Have you ever wondered what it takes to fully optimize a web page for search engines?

From an SEO standpoint, there are two primary sectors you have to consider: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

Basically, there are things you can do on your site to help your rankings, and things you can do off of your site to improve rankings.

Let’s see in this post the main points to consider when working on the on-page SEO.

1. Make Permalink URL SEO-Friendly

You need to create an SEO-friendly permalink URL.

How?

Make it short and add your keywords in it.

Don’t write things like:

nopassiveincome.com/p=87

or very long URLs like:

nopassiveincome/twitter-chat-i-love-it-so-much.

But focus just on your keywords, as this example:

2. Add Your Keywords in the Title

The title tag is the most important on-page SEO factor, so you should add your keywords in it.

You don’t need to place it at the first position, but the closer it is, the more weight will have for search engines.

See my example:

3. Play with Images and Videos

Wall of texts are hard to read and can also bore your readers.

Adding pictures, videos and graphics of any kind may help increase the page views of your site and reduce the bounce rate.

Plus, it can increase the time users spend on your site.

All these factors are really important to rank well on search engines.

Remember to add the proper alt tag to your images, possibly including your keywords, adding them also in the file names (for example, twitter_chat.jpg)

Tip: I like to make screenshots and add them to my content. They are really informative and can make understand the concept at first glance.

4. Link Out to Relevant Content

Outbound links should be a constant practice when creating new content.

This is a really important on-page SEO point.

I use to link out few times at beginning of my online journey, I think for fear of being penalized.

Now I finally learned the importance of adding relevant and quality outbound links in my content.

5. Add Your Keywords at Beginning of the Content

You should place your keywords within the first 100 words of your content.

Of course, try to do it in a natural way.

Again, an example:

6. The Importance of H1 Tag

Well, if you use WordPress, you don’t need to worry about it, because the H1 tag (headline tag), is already included to your blog post title.

See this example, checking the code:

7. Work on the Loading Speed of Your Web Pages

There are many ways to make your site faster.

I use a dedicated server with HostGator, to improve the loading speed of my sites.

You may want to use Google PageSpeed Insights to check your site stats.

8. Add Social Sharing Buttons

Social signals are important for ranking your content.

Number of tweets, authority of Twitter users, number of Facebook likes and shares, authority of Facebook user accounts, Pinterest pins, votes on social sharing accounts (like blogging communities), amount of Google +1’s and authority of Google accounts are all factors which influence the ranking of your web pages.

9. Work on the Length of Your Content

I use to write 300-500 words posts 5 years ago, now I try to write detailed and informative articles, with at least 1000 words.

It seems that 1500 is the ideal length of the perfect content.

See this “Top ranking & average page word count”, by CoSchedule.com:

10. Work on the Bounce Rate of Your Site

Bounce rate may be used by Google to rank your web pages.

Adding internal links (with your keywords), or the most popular post in the blog sidebar, are two effective ways to reduce the bounce rate of your site and increase the page views.

11. H2 and H3 Tags + Keywords in Your Content

You should include your keywords at least once in the H2 or H3 (etc) of your content.

Also, be sure to follow a specific keyword density (2% generally works for me, but I focused to go not much above 1% for the front page of my niche site).

I hope these points will help you optimize your content for search engines.

Other than on-page SEO, you should also take care of off-page SEO (basically getting links pointing to your site).

What do you think?

Any other tips to add?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!