You’ve created a lot of content for your website and some of it is doing well, but a lot of it is underperforming. That’s worrying you, and rightly so! If your content isn’t performing up to expectations, that’s valuable effort and resources gone to waste.
What can you do to get the most out of all your content? We’ll tell you what we say to our clients: on-page optimization.
When it comes to on-page optimization in SEO, the primary purpose is to take an existing piece of content and make it shine in front of search engines and users alike. In this post, we’ll show the importance of on-page SEO and the core elements that drive it. Let’s dive in!
What is on-page optimization in SEO?
First, let’s tackle a few basics. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a website’s visibility and ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). A lot goes into optimization, but SEO can be further divided into two categories: on-page and off-page.
On-page SEO vs. off-page SEO
On-page optimization in SEO comprises everything you can do directly on your website to improve its visibility and ranking. It includes optimizing page titles, meta tags, headings, content with relevant keywords, and more. We’ll cover all these in detail in the sections below.
On the other hand, off-page SEO involves activities outside your website to improve visibility. The main focus of off-page SEO is on building your website’s reputation and authority. This includes things like getting high-quality backlinks from other websites, engaging in social media promotion, and participating in online communities, just to name a few.
Why on-page SEO is important for your business
Unfortunately, it’s not enough that you’ve created a website and put content on it. Unless that content is optimized for search engines and users, it won’t rank in the SERPs. And if it doesn’t rank, it won’t attract organic traffic. Plus, even if it does rank, it won’t for long without continuous optimization.
On-page SEO is important for businesses because it helps search engines identify, classify, and index the contents of your website. That’s important, as they’ll be able to better present a searcher with relevant pages on your website.
Here are some reasons why you should definitely focus on on-page SEO:
- You’ll optimize your content for search engines.
- You’ll have an easier time ranking in SERPs.
- You’ll get more visibility and organic traffic.
More traffic always means more opportunities for conversion, which is what all businesses want. Further, because it’s done on your website, on-page SEO is entirely under your control. So, why not maximize it?
Core on-page SEO elements to focus on
High-quality content with headings
Don’t let all the technical talk of search engines distract you from your true audience: people. Google emphasizes the importance of creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. Content should also demonstrate “experience” to satisfy Google’s E-E-A-T quality guidelines.
Since keywords are the way to connect with your audience, effective keyword research is the first thing to focus on to ensure your content resonates with them. Here are some other things to check for in your content:
- Use your primary keyword in your title in a descriptive way.
- Use primary and secondary keywords optimally throughout the body text.
- When in doubt, choose readability!
- Create content with the user persona and buyer’s journey in mind.
- Use header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to establish content hierarchy.
- Use descriptive subheadings and bullet points.
- Link to relevant, high-authority pages with contextual anchor text.
Page title, meta description, and alt-text
While everything above was to make sure that content was geared toward its audience, now we have to sprinkle some things in for search engines. Optimize your page titles (a.k.a. title tags) and meta descriptions while including some alt-text with your images.
Title tags are a ranking factor, so they’re really important. Further, search engines display your title tags in the SERPs, and they appear in browser tabs. A lot goes into page title optimization, but here are a few tips regarding title tags:
- Keep them under 50-60 characters
- Include your primary keyword.
- Make sure they’re descriptive of the page content.
- Make sure they’re unique.
Meta descriptions aren’t ranking factors anymore, but they do show up on the SERPs as a summary of your page. Meta descriptions encourage the audience to click or not click on your link, so it’s recommended that you take time to write them. Things to keep in mind are:
- Keep your meta description under 160 characters.
- Include your target keyword naturally in it.
- Make it compelling and avoid alphanumeric characters.
Alt-text is used to describe images on web pages for those who can’t see them, including visually impaired individuals. It also provides valuable context to search engines about the images on your page. When crafting alt-tags, it’s crucial to be:
- Descriptive, incorporating relevant keywords naturally.
- Concise (not too descriptive!).
- Relevant to the image content.
Page URLs
This is an example of a page URL. Page URLs aren’t a ranking factor as they were before, but it’s good practice to optimize these as well. URLs are important because they affect how Google perceives the navigation on your site. The cleaner your navigation system is, the better it is in terms of SEO.
Here are some things to remember for URLs:
- Keep them neat and consistent.
- See the absence of page IDs, special characters, stop words, or numbers in the above example. Decide on a naming structure and stick to it for the entire website.
- Use only one or two keywords.
- Use hyphens to separate words rather than underscores.
- Avoid using dates or years in your URLs to keep your content fresh.
Read more about how you can optimize your web page URLs.
Structured markup
Using structured markup on your web pages can be a great strategy to steal a spot in Google’s rich results. Wondering how to get a featured snippet or claim a knowledge panel? Structured data can help you get both and more.
Structured markup, or schema markup, is a coding technique that gives search engines additional context and information about what’s on your website. It uses specific tags or codes to highlight and categorize elements such as products, articles, events, reviews, recipes, FAQs, and more.
Structured markup helps search engines understand and categorize your website’s content better. When search engines understand your content better, they display it better on the SERPs in the form of rich snippets or rich results.
Rich results are more informative and visually appealing. Resultantly, they get more eyeballs, attract more clicks, improve user engagement, and drive targeted traffic to your website.
Mobile responsiveness
With mobile-first indexing, there’s just no getting around having a responsive website. Google wants the best user experience for everyone, and a majority of searchers are doing so on mobile devices.
A mobile-responsive design means your website adapts and displays seamlessly on various screen sizes and resolutions. You can check if your website is mobile responsive with Google’s mobile-friendly test.
If you find that your website needs some work, you should consider whether you want to use responsive design or dynamic serving. Whichever you choose, ensure that all versions of your website, whether desktop or mobile, have the same URL. This is critical!
Site speed
Page speed is a ranking factor. It’s not likely you’ll outperform better content with a faster-loading website, but it matters when the content is comparable. Google offers a free page speed test, and it’s vital that your website meets the minimum thresholds for Google’s core web vitals report.
Here are a few things you can do to improve your website speed:
- Opt for a reputable hosting company with fast servers and good uptime.
- Use image compression tools to reduce image file sizes.
- Minimize redirects, as extra server requests slow down page loading.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). It distributes website content across multiple servers globally to deliver it faster to users in different locations.
There are many other things you can do to optimize your page speed. If you do, it will be well worth the effort too.
No time for on-page optimization? Leave it to Ranq!
With that, we’re done! You now know everything that goes into on-page optimization in SEO. We know that might be a bit much, but these are the minimum standards of on-page SEO that you must have.
No time for on-page optimization? We thought so. Let Ranq handle it for you!
Our team of SEO experts is here to enhance your website’s SEO while you focus on running your business. Our proven strategies can improve your search engine rankings so that your website can attract more organic traffic. What do you say? Interested in more traffic coming your way? Contact Ranq today!