Is On Page SEO Dead?
-
Hey Guys,
Search Engine Roundtable has published a short post about this a few days ago, quoting senior member at WebmasterWorld forums who said:
"The way I see it, on-page text today is for the "relevance" part of the total algorithm. The whole algorithm is, in broad strokes, "relevance + connectedness + quality". After you've clearly stated the relevance of the page, then the rest of your ranking power comes from elsewhere.
I've added on-page bold tags with no effect. I've added or changed h1 elements with no effect. Not too long ago, those might well have done something, but that's not the game anymore.
And moving from a table layout to a CSS-P layout today might get you nowhere, too. It all depends how deeply complicated the table layout was, I think."
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4408395.htm
Is it true?
Is on-page SEO really dead?
What do you think?
-
ShiveS,
Hope you don't mind me barging in here.
H1 tags, the value of conspicuously placing your keyword in H1 tags throughout the page is very questionable in terms of actual value.
However there is more to on page than just "Algorithm SEO Value" If your visible post or page title is tagged H1, which by default usually is tagged H1. Then you want your visitor to definitely see the targeted keyword or a synonym at the very least. **Bounce rate and time on page is of exceptional value to the major search engines. **
If you're page title "visible title" in the SERPs is the same or VERY similar to what the visitor sees when they land, a visitor is going to be a happier visitor when they arrive, happy visitors hang around longer and they interact more.
Alt tags, there is absolutely no doubt that a post or page that has images or info-graphics properly alt tagged will do better than a straight text block of text (all other things being equal) again, both for the visitor and for the SE to know what the essence of the article is.
Link Titles, that sounds like an off page element? If you mean anchor text, do you mean the anchor text of the "Interlinks" around your site, ie the links on your site that point back to the page in question, I can't imagine any reason in the world why those pointing links/anchor text would not be highly relevant to the destination page.
If you mean the anchor text on the page in question pointing to other pages on your site, again, I can;t imagine any SEO or Visitor value reason why anyone would place the Target Keyword on page A as the link anchor text to unrelated page B?
If you think there may be a problem with On Page being dead, try this:
Write the best article you can about your topic, really "the best" relevant, readable, resourceful, long and make the Title something completely different, do not add any images, or alt tag images incorrectly even, and do not point any links anywhere back to that page, and do not point any resource links off the page.
So, the article is about Laptops and the Page Title is Kitty Litter. The image is a graphic about the top 10 laptops, and it is alt tagged "Kitty Litter". No links anywhere.
You tell me how that page will rank, then wait patiently for 60 days and do all the On Page stuff you would normally do.
Which way do you think the page will rank better.
On Page SEO is NOT Dead.
-
I love it when people proclaim the death of different factors. Every time someone believes it my job gets a little easier!
The author of that post said "I've added on-page bold tags with no effect. I've added or changed h1 elements with no effect. Not too long ago, those might well have done something, but that's not the game anymore."
It's pretty clear that what they mean by "on-page seo" is actually "cheap tricks to get a ranking boost". Definitely not the same thing. On-page SEO to me means making the meaning of a page as clear as possible to a search engine.
That means using language that is aligned with that of searchers who you want to connect with, clear structure, good indicators through titles etc and a meta description that talks to those searchers and makes them want to click.
Dead? I don't think so.
-
Thanks for your answer Doug.
Appreciate it!
-
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your answer.
It really helps.
By the way, what do you think specifically about the SEO value of H1 tags, Alt tags and link titles?
-
Of course on-page SEO isn't dead!
As you quote in your question, on-page factors go a long way towards deterining the relevance part of the search engines algorithm.
On-page factors are relatively easy to control/manage and as such tend to be the starting point when it comes to optimising a page/site. I don't think anyone would think about trying to get a page to rank without making sure the on-page optimisation was up to scratch first.
For competitive keywords, you're likely to find that your page will be up against other pages that have the same strong on-page relevancy. Compeiting just based on on-page will be impossible. Tweaking very minor factors such as putting your keywords in bold isn't going to make too much of a difference.
I don't think on-page is dead. I just think that now there's more awareness of on-page best practice and as a result the battle ground is all happening off-page.
One final caveat - it does depend on the niche/market you're competing in. You can still get quick wins using just on-page in the more uninformed niches! I wouldn't want to bet that it would be enough to stay there though...
-
Hi Shiva,
Google has said publicly that a less than perfect site from a SEO perspective doesn't mean you won't rank well. However I don't think onpage SEO is dead, certain elements have a lot less importance, but it isn't dead.
A technically sound foundation on which to build all your future marketing efforts is important in my opinion. On their own, individual onpage factors (such as bold tags you mention) will have very little measurable impact on your bottom line. You shouldn't be using your time to measure these points in isolation, you could knock up a 500 word article in that time
However, having pages with keyword researched content, relevant title tags, crawlable navigation elements, good internal linking and social integration shouldn't be ignored on a site wide level. Especially if you are working on large sites with people adding new content regularly, having this platform/education inplace for onpage SEO gives you a lot of 'easy wins' which often get missed by the competition.
Focus on good structured markup, loadtimes, and well written, keyword researched content aimed at your market.
Hope that helps,
Cheers
Andrew
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
Homepage SEO optimization
Hello, I’m almost ready to lunch my new website https://thetravelhoop.com , I just need to create the content of the product page and put all the images. I would like to know what you think in terms of SEO of the home page (is the content that I want to rank the most). My doubt is that since it is a landing page, there is not a lot of text but mostly <h>. It’s not a styling decision of course (I know is bad practice) but mostly because they are supposed to be title/headings.</h> Do you think I’m doing something wrong, or do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Daniele
On-Page Optimization | | danielecelsa0 -
A good SEO praxis?
Hi all, having a worpress site with 10 DIFFERENT pages (each with its own different content) and consequently 10 DIFFERENT keywords to optimize......Can somehow Google penalize me for having such a number of different keyowrds? I guess sometimes there no way to avoid it. It depends on the content of each page. You'll need a keyword to optimize them (if you consider they are relevant enough). Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Editing Author Pages
Hi, Quick question regarding author pages. I have the blog set as me for my author page. so the url is: mysite.com/blog/author/miles/ Now, seomoz has picked up that my author page is missing meta description. But, this cannot be editied through wordpress as there is no edit option available. I may really be missing something, but where can I alter the author page, I have a feeling it might be fed from G+ but no really sure what part of G+ is used as the description. Thanks Miles
On-Page Optimization | | easyrider20 -
Hotspot area for SEO
Hi, we have an online store: http://www.redwrappings.com.au/ There's been a debate regarding which area is recognised to be the most important place/hotspot for SEO: Free delivery van area (top left panel) OR Top menu navigation Given that if you look at the page html source code, the top navigation loads last and the free delivery fan area is the first one to be read in the html source code. We did this because we want the body page content (h1 & text content) to be read first by search engine robot & also the body can load faster for the user. Is this the right thing to do or we better off load the top navigation first? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Essentia0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Duplicate Page Title
Hi All, I'm new in SEOMoz and have some questions after I have already spend 2-3 days trying to resolve the problems identified from Crawling one of my clients websites. I get quite a lot of Duplicate Page Conntent and Page Titles warnings and trying to find a workaround through the forums and posts. I continuously get this error on most of my pages: URL: http://domain.com/benefits with the same Page but with a WWW in front URL: http://www.domain.com/benefits Any advice will be highly appreciated. Thanks, Athos
On-Page Optimization | | athosk0 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0 -
SEO Domain Values
I always thought that there was no difference in value between a .com and .net, also that hyphens have the same value as the keyphrase without the hyphen. But I have heard Rand lately saying hyphens are spammy - whats the go? Is CarParts.com better than Car-Parts.com or Car-Parts.net etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Ventura0