When working on on-page search engine optimization (SEO), there are 9 on-page factors that we need to work on.

These on-page factors are:

1. Keywords
Ideally, the best keywords are 2 to 4-word phrases known as the “long-tail” keywords. Use of long-tail keywords usually generate good results since visitors are more targeted and it is easier to rank high in search engines for such keywords.

2. Title tag
Each page of the website has a title tag. The title is shown at the top left corner of the browser. Since the title is what both visitors and search engines will see when visiting the website, a human understandable and keyword-based title is highly desirable and important.

The length of title tag should be lesser than 60 characters. The reasoning for this is that the fewer words, the more weight they hold in the eyes of the search engines.

3. Meta Description tag
Together with the title, the description is displayed in the search engine result pages (SERP) of some search engines such as Google.

Writing the description with the intention of a sales pitch will entice people viewing the SERPs to click on the title and visit the website.

In addition, putting some of the best keywords in the meta description tag will also help in ranking of the website.

The recommended maximum length for this tag is 150 characters.

4. H1 tag
H1 tag is usually associated with the headline of a web page. The headline should include the targeted keyword and doing so for the headlines of each web page will reinforce the importance of the keywords for the web pages.

5. ALT tag
Alt tags are words that are associated with images.

Search engines found that the texts inside these tags are normally good indicators of what the page is about.

As with other tags, make sure important keywords and keyword phrases are placed in these tags.

6. Unique and fresh content
Search engines like content, especially original and unique content.

When creating content, keywords should be placed throughout the content and as a rule of thumb, keyword density should be no more than 5%. More importantly, the content has to be readable and understand by human visitors.

7. Text attributes
During the process of content creation, attributes such as bold and italic could be used on the keywords to highlight their importance. This is very powerful but do not use them extensively, otherwise search engines would treat the content as spamming and abusive.

8. Internal Link Structure
Internal links are the links on each web page that are connected to various pages within the same website.

Similar to the title, adding keywords to the link’s description as well as implementation of cross linking of pages within the website will let the search engines know what the web pages are about. This will reinforce the effect of the keywords.

9. Sitemap
Sitemaps are a good way for anyone to find what they are looking for on the website.

By adding a regular human readable sitemap and a xml sitemap, this will ensure that visitors can find everything they are looking for and also making it easier for search engines to pick up all the links.