If you want to rank high in the search engines, and increase the traffic to your website, you have to optimize your site. That includes technical, on-page, and off-page techniques.
Off-page techniques are important to help build credibility and transparency online. Off-page includes things like link building and social media.
Think of technical as your platform, where your site is hosted.
And while all of that is important to your performance, none of it matters if your site isn’t set up the right way to attract attention. That’s where on-page SEO factors come into play.
Smart business owners realize that consistency is everything. Adding to your site regularly will ensure it stays up to date with what search engines require to rank well. The search landscape always changes. In order to make sure your SEO strategy is working, you’ll have to play with your on-page SEO regularly too.
Understanding what on-page SEO is
On-page SEO is the practice of updating every page on your site, so it’s optimized for the search engines. You focus in on ensuring it’s properly coded to attract the attention of the search engines.
With on-page SEO strategies, you’re looking for organic placement. You focus your efforts on using techniques that will rank within the search terms you deem most appropriate for your audience.
On-page isn’t just about content; it also includes HTML source code. It looks at the things you can’t see, in the coding, such as title tags and meta tags, as well as the stuff you can see, like images, headlines, and copy.
Why is on-page SEO important
On-page SEO strategizing is important because it allows the search engines to know your site better.
In today’s world, most businesses focus on making Google happy. There’s a reason for that. According to the latest statistics, Google controls almost 90 percent of the market share. If you make Google happy, the other search engines tend to tag along.
Google wants two things.
- It wants to be able to find the best sites for every key term out there.
- It wants to deliver the best results, so the end-user is happy with what’s ranked.
From day one, it strives to find a way to do those two things better and better. It will continue to do so well into the future.
Google revives its rules regularly in order to deliver better service. If you keep that in mind, and continually adapt your site, you’ll create a better experience for both Google and your viewers.
Additionally, on-page SEO includes things any smart business owner thinks about anyway. They give you a brand people want to do business with. It attracts better, and therefore, keeps your end-user happier overall.
What does Google want?
While Google keeps its algorithm calculations quiet, proprietary and on an as-needed basis, it’s still easy to define what it’s looking for. It cares about user experience. And what users want are results they can trust. They look for experts that can talk about whatever they searched for. And they want transparency to ensure that what they see is really what they receive.
People don’t want to click to a result and have anything but the best experience.
If you deliver that on your site, you’ll do well with Google.
To do that, you have to focus on your content. Google has always placed a priority on great content, and that’s never going to change. That means adding to your site regularly. It means growing your content based on what your users type into the search bar and ensuring it’s well-written and captivating when they get there.
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Pay attention to titles and title tags
When you create content, you do so centered around a keyword or key phrase. That keyword should be used in the title of the post.
Have you ever read through a blog where they post willy-nilly about anything? Their titles are usually based on nothing:
- Happy Friday
- Let’s Celebrate
- Why We Love Spring
You get the picture. You may be guilty of it yourself.
Think about those titles for a minute. What are they telling your reader? Why would a visitor care? If you’re writing for your Mom, she’ll read everything you do. But if someone is looking to do business with you, those simply won’t do.
Titles matter.
And once you have your focus, choose your keywords, and use appropriate titles, you should also place them prominently on your page using title tags.
The title tag by itself has little value anymore in the overall way Google ranks. But if you don’t use it, or use it poorly, it can be a tick against your SEO ranking.
So why take the chance?
Metadata
We’re going to take the idea of “title tags” one step farther. If you’ve done any research on SEO tactics, chances are you’ve seen the arguments on metadata.
Some will say if you want your site to rank well, you have to focus on metadata. Then the next guru will tell you it’s not important.
Google maintains that metadata doesn’t help rankings and isn’t looked at anymore. Still, why take chances, because the evidence is still unclear?
Plus, if you think about metadata, it provides even more focus on the content you are creating.
Meta descriptions, for example, describe what the page is all about. It’s often displayed in the SERPs underneath the title. So even if it isn’t helping with ranking, it makes your page better, more readable, more helpful. That’s never a bad thing, so why not just do it?
SEO writing
Content matters. We can’t say that enough.
But not just any content. SEO writing means creating content that both the search engines and your readers will love.
There is a strategy behind that. It’s not something the average writer can do. It takes practice. It takes knowledge of writing for SEO purposes. Simply writing for the sake of writing won’t do.
And if you don’t understand that, it’s best to leave it to the professionals who do.
Keyword cannibalization
Let’s talk about content from one more angle. Let’s say you want to rank well under golf clubs. Do you think it would benefit you to create 25, 50, 100 pages or more all focused on the keyword golf clubs?
Nope. It’s known as keyword cannibalization. And Google can penalize you for it.
In the past, marketers would focus on having multiple pages vying for the same keyword, trying to be ranked first, second, third – all the way down the page for that specific term. Google didn’t like it. It doesn’t provide a great user experience when the user doesn’t have choices.
Now it’s more beneficial if you understand your market well and create content around your keyword, using as many long-tail keywords as you can.
And when you think about that, it’s better anyway.
Capturing a hundred people from a variety of search terms will provide you with a broader prospect pool than putting all of your attention on people typing in one thing.
That’s better business. And it’s better for Google too.
How’s your on-page strategy?
Of course, there are many other on-page SEO techniques that make a good overall SEO strategy for online results.
If you aren’t getting the traffic or the clients you’re looking for from your current site, let’s talk.
