Master On-Page SEO and change your bottom line!
If nobody knows you exist, how will you ever get customers through the door? Sure there’s advertising, but that comes at a significant cost and doesn’t guarantee you the traffic you’re after.
That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important to your business. It is the frontline to spreading the word and getting you found. So, you want to maximize your on-page SEO as much as possible to get more people to visit your site.
This article helps you to do just that by giving you the lowdown on SEO. Here you’ll find ten of the most effective techniques you can implement and rank up today.
What is On-Page SEO?
While off-page SEO encompasses background processes, such as link building and domain authority, what you really want to focus on first is boosting on-page SEO. This involves optimizing your website and its content to allow search engines to identify what you’re about and rank you accordingly.
This is essential, because the more data that falls in line with your business niche, the more authority you get in search engines. So when they see you providing valuable and relevant content that people like, they start increasing your rank so more people see you.
1. Audit Your SEO
The first step to improving your on-page SEO is to identify what’s currently working and what needs improving. This is a great way to find out what you’re missing and what you can do to fix it.
On-page SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush are excellent for this. They basically scan your whole site and locate errors such as lack of keywords, alt tags, broken links, page speed, and so on. Once you know where you’re at, you can start implementing the next tips.
2. Create Quality Content
If your content is bad, as in providing little value, or is irrelevant to your service, your search ranking is going to suffer. When you create great high-quality content that people want to see, the search engines take notice. More time on your site, more clicks, and shares – all help prove your authority.
Make your content original, well-researched, and exclusive to your website alone. Include descriptive text for videos and images to show what they’re about. Also, include as many keywords as you can to satisfy user intent. So, if they search for something, you’ll pop up at the top.
3. Optimize Your Content For SEO
Before you create any content, you’ve got to do the research. But, even before that, you’ve got to do keyword research. This not only shows you what people are searching for within your niche, but it gives you an idea of what content to create in the first place.
Once you know what your keywords are, build a list, and find longtail keywords and related phrases people are searching for. Then it’s simply a case of adding them to your content, titles, headings, and descriptions to boost SEO.
4. Fruitful Formatting
For pages to do their thing properly, correct formatting is key. Each must have an h1 tag for the title which is displayed in the search results. Make them interesting and easy to read. Then include the other subheadings (h2, h3, h4) for the rest of your content with additional keywords.
All text should be presented so it’s as easy as possible to read. Use a font size of at least 12-14 and use underlines, bold, and italics to highlight important points. Break up large chunks of text into paragraphs of 3-4 lines only to help readers too.
5. Top Titles and Magic Meta
Each page on your site needs a title and meta description. This gives search engines a good idea of what your site is all about and ranks it accordingly. So it’s incredibly important, and a good way to include more keywords.
Keep your titles relatively short and descriptive (less than 60 characters) with the keywords preferably at the start. Meta descriptions (200 characters) add more details to what the site is. And just like the title, you want to make it informative and interesting to get those clicks and rank.
6. Perfect Your Permalinks
A permalink is the URL unique to each page and it also affects your SEO. They’re the part that follows your main website URL after a “/”. They should follow the same rules as your titles to include keywords, as well as being short and descriptive.
Each URL should follow the same structure as your website too. This means categorizing your content so that it’s easier to follow its trail. So if you have a blog that is categorized, the URL should read something like this: https://www.mywebsite.com/blog/topic1.
7. Internal and External Links
When search engines read a page, they also look for any links to follow other pages. This gives them a better idea of what your site is about and indicates pages they may not have been aware of. Also, by linking within your site, it keeps visitors there for longer.
When you link externally to other sites, it helps increase authority and value on a topic further, as well as build relationships with others in your niche. Don’t go overboard with internal and external links, and make sure they’re relevant and useful.
8. Multimedia SEO
Breaking up text with images and videos not only add information to content, and makes it easier to digest, but it also helps with SEO. Use small images and include an alt tag description to let search engines know what it is.
Anything interactive like an embedded video is another great way to add more information with less text to read. People generally prefer to watch and listen than read, so it’s another great way to increase time on your site and provide value.
9. The Need For Speed
People’s attention spans are rapidly decreasing. They like to scan more, read less, and don’t like waiting around for pages to load. Search engines see this too as bounce rates affect your rankings considerably.
Make sure your site is up to speed so everything loads quickly and people can get to your content fast. If not, they’ll leave which doesn’t look good for you. Things like reducing image sizes and background processes that slow things down. Aim for max load speeds of 3-5 seconds.
10. Get Phone Friendly
About half of web users access websites through their mobile phones. So if you’re not mobile-friendly, you could be losing out on a huge chunk of traffic. Be sure to include a responsive design so that your site looks great on mobile as well as desktop. Test everything and make sure images load, the text is easy to read, and all links are visible and clickable.
Maximize Your SEO
By implementing just a few of these on-page SEO tips will do wonders for your website and maximize the amount of potential traffic. Include all ten and you’ll be well on your way to the front page in search results.
If you’re struggling, you can always find some on-page SEO services to help. Once everything’s in place, you’ll start to see your numbers go up more than you ever thought possible!