On-Page SEO Ranking Factors [2021]

On-pages SEO is a way to optimise a web page for search engines and users. On-page SEO is considered a crucial part of an SEO strategy to rank any web page. In this article, we will discuss the 2021 on-page ranking factors for Google as it is the most popular and dominating search engine with nearly 5.14 billion searches per day.

When it comes to ranking a webpage to get maximum traffic, SEO experts follow all the ranking factors that make it tough to rank a site. Google alone has nearly 200+ ranking factors that make it hard to implement all ranking factors. In this article, we will let you know the vital on-page SEO factors that can single handily rank your web page.

Webpage Content
Good webpage content is crucial for search engines and users to rank a webpage and get results. But what is good content? How can we score the content quality? Generally, good content has three attributes as discussed below,

Original Content
Creating original and unique content is the first and foremost step for ranking a webpage. Google, Bing, and other search engines prefer new, distinctive, and plagiarism-free content for ranking against a specific keyword or phrase.

Duplicate content can be a kill pill for your webpage SEO strategy. If Google finds your website content duplicate of any other site content. Then it will stop indexing the webpage as an immediate action. And in case you keep publishing duplicate content, then Google will slow down the website crawling rate to ultimately fail your SEO strategies.

To avoid SEO failures, you should always publish unique, new, and plagiarism-free content on your website.

Linked Content
Be an extrovert as search engines like Google and Bing don’t like the introvert content writing approach. Try to use as many hyperlinks as possible without disturbing the content quality.

A piece of content that is internally & externally linked to other web pages is considered good content under the Search engine’s content quality definition. And researches says that users tend to spend more time on a linked page than an unlinked webpage.

An unlinked webpage is considered an obsolete page. And search engines can’t differentiate obsolete and worst quality web pages. That’s why websites that can neither be accessed without a login nor allow users to share data are rarely observed on Google’s first SERP.

Internal linking comes under on-page SEO metrics. You have to link all the web pages to get positive results. If you are managing an old website with some highly ranked web pages. Then you should connect your new or lower ranked web pages with ranked web pages to boost the SEO strategy.

Users Search Intent
Users’ search intent is another vital factor in writing good content for a webpage. User search intent is similar to the demand-supply chain concept.

User search intent is the most crucial factor of on-page SEO as Google’s robust artificial intelligence system is smart enough to choose relevant content for any search query. While targeting a keyword, you have to understand the user search intent for getting your webpage on top SERPs.

Understanding the essence of user search intent is too critical. Look at the Google search results in the following image when we search a keyword ‘Avocado toast’. Google artificial intelligence triggers ‘recipes’ and ‘how’s to’ blogs against the ‘Avocado toast’ keyword.

Technical On-Page SEO factors
After getting ready a good piece of content for your website, you may need to follow a few of the technical on-page SEO factors as discussed below:

Keyword Density

Keyword density – in fact, researchers and experts are still debating the worth of keyword density. A natural piece of content with a clear focus on users’ search intent doesn’t need you to look for keyword densities. Because natural written content already has enough keyword density to get noticed by the search engines. But, if you are new to writing, you must follow the keyword density rule to get your content ready according to SEO metrics.

The question is, what keyword density should we use? You can repeat the keywords till it feels natural and sound fit in your content. We can say that keeping the keyword density of 0.5 to 1 is a smart way to optimise a webpage. You have to ensure that you’re not stuffing the keywords as keyword stuffing is different and can reverse your webpage SEO.

Keyword density of more than 1% could come under keyword stuffing radar, and Google will consider such pages a scam and never let them rank anymore.

Where and how to use keywords?
You can’t just stuff the 0.5 to 1% keywords anywhere in the blog. In fact, using the keywords is also an art by itself.

Initially, use your main keyword in the title of the webpage or blog, and then try to use the keyword in the first 100 words of your blog. Pitch of any blog or essay matters to humans and robots as well. That’s why putting the keyword in the title & the first 100 words of the blogs impact the SEO strategy.

An emotional keyword-rich title that relates the user’s search intent can be a plus to an on-page SEO strategy. Organise your structure and use headings & subheadings (h1, h2, h3) to make the blog easy to read. Use your keyword in the heading’s to properly optimise the blog.

Content length
One of the frequently asked questions by SEO learners is regarding the length of the content. The content length matters or not for a perfect SEO strategy.

The answer is yes. Yes, the length of content matters in most cases. The content of generally 1850+ words get ranked for first pages, but that’s not a hard and fast rule for SEO.

You may focus on the depth of content instead of word counts. If a blog post covers all the aspects of a specific topic, then it can get ranked on Google’s top page irrespective of word counts.

Final words
On-page SEO ranking factors (2021) may include the following factors:

• Fresh, natural, original, and quality content.
• Use Keyword in URLs, headings, and titles.
• Use original images and stuff your keyword as image alt text.
• Keyword density should not exceed 1%.
• Use internal links.
• Use keyword rich meta tags.