On-Page SEO (2026): How to Do, Examples, Tactics, & More

No doubt, backlinks are still important. But we cannot achieve and retain top rankings in Google without solid On-Page SEO in 2026.

Google is giving more and more weight 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 2026.

What Is On-Page SEO? (Beginner-Friendly Explanation)

On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing your website’s web pages.

It is all about optimizing website pages to help them get ranked 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 be confused between On-site SEO and Off-page SEO. But these are both different than On-Page SEO.

On-Page SEO vs On-Site SEO vs Off-Page SEO: Key Differences

On-page SEO is about optimizing a webpage of your website by improving page quality. On-site SEO is about optimizing the elements of the entire website, such as 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.

SEO Type	What It Focuses On	Examples
On-Page SEO	Optimizing individual web pages	Content quality, titles, headings, keywords
On-Site SEO	Optimizing the entire website	Site speed, HTML code, structure, HTTPS
Off-Page SEO	Activities outside your website	Backlinks, guest posts, social media, PR

Why On-Page SEO Is Important for Faster Rankings

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.

Top On-Page SEO Factors You Must Optimize in 20266

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

On-Page SEO Techniques That Still Work With Google’s Latest Algorithms

When you browse the Internet to fulfill your thirst for various on-page optimization techniques in 2026, you will find too many optimization techniques, and lots of them don’t work in 2026.

In today’s post, I’m including the top On-Site SEO activities you should give the utmost importance to that really work with Google’s latest algorithms in 2026.

The presence of the 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 you are implementing on your website and whether they are compatible with the latest Google algorithms.

On-page elements use many HTML tags, including the Title tag, Meta tags, heading tags, image tags, bold text, italics, underlines, list type tags, etc.

We need to ensure we use the targeted keywords naturally in our website content.

1. SEO-Optimized Titles: The Most Important On-Page SEO Factor

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, make sure to include targeted keywords at 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, Clean, and Keyword-Focused

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 the URL and keep it Short

3. Use Only One H1 Tag Per Page for Better SEO

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 this by reviewing the source code of any of your website pages.

With most SEO-friendly WordPress themes, the post headline used to appear in the h1 tag. Otherwise, you can set your title to an H1 tag yourself or ask your theme provider for 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.

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

4. Use Primary and LSI Keywords in H2 and H3 Headings

Apart from using the primary keyword once in the H1 tag, it is advised to use the primary keyword and its related keywords (LSI keywords) in the H2 and H3 tags as well.

Suppose for this post, the 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.

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

5. Internal Linking: Pass SEO Juice and Improve User 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.

6. Place Primary Keywords in the First and Last 100 Words

Keyword placement is critical for getting top rankings on Google.

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

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

7. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly (Mobile-First SEO)

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

You can check the mobile-friendliness of your website’s home page or any internal page using the PageSpeed tool.

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

8. Switch to HTTPS: Secure Websites Rank Better

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 the HTTP version to the HTTPS version, do it instantly.

Most well-known hosts offer free SSL configuration to their clients.

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

Action Element: Make sure your website is fully secured, and all pages are on the HTTPS version.

9. Write Click-Worthy Meta Descriptions for Higher CTR

It’s very true, your meta description copy does not play any role in your website’s 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’s 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 and ALT Tags for Image Search Traffic

ALT tags play a key role in increasing your traffic from Google and 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.

In addition to using your targeted keyword in the image name, you should add alternative text to each image 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 photos.

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

Action Element: Optimize all of your website images (Names, Alt tags, captions)

11. Link to Authority Websites to Improve Trust and Relevance

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 based on who you are linking to and what kind of websites are linking to you.

Whenever you link to external websites, make sure they have a good TrustRank in Google’s eyes.

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

12. WWW vs Non-WWW: Choose Your Preferred Domain Version

Canonicalization is about deciding whether to use the www version or the non-www version for your website’s home and internal pages.

We need to be consistent with that and use only one version, and later redirect (301) to the first.

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

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

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. Create High-Quality, Unique, and User-Focused Content

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

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’ content, you are making a blunder, and you will also get penalized by Google for doing such plagiarism practices.

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

Recently, Google has lowered the rankings of many popular websites for delivering scraped content.

It’s not easy to write great blog posts all the time, so here are a 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 Robots.txt Smartly to Control Crawling

The robots.txt file plays a vital role in getting your web pages and content crawled by Google bots.

The robots.txt file is used to block certain 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 website, there will be specific content types 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: Avoid Over-Optimization

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

Keyword density is calculated on the basis of the total number of times a keyword is used in your web page content and divided by the total number of words in that page content. And then multiply the result by 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 ones. Here you can find Matt Cutts views on ideal Keyword Density:

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

16. Improve Website Loading Speed for Better Rankings

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

By improving your website speed, you can expect a 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 homepage speed using GTmetrix, and it loaded in under 1 second.

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).

If your site is hosted on WordPress CMS, you can speed up your site with the help of the WP Rocket speed optimization plugin.

Action Element: Ensure all pages on your website load within 2 seconds to improve Google rankings and user experience.

17. Add Social Sharing Buttons to Increase Visibility

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

Add critical social media icons (Relevant to your niche) in 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.

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

18. Don’t Ignore These 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:

In simple words, an XML sitemap contains all the pages of your site and gives 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 helps you monitor your Google search results for your entire site. If you have just launched a new site or if you do not yet have access to them, make sure to create an account as quickly as possible.

Not only is it 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 broken or dead links on your website. It’s tough 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 on your sites. Make sure to install and use this, and flush out all unwanted or non-working links to improve search rankings.

19. Promote Your Content to Maximize SEO Results

Most bloggers focus only on on-page optimization and often overlook the importance of off-page SEO, such as getting links from other blogs and social media submissions.

Here are a few things I personally do after publishing each post on my blog, and I highly recommend you 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, and Mix 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, submit to all 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 reading your posts can 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 readers, 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.

Effective on-page SEO is key. Find hosting that boosts your site’s performance in our best hosting recommendations.

FAQs About On-Page SEO Techniques

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

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 2026? Do share your thoughts in the comments.