There are many on-page SEO strategies that you can use to improve your website’s rankings. In this article, we will discuss some of the most important ones.
Title Tags
One of the most important on-page SEO factors is your title tag. This is the text that appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your website. It is also the text that is displayed in the tab of your web browser when you open a page.
Your title tag should include your main keywords and should be no more than 60 characters long. You should also make sure that your title tag is catchy and interesting so that people will want to click on it. This improves your click-through rate or CTR for short.
Keyword Research
When establishing an on-page SEO plan to rank a website or a specific web page. One should determine the specific keyword or keywords the page should rank for. The variations of keywords should be thoroughly researched as well. This is called LSI and stands for latent semantic indexing.
The specific content on the page should match the keyword search query and should also satisfy the user’s search intent.
Content
Another important factor for on-page SEO is the content on the webpage. When writing content for an on-page SEO strategy, you need to know the point of your page is – what is the reason for the specific page and how does it benefit the user. Is it to engage, inform, or persuade? If you are trying to engage users, their comments might offer additional opportunities for keywords.
There are different forms of content that can be seen on a webpage. Examples of such are images, written content, infographics and video or audio content.
If you are using videos as part of your content plan, make sure that they are keyword rich and relevant to the topic at hand. For written content on a webpage with high rankings in Google search results, you should aim for between 2000 and 5000 words (or sometimes even more). The idea is that the content needs to be helpful and useful for its users. If the content is detailed (in-depth) and is concise you will have a better time trying to rank it.
Header Tags (H1-H6)
Header tags are also important for on-page SEO. They are seen as an opportunity to place your keyword once or twice in the tag itself.
There are 6 header tags that range from H1 to H6. The most important header tag would be the H1 and it is generally used to introduce the page or website. On pages with a lot of content, using the H2 and H3 header tags can be helpful for breaking up the content into more manageable chunks. Header Tags (H1-H6) should not be used more than once on a page and they should not be used to place keywords repetitiously throughout the document.
External (or Outbound) links and Internal links
When building out an on-page SEO strategy one needs to use keywords inside outbound links
Internal linking is a strategy that can have significant success with improving a websites rank in Google. The idea is to link contextually relevant pieces of content together to help the user navigate the different pieces of content that they might find useful.
Think of it as the suggested searches you may find helpful with search engines like Google.
External or outbound links are links that you link out to that is helpful and relevant. The idea is similar to internal links that the searcher may find useful but it also understand that you can use it to link to information like a university research paper.
You would use Anchor Tags to note what the reason for the link is. This way Google can also understand its purpose.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions or descriptions you would find under the website title in Google’s search results. There are two components to meta descriptions – the HTTP-Equiv attribute and the meta description element.
These should be between 150-160 characters in length. On average, these descriptions are seen on search engine result pages for 10 seconds before Google will change it to another part of your website or put up other websites that they feel might be more relevant or interesting. Be sure that you have used relevant keywords in this meta title to improve its chances of being clicked upon by a user carrying out a search query related to your topic area.
Meta Descriptions are very important because they tell users what the web page or website is about. The idea is that if the text matches what the searcher was looking for then there is a greater chance of them clicking on it. This refers to a click-through rate or sometimes even a conversion rate.
Images and Alt text
As mentioned in the Content section of this post – images fall in with the content strategy of ranking a website. There is research to suggest that stock images don’t do very well in terms of ranking websites in Google. With regards to images, you should always use a keyword and descriptive text in the ALT text section in order to improve Google’s understanding as to what it is searching for.
By following these on-page SEO tips, you will be well on your way to improving your SEO rankings in Google.
If you require help with your SEO, consider using BIAS SEO for your SEO needs.
