The
online marketplace of today is extremely noisy. Having a web presence
might have been enough 15 years ago – you would simply cobble a web page
together and boom, you would get traffic, links, and customers.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that anymore.
Google, the world’s
leading search engine, is getting smarter by the minute. Ranking updates
such as Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, and more recently, Rankbrain, are
making it very difficult to rank in every single niche. All niches are
crowded and Google is interested in delivering the best possible results
for every search query. Stuffing a bunch of keywords on a page doesn’t
work like it used to thanks to co-occurrence and co-citation – it’s all
about semantics and relevancy.
In
a nutshell, Google upped its game considerably and is continuing to do
so on a regular basis. If you want to stay afloat you will have to
follow their lead.
What Exactly is On-Page SEO?
Basically,
on-page SEO means optimizing individual pages skillfully so they
regularly rank high in the search engines and bring in relevant traffic.
It’s about content and the HTML source code. It’s called on-page
because both of those things are directly influenced by you as the
webmaster, as opposed to off-page SEO that takes into account inbound
links and other external factors.
On-page
SEO takes a lot of things into account but it’s becoming increasingly
dependent on relevancy. Google is concerned with getting out the most
relevant answer to the query in the shortest possible amount of time and
algorithms are designed to recognize user intent and evaluate whether
or not your page will be able to provide the best possible answer to the
searcher.
Today
I’m going to focus on on-page SEO essentials that you need to be doing
right in order to achieve a higher ranking in Google search. They are
not complicated and after reading you can go back to your pages and
posts and tweak them for better results in the future.
For
more in-depth information about on-page SEO I’ll gladly refer you to
this great Whiteboard Friday video from the Moz team. It’s 11 minutes
long and it explores some of the more advanced techniques you might be
interested in after reading this guide on the essentials.
Title Tag and Keywords
Your
title tag is the most important element of on-page SEO that you can
directly influence. It’s what Google displays in the search engine and
those are the first words a potential visitor will see. Title tag
signals to Google whether or not your page is a good fit for the search.
Always include your keyword in there, preferably at the beginning of
the title as keywords are weighted from left to right, meaning that the
search engine places more value on words that are at the beginning or
closer to the beginning. Also, make sure that your page title is wrapped
in the
headline.
This title tag sends a strong relevancy signal to Google and lets it
know what the content is about. Most CMS platforms do this automatically
but it doesn’t hurt to check. Make sure you don’t have more than one
on every given page.
Don’t Leave Your Meta Descriptions Blank
Even
though the meta description is not nearly as strong of a relevancy
signal as the title tag is, it’s something that users read before they
decide to click on your link. Google claims that meta descriptions are
not a very strong factor in the calculation and I do believe them.
However, I also know that I usually read them. If they are appealing,
concise, and include the keywords from my search I click on them. If
not, I move on. Lesson to be learned – always strategically place your
keywords into the meta description and invite people to find out more by
clicking on the link.
Beware of Over-Stuffing Your Keyword
Keywords
are important; there is no doubt about it. However, they are not as
important as they used to be. Google algorithms are getting smarter and
no amount of keyword stuffing is going to get you on page 1 of the
SERPs. Instead, focus on dropping your keyword several times into the
copy (preferably in the first paragraph) and then move on to
complimentary and supportive words.
Google uses semantic search to
determine relevancy. This means that it’s looking at the content and
trying to assess how authoritative it is. Let’s say your keyword is
‘Facebook Advertising’. Instead of repeating it 50 times in the text use
other words such as ‘social media advertising’, ‘social media advertising guidelines’, ‘Face advertising tips’, and so on.
The
purpose of content is important but, generally speaking, the longer it
is the more authoritative it is. This is especially true for blogs and
articles – posting anything under 800 words won’t get you much traffic.
People are searching for in-depth content that can easily answer their
immediate questions but to which they can go back to and reference when
they have a need. Google knows this and, usually, awards lengthier
pieces with better rankings.
Pay Attention to Your External Links
High-quality
pages develop a symbiotic relationship when they link and mention one
another thanks to something called co-citation. Basically, co –citation
is one of the building blocks of semantic search. It signals to Google
that your content is good enough to be picked up by others when they
link to you.
Alternatively, when you place outbound links to relevant
sources it signals to Google that you’ve done your homework and know the
top players in the niche. On the other hand, links are common courtesy
these days because you can’t possibly cover everything on your page.
They give your visitors a chance to learn more about something you’ve
mentioned from other credible sources.
Link Internally As Well
But
do it smartly! You want to redirect users to the content they expect to
see when they click on a link. If you’re just brushing on a term in one
of your posts but have a more extensive write-up about it somewhere
else by all means, link to it.
However, don’t add unnecessary links only
to drive readers to your sales or product pages – they will simply move
away if they didn’t expect to see that. If they get what they’ve
expected they are going to hang around and your dwell time will
increase, signaling to Google that your content can keep readers engaged
and boosting your rankings.
Improve Your Page Loading Time
There
is absolutely no excuse for a slow-loading page these days. There are
so many hosting options out there (most of them cost peanuts) that if
your site has loading problems it simply means that you don’t care
enough to fix them. It’s a major turn off for users accustomed to
high-speed internet. Use specially built tools to check your site’s
loading times and follow the recommendations on how to fix any problems
you might be having.
Do
you have any tricks up your sleeve you would like to share with the
rest of the world? By all means, leave a comment below and let us know
about your own on-page SEO tactics!
Author: By Emma
Have you used any of these SEO tactics - Please comment below.
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