, on-page SEO help more than 70% to rank…also if we create well optimised detailed article then we can able to attract lots of links towards our blog…
    Thanks…
    Bishnu☺️

    Reply
  7. I still remember that when I started with one low competition website and just optimized its meta titles and descriptions it came on the first page, without doing any off page SEO efforts. This thing made me believed in the incredible power of good on-site SEO. Many people underestimate on page SEO and think that just building links would get them rank higher but the case is not like that there are many metrics which Google keeps on looking especially recurring visitors to your website.

    Reply
  8. Hey Anil,
    Thanks for such an informative post on On-Page SEO. It’s easy to miss the importact of On Page optimization while being caught up with off page link submissions. By focusing on both on page and off page optimisation combined with the right keywords and quality content. organic results will follow. It was great to revisit the whole on page importance and its need for SEO.

    Cheers,
    Daksh

    Reply
  9. Hi Anil, some good suggestions. I think number 7 in terms of mobile friendliness seems to be extremely important to Google right now as well as number 16 in respect of load speed. Do you think that a CDN would make a significant difference in terms of load speed?

    Reply
    • Hi Mike, yes, mobile friendliness is extremely important and it’s better if you can also implement AMP (there are a couple of WordPress plugins which are available for free such as AMP, https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/) which helps you easily get faster loading sites when people are browsing it from their smartphones.

      CDN definitely increases the speed of your site as images which are included on your site (including blog posts) can be loaded from your CDN which can significantly improve your site loading times.

      Reply
  10. Thanks, ANIL for sharing the important Techniques of on-page SEO, Before reading this article I have some confusion about using of Heading in posts. but after reading this totally happy. I am a new blogger and searching for good information to boost my website ranking. Your Blog is really an inspiration for me.

    Reply
  11. Hi
    Anil,
    Best tips on on-page SEO. This post covers many crucial information about on-page SEO and we must implement these on-page SEO strategies on our website. On-page optimization is very crucial for any website for better ranking in search engines. Thanks for in-depth post on on-page SEO.

    Have a great day.
    Praveen

    Reply
    • Glad you found it useful Praveen and yes as you said, On-page optimization is very crucial for any website if you really want to increase your overall search rankings.

      Reply
  12. Hi Anil,
    I have been using Pingdom tools to check my website speed. Earlier I used w3 total cache but as of now I am not using it. I do most of the things above except a few. I haven’t configured my robots.txt file. I will surely include your points in my on-page SEO process.
    Thanks for this.
    Regards
    Vineet Saxena

    Reply
    • Hi Vineet, robots.txt files is bit complicated to understand and I suggest you NOT to make any changes to it if you’re really not aware of it fully. You can better install Yoast SEO as it takes care of most complicated technical SEO related things.

      Reply
  13. Anil this post is sensational. UX is bigger than ever now; so many mobile users. So you better get your onsite factors lined up to rank well on Google. Well done bro!

    Reply
    • That’s so true Ryan, glad you found it useful. Yes, UX is so much important if you really want get more out of Google and make sure to improve website speeds for better rankings in the future.

      Reply
  14. Hi Anil

    I do not agree to your point “Single h1 Tag on the Page: Keep Your Headline Text Here”
    As per Google webmaster, having multiple H1 is perfect and nothing to worry

    Also, Stumbleupon is no more. Mixx has overtaken it.

    But rest, I would say awesome tips

    Reply
    • Hi Atul, you should use h1 tag only once if you want to avoid Google penalties in the future as using h1 tags multiple times can be considered as over optimization and can lead to penalty. And yes, SU has now became Mix. Thanks for the comment.

      Reply
  15. Hello Anil,

    I am a big fan of yours and love your tips on SEO. I have to implement your tips on my blog and its really help me to rank better in search engines. On page, SEO is very important to make your site search engine friendly and let Google bot to crawl your website smoothly. Thanks for sharing these detailed and helpful post.

    Have a Great day 🙂
    Vishwajeet

    Reply
  16. Hi Anil sir,

    SEMrush and Ahrefs help me a lot to get more organic traffic, links and ranking.

    These two tools are worth their price.

    Once again thanks for the on page SEO tips.

    Thanks,
    Pradip

    Reply
  17. Thanks Anil Sir for all the tips, I am really glad to read it and you have made it simple to understand.
    As So many SEO’ blogs and bloggers share different knowledge and hence its a confusing task to know the proper ON page SEO optimization methods,

    Well, After reading your Article, I got a clear picture for ON page SEO and will surely follow this.
    Thanks and keep it Up!!

    Reply
  18. It is very detailed article on SEO On-page. Everything is explained very well.
    I have a question that how much time takes a blog to reach in the first page generally with moderate SEO.

    Reply
  19. On-Page SEO will work for those who are working on a low-competitive niche. If the competition is high, then we have to take some steps more.
    But, yeah, it’s always good to optimize a site for readers first.

    Reply
  20. Hey Anil,
    That’s a detailed post on on-page SEO. Both on-page and off-page optimization must go hand in hand to reap the organic benefits.
    SEO used to be hard. But now, if you have a little knowledge about the keywords and if you are willing to create high quality engaging content, the results will follow.
    But that doesn’t mean on-page optimization is unnecessary. Still we must do the on-page items as you have mentioned in this post.
    Thanks for the detailed discussion and thank for highlighting the major points.
    Cheers,
    Jane.

    Reply
    • Hi Jane, glad to see you around here and yes it’s a detailed guide around on page SEO as it’s a huge topic and I wanted to make it as informative as possible especially for the beginners. SEO is still hard with the constant Google changes but you get rewards if you create great content consistently.

      Reply
  21. Hey Anil,

    It is very detailed article on SEO On-page. Everything is explained very well.
    I have a question that how much time takes a blog to reach in the first page generally with moderate SEO.
    Thank you sir it is very helpful to improve my blog SEO.

    Ashutosh singh

    Reply
    • Hi Ashutosh

      It will take 2-3 months at least when you will start seeing rankings for targeted terms in Google. If you are just starting out, try to target long tail keywords with less difficulty. Tools like SEMrush & Long Tail Pro can help you find such keywords with ease.

      Reply

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