On-Page SEO: Top 20 Essential Techniques For 2023

The dynamic of SEO is the hardest part to master. Every year, Google’s algorithm is tweaked 1000 times. This means that a new update is released at least once daily throughout the year. Even SEO professionals who spend their careers calculating rank criteria are left scratching their heads. 

It’s impossible to remember all that has transpired. That’s not a nice way to spend your time. You’ll be a step ahead of the pack if you remain up to date on some of the most important trends and SEO tactics for 2023. We know that 75% of people never browse past the first page of search results. So it’s vital to figure out how to avoid these algorithm updates and stay on the first page of search engine results pages. 

source: bing.com

To save you time from regularly checking Google’s update page, we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 most important SEO techniques for 2023. 

Let’s look at what SEO is and how it affects the digital world. 

How does On-Page SEO work?  

It ultimately boils down to optimising website pages in Google and other search engines to help them rank better. On-page SEO increases a website’s page-level components, whereas off-page SEO focuses on link building. 

On-page SEO is essential for every website’s success. Isn’t it tough to increase conversion rates or revenues without the help of search engine traffic? Everyone is focusing their efforts on Google to increase website traffic and sales, and profits. 

Best On-Page SEO Techniques for 2023 to Achieve Top Google Rankings 

When you explore the Internet for different On-page SEO tactics in 2023, you’ll find that there are far too many to choose from, and many of them will not work in 2023. 

So, in today’s post, I’ll go through some of the top On-page SEO strategies that will work in 2023 with Google’s existing algorithms. 

The existence of the Meta Keyword tag does not influence your website’s rankings, in Google’s opinion. 

As a result, you can just ignore it. As a result, you must ensure that the strategies you employ on your website are compliant with Google’s most recent algorithms. 

Meta tags, header tags, picture tags, bold letters, italics, underlining, list-type tags, and other tags 

1. Recognize Your Site’s Core Web Vitals 

The word “core web vitals,” a new SEO concept, may be unfamiliar. By 2023, you’ll need to understand what these terms mean and the metrics that go with them. Page Experience, a new algorithm that ranks pages based on Google’s fundamental web essential ratings, will release soon. 

So, what are the most crucial features of the internet? According to Google, they’re a collection of measures that evaluate speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. We’ll go a little deeper into what essential web vitals encompass in this post, but first, a reminder. 

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)The Largest Contentful Paint determines page speed (LCP). The amount of time it takes for the main content of a website to load is measured in milliseconds. 2.0 seconds or less is the optimal LCP.  

The First Input Delay (FID) is a metric that measures a page’s responsiveness. This is the time it takes for a page to become interactive. FIDs of fewer than 100 milliseconds are optimal. 

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is a metric for visual steadiness. This is the amount of visual page content layout movement that is unexpected. CLS should be less than or equal to. 

Now that you know what you should measure for, how do you do it? Many of Google’s existing tools have been improved to include core web vitals measurement functionality. 

Each of these tools generates reports that describe and explain the state of your important web metrics. 

Spend some time familiarizing yourself with these reports and how you might be able to enhance your scores before the new page experience modification goes live. 

• Google Search Console
• PageSpeed Insights
• Lighthouse
• Chrome DevTools
• Chrome UX Report
• Web Vitals Extension

2. Passage Ranking Optimization on Google 

Google launched Passage ranking in October 2020, allowing specific portions on web pages to be ranked alongside the overall page. What connection does this have to anything? This means that Google can take content from a page even if the page is about a different topic than the SERP. 

Assume you wrote a blog article about social media marketing that included a variety of topics, such as tools, strategy, metrics, and networks. Your page could still rank for the keyword social media marketing tools even if you haven’t optimised it. Google is indexing your content since it identifies a significant portion relating to social media marketing tools. 

Here’s another Google passage ranking example. 

source: searchrankingtips.com

To optimise for Google’s Passage ranking, all you need is easy-to-read blog material and a user-friendly experience to optimise for Google’s Passage ranking. The most crucial thing for you to focus on is creating different divisions within your postings. 

For these sections, make sure to include keywords as headings. Your information should be clear and focused on the subtopic within these sections. 

Consider it a blog post inside a blog post.  These sections should always be relevant to your main point, but they should also make sense in context if read separately. 

3. Pay attention to the Featured Snippets. 

Featured snippets should be a part of your 2023 On-page SEO strategy if you haven’t already. Featured snippets, the holy grail of search, appear in a rectangular box at the very top of the SERP page, in position zero. 

While you can’t control which content is highlighted in a snippet, you can optimise your content to make it more likely to appear in one. Here are a few suggestions: 

Keywords to Consider for the Long Run 

The more phrases in a search query, the more probable a highlighted snippet would be returned, according to SEMrush. Only 4.5 per cent of single-word keywords yielded a highlighted snippet, compared to 17% for five-word phrases and 58.5 per cent for ten-word keywords. 

Use questions to your benefit

Any content you distribute should be created with the user in mind. When people use Google, they typically do searches in the form of questions. You’ll be more likely to obtain featured snippets if you compose an article with these questions and answers. 

According to the On-page SEO rule, question terms like “why,” “do,” and “can” elicited the most featured snippets, while the word “were” produced the fewest. 

Choose your format with consideration

The four fundamental highlighted snippet forms are paragraph, list, table, and video. While creating your material, keep these several forms in mind. 

Keep in mind the purpose of a featured snippet. Google wants to present searchers looking for clear and straightforward, quick solution information. As a result, you should be ready for the speed reader. 

That’s not to say you can’t add longer paragraphs of text in your posts; simply put them after the definition of the featured snippet. This should be concise, direct, and to the point. 

4. Become familiar with the EAT Principle

Despite Google’s ever-changing algorithm, the EAT principle can help you master long-term On-page SEO success. So, What is EAT, exactly? 

Expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are all represented by the letters EAT. It’s essentially a metric for determining the online reputation of your business. Google gives new sites a lower rating than existing, brand-authenticated, and trustworthy sites. 

source: articlecity.com

• If your business is a little more saturated than others, you may be wondering how you’ll be able to compete against major corporations or well-known brand names. 
• Keep it simple at first, and don’t get carried away. You can take certain steps to improve your brand’s authority, dependability, and reputation. Listed below are a few examples: 
• Customers should be asked to leave favourable reviews on reputable sites like Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, Amazon, or Google. 
• Obtain high-quality links from relevant websites. 
• Participate in public forums and urge others to mention you. 
• To demonstrate EAT on your website, use testimonials, case studies, reviews, and other forms of social proof. 

5. Use Multiple Long-Tail Keyword Phrases 

Google’s search engine becomes increasingly sophisticated with each algorithm improvement. Google now claims to be able to tell the difference between relevant search subtopics. If you search for “home fitness equipment,” Google now recognises that “cheap equipment,” “premium options,” and “compact space ideas” are significant subtopics, and SERPs will return a more diverse collection of results. 

Source: bing.com

In terms of search engine optimisation, what does this mean?  Keywords with short tails will have a lot more competition. . You’ll have a better chance of finding your website on the first page of search results for the relevant term and maybe related terms if you use long-tail keywords or more specialised keywords with three words or more. 

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. You could include “logo jackets for firms,” “branded sweatshirts and T-shirts,” and “sweaters for businesses” in your content if you want to rank for “custom branded apparel.” You could also include “logo jackets for firms,” “branded sweatshirts and T-shirts,” and “sweaters for businesses” in your content if you want to rank for “custom branded apparel.” This helps you organise for various search terms while also informing Google that your custom branded gear is linked to these other long-tail keywords. 

6. Create unique content 

This may seem obvious, but many marketers get caught up in the weeds of On-page SEO and fail to focus on creating new, high-quality content for searchers. Keep in mind that over 4.5 million blog posts are written every single day. It’s easy to get behind if you’re not creating new content regularly. 

When you publish fresh material, you have the opportunity to optimise it for today’s On-page SEO best practices right now. Pay close attention to page titles, content headers, subheads, image alt text, and the new keywords you’re looking for. 

Users consider new content to be more valuable than the old stuff. When people are looking for an answer to a topic, they frequently check the date to see if it is relevant. If all of your postings have old dates and outdated material, they will quickly move on to the next search results. 

Finally, the product’s quality is a grading factor in and of itself. The more you publish, the more Google will index your site, and your content will rank higher. 

7. Update Old Content 

Even if you’re busy creating new content, you can’t forget to keep your existing content updated. This is a crucial On-page SEO strategy for the year 2023. Your old content will fade away and become obsolete if all you do is add new content. Don’t pass up the opportunity that those old postings may bring because you invested a lot of time in them. 

One of the simplest methods to go back and refresh outdated information is to conduct a link audit. Find any broken or out-of-date external links and fix them. This improves the user experience and protects you from being penalised by Google if you have too many broken links. 

Make sure all of your internal connections are up to date as well. Remember to go back into relevant old content and add links to these new postings as you develop new content. This informs Google that the two sites are linked, which expedites the indexing of your new pages and boosts the ranking of your posts for relevant search terms. 

8. Focus on User Experience 

To be honest, every On-page SEO strategy should aim to improve the user experience in some way. That is what On-page SEO is all about. This user experience will be more crucial than ever in the 2023 revision. 

After all, the current focus on essential web vitals is centred on user experience. Google considers the bounce rate, dwell time, and click-through percentage. The goal is for a user to click on your result, explore other sites, and stay on your site for at least three minutes. 

Consider the following factors while evaluating your user experience: 

• Is your website compatible with mobile devices? Is it designed to be mobile-friendly? 
• Is it easy for consumers to navigate between pages on your site? 
• Is it taking you an hour to complete your task? 

9. Don’t Forget About Images

Google Images is responsible for over 20% of all web searches in the United States. So, if you want to rule On-page SEO in 2023, you’ll need to know how to search engine optimise any image. 

First, ensure that any photographs you include are high-resolution and related to your term. Simply by glancing at your content, users should be able to figure out what it’s about. 

source: creative-loft.com

Before sending any images to your site, be sure they are compressed. Keep in mind that page speed is a ranking factor for Google. Because photos contribute to 21% of a webpage’s total weight, even a single large image might cause a fast site to slow down. Squoosh is a free and easy-to-use tool for fast compressing your photos. 

Image alt tags are also essential. This is a text-based substitute for photographs that search engines use to help them match keywords to your image. A user also sees this in the upper left corner if your image does not load. When creating your alt text, include crucial information and keywords. Keyword stuffing, on the other hand, should be avoided. 

10. Increase the number of backlinks to your website 

Search engine optimisation relies heavily on backlinks. If you don’t focus on establishing high-quality backlinks to your site in 2023, you won’t be able to have a successful On-page SEO strategy. 

Why? Building brand authority depends heavily on backlinks. Our study predicts that in 2023, expertise, authority, and integrity will be more crucial than ever. When a popular website connects to yours, your EAT factor rises, and Google views your website as a searcher-friendly option.

source: virtualmarketadvantage.com

We’ve put up a step-by-step guide on constructing a backlink plan. Learn all you need to know about developing backlinks, from email templates to link-building dos and don’ts.

Here are a few suggestions: 

• Prioritise quality over quantity: the domain authority of your linker is more important than the total number of links you have. 
• Consider inviting a guest blogger to contribute. 
• Use online forums to distribute your work and network with others in your profession. 
• Make the most of social media by sharing useful content and requesting backlinks to your website from others. 
• Find mentions that aren’t linked and make them clickable. 

11. Use SEO-friendly URLs that are simple and short. 

People should be able to tell what kind of content they’ll get from your website by glancing at the URLs. As a result, your URLs should incorporate your chosen keywords. Always put the target keywords near the beginning of the URL and make it as short as possible so that people can remember them. This plays a crucial role in On-page SEO strategy.

Source: Pinterest

Avoid using special characters in URLs, such as brackets, commas, signs, colons, semicolons, question marks, underscores, and Tildes.

Use your target term in the URL and keep it short as an active element. 

12. Page using a single h1 tag: 

First and foremost, ensure all your website pages have a single h1 element (header tag). You may double-check this by looking at the source code of any page on your website. 

The headline for the post used to be in the h1 tag in most On-page SEO-friendly WordPress themes. If this is the case for you, you’re good to go, and you’ll need to repeat your target term here as well. 

source: reliablesoft.net

Make sure there is just one H1 tag, and the target term is present. 

13. In the H2 and H3 tags, use targeted keywords and LSI keywords. 

Aside from the h1 tag, it is recommended to use the major and related keywords (LSI keywords) in the h2 and h3 tags. 

If the primary keyword I’m targeting for this post is On-Page SEO, I’ll try to include it once in each of the h1, h2, and h3 tags. Aside from that, I’ll include terms like SEO, Off-page SEO, content optimisation, on-page optimisation, search engine optimisation, and so on in header tags. 

source: getthatright.com

Use the primary keyword only once in the H2 and H3 tags. 

14. Use internal linking to increase SEO juice and improve engagement. 

Internal linking means including links to related posts and pages within the content you’re working on. 

Internal linking will help you direct more targeted traffic to the linked sites while encouraging visitors to stay longer on your site by allowing them to read relevant related pages. 

In this manner, you’ll be able to provide the corresponding pages with some much-needed SEO juice and domain authority. This will help the linked pages rank higher in Google and other search engines. 

You can improve your search rankings and user engagement by linking to related pages through this On-page SEO strategy.

15. In the first and last 100 words, use primary keywords. 

Regarding obtaining top Google rankings, keyword placement is quite crucial. Your major keyword should be used once in the first 100 words and once in the last 100 words of your article.      

16. Verify that your website is mobile-friendly.  

Google has already begun to penalise websites that aren’t mobile-friendly (Responsive design). 

source: smartinsights.com

You can also start using this particular tool if Any internal page of your website, including the home page, may be tested for responsive and mobile-friendly using the Google Page Speed tool.

17. Upgrade to your website’s HTTPS (Secure Site) version. 

You’ll notice many more HTTPS websites if you spend time browsing through the top Google results for any query. 

source: signalinc.com

The majority of well-known hosts provide free SSL configuration to their customers. As a result, you should have no trouble updating to the secured version.  

18. Create a compelling meta description to increase Google clicks. 

True, your meta description language has no direct influence on your website’s search engine rankings. 

However, most of the time, Google used to include meta description data with your website’s placement in search results. 

source: mohitdave.com

So, even if your website is listed behind your competitors on search engine result pages, writing a solid meta description copy could help you receive more clicks. 

Here’s an interesting video from Matt Cutts (former head of Google’s webspam team), in which he discusses title and meta description modifications and their impact on organic CTR. 

19. Increase Search Traffic by Optimizing Image Names and Alternate Tags 

The ALT tag is important for getting traffic from Google and other search engines. If your blog posts include appealing photos with appropriately optimized keywords in their alt tags, you will likely receive a lot of traffic from Google image search results. The names of your images should be created with your desired keyword in mind. You should include alternative text with each image used on your website pages, in addition to using your targeted keyword in the image name. 

Remember to credit the original proprietors of the photos if you use photographs from Google or any other website. You won’t have any copyright difficulties in the future if you do it this way. 

If you don’t know where to find free high-quality photographs for your blog posts then search on freepik, splash etc

20. Make Use of the Robots.txt File Smartly 

The Robots.txt file is critical for Google bots to crawl your web pages and content. 

The robots.txt file is mostly used to exclude specific material from our website from search engines such as Google. This file can be used to prevent certain files, directories, and URL patterns from being scanned by search engines. 

source: poweredbysearch.com

There will be certain content types on each website that we do not want search engines to see. We achieve this goal by using the robots.txt file. Block thin and duplicate pages using the Robots.txt file

Bonus Read

Keyword Density: Don’t Overdo it

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

Keyword density is calculated based on 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.

Let’s say the desired term ‘On-page activities’ appears eight times in the content of a page with a word count of 400 words. As a result, the keyword density for the term ‘On-page activities on that web page will be 2%. 

source: coolwebfun.com

Ideally, you should try to limit your keyword density to 1% only. Never overdo it, and make sure you use relevant (LSI) instead of repetitive ones. 

Don’t worry about keyword density; instead, write naturally. 

Conclusion:

These are the top 20 On-page SEO techniques. It’s impossible to stay on top of every Google algorithm change. Keeping up with the current trends is beneficial, but it can be difficult for a busy marketer to do so. As a result, the most important SEO tactic to remember is to optimise for people. 

Stop attempting to create content for search engines. People and experiences will be at the heart of every SEO method and trick used in 2023. 

So devote your time and effort to creating high-quality content that answers and informs your target audience. Any successful SEO plan must start with this. Then, in 2023, apply the most effective SEO tactics to fine-tune, tweak, and optimise your efforts. 

Want to learn more about the complete SEO techniques with practical learning then check out our digital marketing course where you can gain more insight about SEO, Digital Marketing, Landing page automation, and so on.