10 Ways to Improve your On-Page SEO
When it comes to SEO strategy, the end-goal is to ensure that the website ranks as high as possible, and to do this, it is important to look into both on-page and off-page SEO. In this article, we focus more on on-page SEO and ways you can use it to improve your ranking.
On-page SEO consists of measures that can be taken within your website to improve website rankings. These can include elements such as keywords, meta descriptions, heading tags, alt tags, and HTML. As such, on-page SEO forms the fundamentals of any SEO effort on a website. In order to ensure best practices in SEO management, on-page technical issues and quality of content should be tackled prior to off-page techniques. Although there has recently been a shift in focus to off-page techniques such as link-building and social media promotion, it should be noted that off-page SEO effectiveness becomes watered down without the fundamentals of on-page SEO in place. Below are 10 essential factors in on-page SEO for improved content and authority, favorable ranking and a boost in traffic and conversions.
1. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT)
To rank well on Google, you need to ensure your content reflects the expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. As Google has put a premium on high-quality content, it is important that your website content follows this framework to increase visibility on organic search results.
2. Title Tags
Title tags refer to the headings of your web pages or the main heading you see in the search results and provide context to what the web page is about. A missing, duplicated or poorly written title tag can negatively affect search rankings and should be worked on to boost the searchability of your page.
3. Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions provide a brief description of what the page is about and usually appear under the URL. Not only should it describe the content, but it should contain relevant keywords as doing so as to be picked up by search engine crawlers. Well written meta descriptions can improve CTR, perception of the quality of the result and what your website has to offer.
4. Headlines
Attention-grabbing headlines should be part of your SEO strategy as it could be the difference between an impression and a click. Interesting and eye-catching headers need to spark interest in the readers for them to take action by clicking and consuming the rest of the content.
5. Header tags
Header tags are used to identify headings and subheadings of your text from other types of text within your content. These serve an important function as they can indirectly impact your rankings through providing keyword-rich context about your content and making content easier and pleasurable for website visitors.
6. URL Structure and Internal Linking
An organized URL structure allows for search engines to crawl from page to page of your website more easily and makes navigation more seamless for website visitors. URLs must contain keywords that reflect the pages they are directed to as these will help in earning clicks.
Internally linking related pages on your website is another important factor in SEO. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl through the website and keeps visitors engaged for longer.
7. Avoid Keyword Cannibalization
Too much of a good thing can lead to disastrous effects especially when it comes to keywords. Targeting a specific keyword among several pages may prove to be detrimental to your SEO as these will compete with each other leading to “keyword cannibalization.” It is vital that your web pages are checked that they are not competing for the same keyword as this may lower search rankings.
8. Content Audit
Auditing existing content is crucial because it helps evaluate whether it is achieving goals and making an impact on ROI, it identifies whether the information is relevant or outdated and determines the content that is performing well on the website. This aspect of SEO is very important and should be done regularly.
9. Media
Engaging images, videos, and diagrams can make the website more appealing and help increase the time spent on the website and reduce the bounce rate. Optimization of images can help in providing additional ranking opportunities and better user experience. Alt-text is a word or phrase that can be attributed to the image file to help it be indexed for search.
10. User Engagement
The performance of the website also affects how the website is ranked with things like page speed and mobile usability being benchmarks of search ranking. Pages that take long to load or don’t render properly on mobile often lead to frustrated visitors who contribute to a higher bounce rate. To increase engagement, focus areas should be on-site speed, user experience, and content optimization, among others.