The purpose of each on-page SEO element
If you manage a website, your own or someone else’s, you most likely came across various SEO settings when publishing a new page or post. It’s also possible that you skipped the SEO set-up because you found it too confusing and didn’t know what was relevant and why. So, to make your life easier, here is a breakdown of the most common SEO elements and what’s their purpose - in plain English:
Keywords / Keyphrases
These are the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called "search queries." If you boil everything on your page down to simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords. Keywords are important because your website can show up when people type them into search engines. Your goal in ranking on search engines is to drive organic traffic to your site from the search engine result pages (SERPs), and the keywords you choose to target will determine what kind of traffic you get.
Title Tag / SEO Title
This is an SEO element that specifies the title of a web page displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page (SERP). It appears as the clickable headline for the search result and is important for user experience, SEO, and social sharing. Keep it under 70 characters - any longer and your title will be cut off in search results. Mobile search results show up to 78 characters. But don't stuff the title with keywords - search engines are designed to specifically monitor the content that's unnaturally stuffed with keywords.
Page URL/ Slug
The slug is the editable part of the URL of a page. Located at the very end of a URL, the slug contains keywords separated by hyphens. It may also contain the day, month, time, random numbers, or the author’s name, and they should be simple to digest for both readers and search engines. They are also important when keeping your site hierarchy consistent as you create subpages, blog posts, and other types of internal pages. To make them SEO-friendly remove the extra, unnecessary words, include only one or two keywords. and use https if possible, as Google now uses that as a positive ranking factor.
Meta description
This is an HTML element that provides a brief summary of a web page displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page (SERP) and is meant to give the user an idea of the content. These are the short page descriptions that appear under the title in search results and although they are not an official ranking factor for search engines, they can influence whether or not your page is clicked on. Keep it under 160 characters, although Google allows longer meta descriptions — up to 220 characters. Mobile devices cut off meta descriptions at 120 characters.
Header Tags
Header tags are HTML elements (H1-H6) used to identify headings and subheadings within your content from other types of text. Put your most important keywords in your <h1> and <h2> headers - they can indirectly impact your rankings by making your content easier and more enjoyable for visitors to read and providing keyword-rich context about your content for the search engines. These tags help organise your content for readers and help search engines distinguish what part of your content is most important and relevant. Include important keywords in your headers, but choose different ones than what's in your page title.
Image Optimisation
Properly identifying your pictures bring additional ranking opportunities, such as showing up on Google Image Search, better user experience and faster page load times. Image alt-text is like SEO for your images. It tells Google and other search engines what your images are about, which is important because Google now delivers almost as many image-based results as they do text-based results, meaning that users might be discovering your site through your images. Make it descriptive and specific. Make them contextually relevant to the broader page content, keep them under 125 characters, and use keywords sparingly.
Internal Links
This is the process of hyperlinking to other helpful pages on your website which is important for on-page SEO because internal links send readers to other pages on your website, keeping them around longer and thus telling Google your site is valuable and helpful. In addition, the longer visitors spend on your website, the more time Google has to crawl and index your site pages. This ultimately helps Google absorb more information about your website and potentially rank it higher on the search engine results pages.